Removing Instructional Barriers: One Track at a Time

The Background of Tracking First, this country had the one room school house. Before the industrial revolution, children of different ages and abilities received their education from one teacher in one room. Differentiated instruction was the model for education even before there was a sophisticated name for such a delivery system. Then, in response to the influx of immigrants to the U.S., Americans needed to find an avenue to teach a more diverse population. With the advent of the recently developed IQ test, educators had a method to test incoming students and place them in different classes according to ability (Ansalone, 2003). Tracking appeared to be the answer for Americans to socialize newcomers and provide a path for students to progress academically. The most accepted definition of tracking comes from Oakes (1985) and states that students are sorted into groups according to perceived ability. In general terms, tracking has the following characteristics: First students are identified in a rather public way as to their intellectual capabilities and accomplishments and separated into a hierarchical system of groups for instruction. Second, these groups are labeled quite openly and characterized in the minds of teachers and others as being of a certain type-high ability, low achieving, slow, average, and so on. Clearly, theses groups are not equally valued in the school.third individual students in these groups come to be defined by others--both adults and their peers--in terms of these group types . Fourth, on the basis of these sorting decisions, the groupings of students that result, and the way educators see the students in these groups, teenagers are treated by and experience school very differently. (p. 3) Historically, tracking in the educational world of the United States aligned to the 1896 ideas of "separate but equal" as demonstrated by the case of Plessy versus Ferguson which ruled that if schools were equal they still could be segregated by race. Desegregation later came about as a result of Brown versus the Board of Education; yet America's educational foundation still tracked students by grade level; and within those grades, tracked by ability. The conveyor belt of education became the standard during the industrialized revolution. Before the Civil Right's Movement of the 60's, many school counselors divided students into either a vocational track or a college track. Afterward, such large scale tracks began to dissolve in response to the call for equity. Yet, tracking persists. Today, tracks occur more at the class level in courses titled such as honors or remedial (Hallinan, 1994). In late 20th century and early 21st century practice, tracking can be found in "60 percent of all primary and 80 percent of all secondary schools in the United States" (pg. 4). In general, tracking typically involves various arrangements of grouping students according to ability. Tracking stirs heated debates among educators. Those in favor of tracking purport that this system enhances achievement because of three factors. First it provides a comfortable environment for the student to progress. "According to this perspective, student affective development is favorably influenced when a student's schoolwork is not invidiously compared to the work of more able peers" (pg. 4). Second, tracking can be an organizational technique that helps teachers. "Tracking is viewed as a managerial technique that prevents less able students from holding back those with greater academic potential" (pg. 5). Third, tracking provides educational organizations an efficient means of allocating their resources. "Proponents of this efficiency perspective believe that schooling in America is entrusted with the responsibility of sorting students in specific categories in the labor market"(pg. 5). Those that disfavor tracking point to studies that show the deleterious impact this sorting system has on "students' opportunity to learn (OTL)" (pg. …