Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route
By: Jeannie Oakes

Author’s Argument:
This article is about tracking and ability grouping in schools and the students it helps and harms in doing so. The author of this article is saying that by grouping students into high, average, and low performing groups schools are limiting the resources each group gets. They are pushing the high performing students higher, keeping average students “uninterested” and “unspecial”, and keeping the low performing students down and unable to excel.

Quotes:


1. “Students who need more time to learn appear to get less: those who have the most difficulty learning seem to have fewer of the best teachers.”

• This quote is a reflection of how each group of students gets attention after they are grouped into those high, average and low performing categories. This quote states that the lower performing group is the one who needs more time in the classroom, working on the topics they are struggling with, but they are the ones who get the least amount of time dedicated to that. It also is saying that the lower performing groups are the ones who need the most help with learning and they don’t get the best teachers to help them, like they should, the higher performing groups get the best teachers. This quote stood out to me because it’s something being talked about a lot right now as part of the Presidential election campaigns. Obama has talked about giving the best teachers more money to work in lower performing schools to help them. Obama has said that he realizes it isn’t fair that the high performing get all the good supplies, teachers, buildings and funding and the lower performing schools and stuck being lower performing because they aren’t given a chance at better resources.

2. “…the proliferation of classes and special programs for students at the extremes-students with high abilities or with handicaps-had the effect of making students in the middle “unspecial” and guaranteeing that they were taught in quite “unspecial” ways.”

• This quote is a statement about how the average performing students are treated when it comes to tracking. The high performing students get the best teachers, and resources, and are pushed to excel. The lower performing students don’t get the best teachers, get the bare minimum of resources and aren’t taught the things they would need in order to excel and possibly become part of the high performing group. The average students on the other hand have very little expected of them. Their teachers set routines, lecture them, give them worksheets or “busy work” and all work and learning is kept to the minimum required. Distractions are encouraged and these “average” students are rarely asked or expect to thinking outside of the box or deeply about any subject they’re being taught. The average performing students are taught to do just that, skate by doing the minimum requirements and get “average” grades, don’t push yourself of try to be better or excel. This is INSANE.

3. “Perhaps the most important and difficult task for those who would change tracking is to confront deeply held beliefs, such as the belief that academic ability is fixed very early and is largely unchangeable or that achievement differences can be largely accounted for by differences in ability.”

• This quote is saying that in order for the act of tracking in schools to be changed the people doing it would have to change the belief system that is causing them to do it, which is that everyone has a set academic ability and that no one can do any better or worse if they’re given different resources or give more effort. This quote basically says if you’re a high performer from birth you always will be, and if you’re average you’ll always be average and never be able to excel and be better then average, and if you’re a low performer you’re screwed. Low performers are destined to nothingness, they’ll never excel or ever be better, so why bother wasting time helping them? This is also INSANE. Why should we help students who have trouble learning? Because everyone can be better. I was always brought up to do my best. If I brought home a 90 it could have been a 100. If I brought home a 100 I could have gotten the bonus question. How can we doom mere children to being stuck at a low level for life when maybe they just have a different style of learning then other children? You can’t give up on them. We can all do better, but it isn’t all up to us and out self-motivation, we have to all be given equal opportunities and resources to excel.

Questions/ Comments:

I enjoyed reading this article even though it was kind of upsetting. I hope that tracking is something that they are getting out of schools ASAP because it isn’t helping anyone. This says that some children benefit from tracking because if we put all children in the same classroom and taught them all at the same pace that some children would be bored and some would be stuck on certain things. Well I’m doing the reading buddies program as my service learning project, and I’m helping children who are struggling with reading and phonics. We have special programs in schools for high and low performing students. The children I work with aren’t taken out of their class because they’re struggling, they just get a little bit of extra help on the side, just like high performing children can be guided to learn more on their own so they wont get bored. I don’t believe tracking helps anyone and should be removed from all schools.