Tracking is separating students by what is assessed as academic ability into groups for all subjects[1] or certain classes and curriculum[2] within a school.
For the next lesson, the teacher may revert to whole-class, mixed-ability instruction, or may assign students to different ability groups.
By the 1920s, some schools had developed up to eight distinctly labeled tracks that represented particular curricular programs that reflected an assessment of students’ probable social and vocational futures.
[7] The origins of race-based tracking reach as far back as the federal court ruling in Roberts v. The City of Boston in 1850, a case that upheld separate school curricula for blacks and whites on the belief in inherent racial differences in intelligence.
With the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court ruling of 1954, which determined that the separate school statute established by Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional, the stage was set to address between-school segregation/tracking.
[9] Haney's (1978) historical analysis at the secondary school level found that less qualified teachers were assigned to teach racially tracked classes.
[10] During the mid- to late-1980s, federal court cases in Mississippi and Georgia took up the question of unfair race-based tracking in school systems.
[11] Other studies by Lewis and Diamond (2015), Kelly (2009), Riegle-Crumb, Kyte, and Morton (2018), Schuhrer, Carbonaro, & Grodsky (2016), and others continue to show large disparities in course taking among whites and minorities.
Within the context of this system, researchers disagree over the extent to which highly involved parents intervene to give their own student a course taking advantage.
[18][19] Historically, high school students were sorted into “business/vocational,” “general,” or the “college” track, which had profound implications for the nature and extent of academic course taking.
A major advantage of tracking is that it allows teachers to better direct lessons toward the specific ability level of the students in each class.
[26] Tracking meets the need for highly gifted students to be with their intellectual peers in order to be appropriately challenged and to view their own abilities more realistically.
Similarly, Rogers (1991) recommends that gifted and talented students spend the majority of their school day with ability peers.
[35] In 1987, Jeannie Oakes theorized that the disproportionate placement of poor and minority students into low tracks does not reflect their actual learning abilities.
Rather, she argues that the ethnocentric claims of social Darwinists and the Anglo-Saxon-driven Americanization movement at the turn of the century combined to produce a strong push for "industrial" schooling, ultimately relegating the poorer minority students to vocational programs and a differentiated curriculum which she considered a lingering pattern in 20th century schools.
[39][40] Scholars have found that curricula often vary widely among tracks, as teachers adjust instruction to match student achievement levels.
[25] However, while the enrichment and/or acceleration of curricula is considered to be a major benefit to high-track students,[41] lessons taught in low-track classes often lack the engagement and rigor of the high-track lessons, even considering that low-track students may enter class with lower academic achievement.
[43][44][45] Teachers also report spending less time addressing disciplinary issues in high-track classrooms than in low-track classes, which leads to differences in content coverage.
[51] Dweck implies that teachers who promote a growth mindset could stimulate students to greater academic achievement regardless of tracking.
[54] They found that students lost confidence in their abilities by their placements in low-ability classes in which teacher expectations for them were low.
Goodlad (1983) and Oakes (1985) found that students in lower tracks were more likely to drop out of school or participate in criminal activities.
Even though some countries track students into differing-ability schools by age 10, others such as the United States keep their entire secondary-school system comprehensive.
[58] Tracking can be associated with giving students in low-track classes less resources, fewer experienced teachers, low expectations, and unchallenging curricula.
[31] Critics of tracking such as Kevin Welner say that detracking will help close the class-based and race-based achievement gap.
For example, in schools where gifted learner programming is focused on content acceleration,[59][60] the evidence supports that higher-tracked students achievements suffer.
However, in mixed environments which feature more project-based learning and critical thinking, the results for heterogeneously grouped learners increases at all ability levels.
[4] On the other side, in a wealthy school, teachers typically assumed students were college-bound and intelligent, and followed a creative and challenging curriculum.
[4] Educator Robert Pondiscio has argued that mixed-ability grouping in the classroom creates problems of its own, especially the neglect of higher-functioning students.
[63] Maureen Hallinan offers many suggestions for reforming the tracking system and counterbalancing its perceived negative consequences.
In order to successfully accomplish a reformation of the educational experience, teachers and faculty must be provided the proper time and support to complete training.