Examining Educational Tracking: Impacts and Controversies

1. The Tracking Wars Vicki Nilles Metropolitan State College

2. What is Tracking? • Assigning students to various learning groups based on abilities in specific academic areas • These groups could have could have a heterogeneous make up of both girls and boys • Teachers may use different instructional approaches and strategies for each group depending on students’ academic abilities and performance

3. Supporters of Tracking: • argue that separating students based on their perceived abilities allows teachers to better meet the needs of all students

4. Critics of Tracking: • Argue that tracking and homogeneous groupings based on ability is discriminatory and prevents many students from developing their intellectual and social potential.

5. What do you think???

6. Does class matter in the issue of tracking? • According to Ball (2003), Brantlinger (2003), and Welner, (2001), high ability appears to be more closely related to family background and SES than intellectual potential. • Students whose families are privileged benefit most from tracking as they end up in the programs for the gifted and talented whether they truly qualify or not. • At the other end of the spectrum, the curriculum tends not to be as creative, engaging, and challenging for the students.

7. Being in the low group diminishes academic achievement • Lucas (1999) and Welner (2001) have found that students in the lower groups are provided with fewer and less effective opportunities to learn than other students. • Critical thinking tasks are reserved for the high ability groups which leads to them faller even further behind in areas of math, foreign language, and sciences. • Oral recitation and structured written work are common in low ability groups and students are exposed to low status knowledge.

8. Teacher in low ability groups: • Spend more time on discipline and behavior issues and less time engaged in instruction • Tend to be the less experienced teachers • Tend to view the group in a negative way

9. Kids from lower SES groups: • Are disproportionately represented lower ability learning groups • Are also disproportionately represented in students referred for special educational services • This places many students of color in double jeopardy as many are from lower SES and are considered to have learning impairments

10. Schools with diverse student populations: • Students have been resegregated based on race, language, or class, into separate tracks within schools • White middle class students have disproportionate representation in programs for gifted and talented or advanced placement • African American, Latino, and low SES students are disproportionately represented in low ability groups

11. Courts have agreed: • Tracking practices are discriminatory • Inappropriate preparation for students in low ability groups for standardized tests is unlawful • Many times parents are not appropriately notified of program options for their children creating a discriminatory situation for certain students • The placement of unqualified teachers disproportionately in schools with low achieving students is an act of discrimination

12. Middle class parents: • Have been known to fight the concept of “detracking” in order to maintain the resources for gifted and talented that they believe their children deserve • Believe that their achievements should be passed on to their children by ensuring that they receive the highest quality education possible • They use their power to force administration to respond to their demands

13. Curriculum for Equality • Should reflect accurately the class structure and inequalities that exist in the US • Curriculum and textbooks should actually focus on the values and experiences of a middle-class society • Should focus on the history and heroes of the labor struggle in this country in which laborers endured great odds to improve their conditions • Should discuss the inequities based on income and family wealth

14. The Peoples History of the United States • Howard Zinn