Note: In our Equities class, we had to read a 1994 exchange on tracking by Maureen Hallinan and Jeannie Oakes. I can't find it online anywhere, and don't have a copy, but you can get a good idea of the debate and Oakes' opinion from her preface to Keeping Track. You can get a good idea of Hallinan's views from the excerpt. If you want a good overview of what I personally think is a likely outcome of tracking, this study will serve nicely.

(In the class, we are required to write a response to any one of the readings. We have limited time to do so (we're meeting daily), so these responses are gut level and quick, not well-researched essays.)

Response:

“The studies show that the major differences between homogenously and heterogeneously grouped schools lies in the variance, rather than the mean, or average, of the student achievement distribution. On average, students do equally well in grouped and ungrouped instructional arrangements. But in ability grouped schools, the high-ability students tend to learn more, and the low-ability students tend to learn less than in heterogeneously grouped schools. This consistent finding implies either that ability grouping is inherently detrimental to low-ability students (and advantageous to high-ability students) or that intervening factors modify the effects of ability grouping on students who differ in ability. Both survey and ethnographic data indicate the latter….Consequently, it is likely that a school’s context, rather than its grouping practices, should be the object of reform.“ (Maureen Hallinan, Follow up to Exchange)

I excerpt this section of the debate because it captures both my reasons for supporting tracking and my approach to fixing the problems that occur. (In the following piece I’m offering an analysis based partly on intuition and partly on research. Half-baked, but hey, I only had a day.)

Impact on High Ability Students

Note that neither I nor Hallinan said “gifted”, which I think is an overused word. By high ability, I mean students who learn quickly and retain much of what they learn. While research on tracking’s impact occasionally differs in its findings on low and mid-ability students, studies have consistently shown that high ability students learn less in heterogeneous classrooms. In most studies I’ve read, the negative impact on high ability (and sometimes mid-ability) is much greater than the benefit for low ability students.

Dismissing the impact on high ability students in favor of perceived benefit to low ability students is troublesome and counterproductive from a public policy standpoint. First, in my view, public education should ensure that high ability students are meeting their potential, rather than being slowed down to ensure that achievement variance is minimized. Tracking opponents create a fixed (and largely accurate) dichotomy between income and race ie, high income/education=white/Asian, low income/education = black/Hispanic. But low and middle income students of all races and ethnicities can be high ability, too. Finding and assisting these students to meet their potential ought to be a critical component of any public education policy. These students don’t have parents who can pay for enrichment courses or pull them out and put them in a private school. But even if the dichotomy were perfect and all high ability students were high income, I would argue that public education policy should give serious thought to optimizing the education of high ability students as a fundamental outcome that benefits everyone, not just individual students.

But even if I were to lose that public policy debate, tracking opponents really should understand that those who pay the bills make the rules. In calling for heterogeneous classrooms, tracking opponents are assuming that everyone agrees with their priorities--that is, they are implicitly assuming that everyone agrees that reducing the overall achievement gap should take precedence in all cases. They need to make this case to the public that pays the bill for education--particularly middle and upper income parents. But they don’t explicitly make this case for a simple reason: they would fail.

The busing and forced school integration of the late 60s and 70s provide a lesson that no progressive educator should ever forget: don’t get between the suburbs* and their schools. They will leave. And when they leave, they will take their support of public schools with them. It took close to two decades for public schools and funding to recover from “white flight”--that is, middle and upper income parents moving their children away from the controls that well-meaning progressives would enforce.

In the unlikely event that educators would try to “detrack” high school, the suburbs would react instantly and negatively. As it is, most suburban parents are deeply unhappy with the lack of ability grouping in elementary and middle school. (that’s my anecdotal observation both as a parent and a tutor).

Fortunately, from my perspective, the impact on high ability students is a serious trump card that pretty much derails any effort to end tracking. The suburbs will never allow it. I still worry, however, about low income and working class high ability students, especially those in schools run by progressive educators who oppose tracking. Are they getting the support they need, or are they being used as tracking horses for their lower ability peers?

Impact on Low Ability Students

I am in ed school because I want to teach students who struggle with math. I have found time and again in my own teaching that separating students by ability has outstanding results for low achieving students. In short, my own experience contradicts the studies, and while I don’t doubt the study results I believe, with Hallinan, that tracking is unlikely to be “inherently detrimental”. If tracking helps high ability students, it should also help low ability students. If tracking does not appear to help low ability students, then the first line of investigation should be the other factors involved. The first factor I suspect is teacher quality; the second is student motivation. I do not consider student motivation to be a problem with the students, but rather a challenge to be addressed.

(I could have discussed this at greater length, but it’s a much longer paper that requires more thought and organization.)

Problems with Tracking

Most of the disproportionate impact of tracking occurs by choice. Oakes might rant about the “powerful parents” who are “able to secure high-track placements for their unqualified children”, but all that does is make parents like me--wholly without power and in possession of bright kids with bad grades--snorfle in sarcastic disagreement. You know what we do, we “powerful parents”? We call the school and say “PUT MY KID IN THE HIGHER TRACK” and the administrators, who have institutional and logistical concerns, talk about “optimal conditions” and “best for his GPA” and the ones who know better say “Yeah, Yeah, PUT MY KID IN THE HIGHER TRACK” and that’s the end of it.

There isn’t a counselor in the US who would deny a low income African American or Hispanic parent who called up and asked for their kid to be put in a higher track. They might make the same demurs, and more of these parents might give in, but the idea that an adamant black or Hispanic parent would be denied their goal? That’s basis for a lawsuit, and one thing administrators want to avoid is lawsuits.

If I ran tracking, it would go something like this:

• Test scores determine almost everybody’s initial ranking.
• Teachers can recommend up, but not down. That is, teacher recommendation can’t trump a good test score, but it can trump a bad one.
• Parents and students can opt up, but not down.
• If, at the end of the year, a student who was recommended or opted up has test scores well below the high end of the group below, then the school recommends the lower track.
• Tracking standards are absolute--that is, schools who only have one teacher qualified for advanced courses and have enough students for two classes will have to get another teacher. (I can’t tell you the number of times a counsellor has told me, with a straight face, that my son was in a lower class because the top ranked class was full. I told them that was their problem, and they‘d best fix it. )
• As math has permanent ramifications for tracking, schools provide students who develop higher abilities a way to “make up” the difference.
• Each school or district would have an ombudsman--someone entirely free from institutional or logistical concerns--responsible for evaluating school decisions on tracking and acting as a court of appeal for parents. That person would also be responsible for educating everyone on their options.

What if Tracking Worked?

I have not addressed the issue that troubles most progressive educators: specifically, tracking results in high ability classes that are disproportionately white and Asian, and lower ability classes that are disproportionately black and Hispanic. The inequities that result because of unequal parental information and choices, the teacher recommendations that reward good behavior over brains, the school’s institutional concerns that put the least squeaky wheels in the low ability classes because that’s what they have teachers for…all of these sorting inefficiencies tend to mask the larger issue.

So to those who oppose tracking because of its disproportionate impact by race and income, I’d ask the following question:

Suppose that tracking demonstrably benefited all students. Low ability students learned more, high ability students learned more. Suppose also that tracking still resulted in a disproportionate allocation of races in the various tracks (that is, more blacks and Hispanics in low ability courses, more whites and Asians in high ability courses). Assume, though, that all tracking is accurate and that all students benefit more from tracked than heterogeneous instruction.

Would you still oppose tracking?

That’s the much tougher question, and that’s where I think this conversation ultimately leads.

*”Suburbs” is a shorthand for middle and upper income parents who have some degree of choice over where their children go to school.