Should Students Be Tracked?

Should Students Be Tracked?

Academic pigeon-holing remains widespread despite controversies

Whether you knew it at the time or not you probably have been academically tracked at some point in your educational career.  According to a study by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, some form of academic tracking was found in 82 percent of the surveyed schools. Yet the practice remains highly controversial. Tracking experts explain the case for and against tracking and suggest what you can do to help a child in a tracked situtation.

What is academic tracking?

There are two components to tracking. One is the identification and labeling of kids according to their perceived capacity to learn. The second part is providing those kids with different curricula and instruction. Tracking can apply to high school or secondary school programs where whole sequences of courses are labeled honors track, general track or basic track. They have different names in different places.

An Untracked Student. Photo by Elena.

Why is academic tracking so often used?

Untracked classes are more difficult for teachers, particularly teachers who haven't had the opportunities for professional development.  Teachers who are used to teaching to the middle range of abilities in a classroom find that this doesn't work anymore with students of widely varying abilities. They are faced with the daunting task of rethinking their entire approach to managing the classroom.  When you have a class with wide-ranging abilities, lecturing doesn't work. You have to engage all of the students' different abilities and talents.

Another argument is that schools should reflect the real world where people are sorted into different jobs all the time. The argument hinges on the belief that schools actually gauges students' abilities with tracking. However, the most recent research shows that schools often make mistakes trying to place kids in the right tracks. You find some kids in the low groups who are scoring in the 99th percentile on achievement tests while some kids who are in the 20th percentile are in the high groups.

People support tracking because they believe that curricula get watered down in untracked classrooms.  They argue that the kids from the higher tracks will miss more challenging classrooms, because they have to wait for the kids from the lower tracks to catch up. This can be avoided, however, with the professional development of teachers.

How well does tracking work?

All student lose. The students who are not at the top levels lose, because they don't have access to the most challenging curriculum or usually the most engaging teaching that the school has to offer. In the lower tracks, the press for achievement, the diversity of instruction, and the access to interesting materials is just never as great as in the top groups. Students who are in the top tracks are losing, but they are losing in a more subtle way. They learn to avoid taking risks academically, intellectually, or socially. Very often in tracked schools, if you ask too many questions and reveal that you are not so smart, you risk getting knocked down to the next level. We learn from our mistakes, so we need to create climates in which asking questions and risk-taking is the norm.

Is there concrete evidence that untracked classes work better?

The most powerful and recent research comes from the U.S. Department of Education, which looks at the performance of eighth graders.. Their status was followed up every two years since 1988, concluding in 12th grade. In an analysis of the data Johns University and the University of Miami looked at the test scores and academic records of students in the first interval from eighth to tenth grade and asked, “Does it makes a difference if the students were in a tracked or untracked grade?”

They found that it does make a difference, at least in terms of 10th-grade performance. The average- and low-scoring eighth graders in untracked classes were more likely in their 10th-grade year to get better grades and test scores than their comparable scoring peers who had been in tracked 8th-grade classes. They were also more likely to be in college-bound tracks than they would have been in if they had been tracked in eighth grade.

Is there anything parents with children in tracked schools should do about it?

They should fight like hell to get their kids in the top groups. And they should work with teachers to provide all the kids the opportunities available to those in the top groups. They should make sure that their child gets to go on field trips, learn research skills, solve interesting math problems, apply math in a variety of contexts and do lab experiments. They must also make sure that their child has access to computers and the library, and ask what kind of access it is. Often in tracked schools these opportunities to learn get distributed so that the top kids get more and the bottom kids get less.

What would you tell parents who worry about untracked classes?

Parents should ask,:What is my child going to learn, and how will I know of he or she has learned it?” They should ask, “How is the school going to use what it knows about gifted and talented programs in untracked classes?” By asking those questions, parents can guard against untracked classes being synonymous with watered-down classes.