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February 2002

Quick Takes:
Tracking decisions change lives.

Individual tracking decisions also affect the distribution of knowledge across the student population. Researchers connected with the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), for example, have reported that whether a student had been assigned to an algebra class or a nonalgebra mathematics class was a good predictor of how he or she would do on the TIMSS (Education Week, February 18, 1998). Long before there was a TIMSS, however, tracking was contentious.

Why is tracking a contentious issue?

Tracking is an emotionally charged issue stoked by the fear that one s own children might be shortchanged educationally. Both proponents and opponents of tracking advocate good education but their assumptions about what makes education good differ.

Proponents of tracking argue that students learn best when they are in classes or groups made up of others with more or less the same abilities and interests. Human resources are wasted, they contend, if well-prepared students are not allowed to excel in challenging courses without being pulled back by inadequately prepared students. Those who favor detracking counter that even more human resources are lost if some students are never exposed to challenging material. They add that low-track classes are disproportionately filled with students from impoverished homes and with African-American and Hispanic children and that tracking often degenerates into a system that rewards privilege rather than ability.

Criticism of tracking can be summarized into a few statements:

• Tracking disproportionately assigns to lower tracks students from certain ethnic and lower socio-economic groups.
• It fosters segregation by race and class and permanently labels students.
• Parents with higher incomes or more education pressure schools to put their children in high-ability tracks. Parents who do not participate in the informal power relations of the school, or do not have the ability to take time from work to discuss scheduling with teachers, can not advocate for their children when tracking decisions are made.
• Parents from cultures that value trusting teachers expertise might be less likely than others to push for re-assigning their children to advanced classes.
• Once assigned a track high or low students find it nearly impossible to move either up to higher tracks or down to more appropriate levels (even if they are not doing well in higher-track classes and might do better in a less-intense class).
• A disproportionate share of resources, especially well-prepared and experienced teachers, goes to high-track classes.
• The curriculum and instruction in low-track classes are frequently dead-end and boring for both students and teachers.
• High-ability students need to collaborate with those different from themselves in culture, class, ability, and interests. This is more possible in detracked classes.

Proponents of tracking make these arguments:

• Students learn better in classes where everyone is learning more or less the same material at the same pace.
• Teachers find it time-consuming and complex to teach intricate material to students at different levels of understanding.
• Certain subjects, like mathematics and foreign languages, often require that students master basic material before they advance to higher levels.
• Students of average abilities will perform better in the company of their peers than they will in daily competition with above-average students.
• Better resource allocation is addressing the inequities of tracking.
• Mixed classes depress achievement levels by holding high achievers back.

How does tracking affect students?

The effects of tracking reach long and deep into a student s education. The types of resources devoted to classes and kinds of instruction often vary by the level of track. In addition, the very fact of being in a low-track class can cause students to lose educational ground at an ever-increasing pace. A student may be placed in a lower-track mathematics class, for example, because his basic arithmetic skills need improving, while others at his grade level are learning how to manipulate fractions. Those who can work with fractions move on to more sophisticated tasks, while the student in the lower-track class is still polishing his basic skills. Before he can move into learning fractions, his classmates have moved several steps beyond him. Catching up with others in his age group becomes more difficult. This process begins before high school; often children are hopelessly behind by ninth grade. Changing the tracking system in high school will be too late to help these students.

Enriched curriculum and small class size, rather than the homogeneity of their classes, may be the actual benefits for students in high-track classes. Such curricula and class size could benefit all students, especially those in lower-track classes. In fact, some argue that since genuinely high-achieving students are often the most motivated learners, they have the least need of superior teaching and resources, while lower-track students may need the more interesting instruction and curriculum especially in subjects like mathematics. Tracking systems, however, usually allocate the best resources only to high-achieving students. Instruction in lower-track classes usually focuses on repetition and drill over basic skills. Inexperienced or ineffective teachers often staff these classes. More experienced teachers claim the classes with enriched curriculum since these are seen as more rewarding to teach. Since moving out of lower-track classes becomes a teacher s reward for years of service, faculty develop vested interests in preserving the tracking system. School cultures usually do not encourage teachers to think about offering enriched material and instruction to all students, even though lower-track students might benefit from them.

Tracking can distribute resources unfairly even among students who do well in school. If a school has many high achievers and only a few spaces in the upper-ability classes, some above-average students will not be allowed into high- track classes. This situation can result either in a proliferation of tracks or in limiting access to only the very highest-scoring, as the case of Jim in the opening vignette shows.

When schools do offer all students enriched curriculum, most children respond positively. In the early 1990s the Achievement Council, a California advocacy group, reported on an inner-city school in a poverty-ridden area. The school set up a college-preparatory curriculum and more than 65 percent of its students subsequently went on to college and university. Before the program had been instituted, 15 percent of the students had gone on to higher education. The high expectations of an enriched curriculum had engaged these students who previously had been shunted into slowed-down programs with low expectations for their success.

What does the research show?

Despite this California school s experience, little research has been done in this area; little support has been provided for either side of this controversy. Since detracked schools are a relatively recent phenomenon, a body of research on them has not been established. No long-term study involving many schools has examined the costs and benefits of tracking or detracking. Until more research compares what actually happens in tracked schools to what happens in the detracked, research-based statements will be incomplete.

People do have opinions about tracking, however. Surveying participants in its National Issues Forums, the nonpartisan group Public Agenda found that parents, students, and teachers tended to prefer tracking, while administrators and educational researchers and professors of education preferred detracking. Many civil rights and human rights groups also advocate detracking. Perhaps a person s understanding of how tracking works forms his or her attitude toward it.

What do people know about tracking?

Knowledge about the implications of tracking is not evenly distributed. Better-educated parents know that children need algebra and calculus to be considered for certain colleges and to qualify for some kinds of employment. Other parents may not understand college requirements or the market for technical positions. Consequently, they may not protest when their children are placed on tracks that will eventually limit life choices. If a family has little experience that school success affects life success, parents may not realize that unfamiliar courses, such as calculus, will be useful to their children.

To make sure that parents understand the future repercussions of present choices, schools have a duty to communicate the realities of educational decisions to all families. Simply sending out a parent newsletter will not ensure that everyone is aware of the implications of, for example, following the general mathematics track. The possibilities of college and technical careers should be clearly and fully explained to everyone in the school community. This information also has to be disseminated at a much earlier age than usual; long before their sophomore year students are already on the tracks that will take them to college or leave them out. Enough adequately trained guidance counselors early in children s schooling can make a difference.

Schools can not assume that some students and their parents are naturally uninterested in postsecondary schooling or in certain career options. If schools truly believe that all students can learn, they also have to believe that all learning is potentially useful for all students.

How do schools go about detracking?

Many possibilities have been presented as alternatives to tracking. The most frequently mentioned include cooperative learning, interest grouping (where students within a class are put into smaller groups), schools within schools (where students are placed into groups within a school and stay together usually with the same teachers for several years), and integrated college preparatory and vocational classes.

Alone, however, none of these methods gets to the inequities that detrackers want to change. Interest groups and within-class ability groups, for example, can reproduce the inequitable aspects of tracking by attracting more advantaged students to specific classes or groups. Cooperative learning and schools within schools are neutral and can be used by tracked schools as well as detracked. None of these alternatives grapple with attracting successful teachers to teaching students who are not high achievers.

If a school is going to detrack, several factors will contribute to success:

• The culture of the school must support the belief that each student has a right to the best curriculum and instruction.
• Parents need to be involved in all aspects of the decision to detrack. If curriculum is seen as watered down, more educated parents will not support it. Schools can show the parents of students who have traditionally been left out of advanced mathematics and science classes that the knowledge and skills learned in these classes are relevant to their children s lives.
• Teachers must be actively involved in the change from tracking to detracking and have support for any professional development necessary to make that change successful.
• Individual school administrators, the district, and other policy makers must actively support the effort.

Can tracking be equitable?

Advocates of both tracking and detracking want what is best for children. Issues begin to arise when best has to be defined and resources have to be allocated. Should the best content be available only to the highest achievers? Will the best be diminished if it is made available to all?

As long as enriched curriculum and better teachers are more accessible to certain students than they are to others, advanced tracking will be a route preserved for the privileged. If privileged families see no advantages for their children and their futures in detracking, changing that system will be difficult. Natural concern for one s own children will take precedence over concern for the good of all in the community.

The parents of high-achieving students will not settle for a dumbed-down curriculum that distributes the same low-level content and simplistic instruction to everyone. Schools have to show such parents that making good instruction available to a wider pool of students does not dilute the learning of high-achieving students. And the schools have to make sure that no student s learning actually is diluted and that teachers have incentives to offer enriched curriculum to all students. At the same time, schools have to show less-privileged families the benefits of their children studying such subjects as calculus and physics.

If schools make good instruction and challenging content available to all students, even the parents of high-achieving students will support detracking strategies. Detracking should be a process of pulling all up, not lowering standards for anyone.

About Quicktakes

Quick Takes was a publication of the Eisenhower Southwest Consortium for the Improvement of Mathematics and Science Teaching (SCIMAST) project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education under grant number R168R50027-95. The content herein does not necessarily reflect the views of the department or any other agency of the U.S. government or any other source. Available in alternative formats.

The Eisenhower SCIMAST project was located in the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) at 211 East Seventh Street, Austin, Texas 78701; (512)476-6861/(800)201-7435. SEDL is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and is committed to affording equal employment opportunities to all individuals in all employment matters.