Assignment of students to elective courses sometimes results in disproportionate enrollments of minority or nonminority students in certain classes. These disproportionate enrollments may be caused by school policies or practices that limit choices of minority students to certain classes. School officials must ensure that all students are provided nondiscriminatory counseling information and have equal access to elective courses. Assignment to Ability Grouping and Tracking School districts have a responsibility to ensure that they do not use ability grouping or tracking practices that result in discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Ability grouping is the assignment of students to classes or instructional groups based upon the students' level of ability or achievement.
Tracking is the assignment to different courses of instruction.
Ability grouping and tracking sometimes result in courses with substantially disproportionate enrollments of minority or nonminority students. To ensure that the ability grouping or tracking practices comply with Title VI, the criteria used by schools to assign students to ability groups or tracks must be nondiscriminatory. Students must be given the opportunity to move from one ability group to another, or in and out of assigned tracks according to their progress. If ability grouping or tracking results in classes with substantially disproportionate enrollments of students of one race or minority group, school districts must be able to demonstrate that there is a valid educational justification for their ability grouping or tracking practices. Testing, Evaluations, and Criteria for Student Assignment At all times, school districts should be careful to use appropriate criteria and evaluation and testing methods before assigning students to specialized classes or courses of study.