Re-envisioning Education and Democracy
Public Intellectual Essay
April 26, 2002
STRATIFICATION,
DISILLUSIONMENT, AND HOPELESSNESS:
THE CONSEQUENCES
OF TRACKING AND ABILITY GROUPING
Introduction
The notions of
tracking and ability grouping have been contentious topics in this country’s
educational policies since the 1970s, when research emerged on the effects of
such grouping on student achievement.
This essay will work to further the debate through studying and
addressing both notions as compared to each other, as well as new alternatives
that have recently emerged in educational reforms.
Tracking is
defined as a process to sort students into small learning groups based on the
student’s ability. Once a track has been
assigned, the track determines not only the content of the courses but also the
number of courses the student will take, and often the career path the student
will eventually choose. Ability grouping
differs from tracking, although it follows the same general principles. Ability grouping also sorts students into
small learning groups, but offers several classes that cover the same or
similar academic content (e.g. mathematics) at a pace and depth that matches
the ability of students in each class.
Unlike tracking, a student can be placed, for example, in a low-ability
math course and an average-ability social studies course during the same
semester. Tracking, on the other hand,
would require the student to be enrolled in a low-ability social studies course
due to their low-ability in math (NCREL).
Evidence
has proven that neither of these tactics is successful for a variety of
reasons. While we should only use
grouping practices to help students lift their achievement goals, both tracking
and ability grouping have so far worked seemingly only to keep students from
reaching their full potential in the U.S. Educational system. Jeannie Oakes has stated that excellence in
our educational system can and should be achieved concurrently with equity, and
our system should not force a choice between the two notions (Lockwood and
Cleveland, 2). Excellence with equity
can only be achieved through detracking reforms and the implementation of an
entirely new grouping system throughout this nation’s schools. Both tracking and ability grouping have
evolved to assure excellence to some, and equality to none. The system must change immediately, and
quickly, as up to 80% of the elementary classrooms in American use a grouping
system during reading instruction that sorts students within the classroom into
small, ability-based groups (Rowan and Miracle, 134). To save our students from stratification,
disillusionment, and hopelessness, reform must be initiated to ensure that the
grouping practices are fair, equal, and that all students will be pushed to
reach their full potential through them.
The
educational practices of tracking and ability grouping emerged “around the turn
of the 20th century as a way to prepare students for their
‘appropriate’ place in the workforce” (Cooper, 192). Students with high abilities and skills were
given intense, rigorous academic training while students with lower abilities
were given a vocational education.
Tracking was supported by a philosophy of the time that “high
achievement was more the product of innate ability and intellect, and less the
produce of an individual’s work ethic or determination” (Cooper, 192). Thus, most U.S. schools decided to structure
themselves around the belief that academic excellence could only be achieved by
a few gifted and talented students, and not by the population at large. This philosophy is even evidenced in WWI,
where Alfred Binet’s intelligence, or IQ, test was used by the military when
young men began enlisting in 1917. The
IQ test was used to sort potential officers from enlisted men, according to
perceived mental capabilities (Lockwood and Cleveland, 2).
Pros and Cons (Mostly Cons)
of Tracking and Ability Grouping
How
the times have changed. By the 1970s,
evidence began emerging indicating that tracking and ability grouping practices
actually hindered a student’s educational experience through a series of
negative consequences revolving around notions of inequality of achievement,
teacher biases, peer influence, a widening of the achievement gap, negative climate
of classrooms, and the impact on high-ability students. In fact, both tracking and ability grouping
had evolved into such negative practices in the U.S. educational system that by
1993 a survey conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics
reported that more than half the schools in the U.S. had begun to modify their
approaches to ability grouping, and only 15% at that time reported using
traditional tracking mechanisms (Burnett, 1).
The many negative consequences of tracking and ability grouping listed
above shed light not only on how these practices may work to hinder a student’s
educational experience, but also give great insight into what reforms could be
used to turn such negatives into positives.
Every student should be given the opportunity to be successful in
school, and some form of ability grouping must be used in order to give them
such an opportunity. “The assumption
that students will learn best when the instructional content is well-matched to
their current knowledge and abilities necessitates dividing students into
homogenous learning groups” (Braddock and Dawkins, 325). By examining tracking and ability grouping,
the two most common practices throughout the history of our educational system,
we can find a new means of grouping students that promotes both equality and
excellence.
Achievement,
in a variety of contexts, headlines the list of negative consequences felt by
students through tracking and ability grouping.
Both types of sorting had direct effects on the reading achievement of 4th
grade students in a single urban school district as studied by Rowan and
Miracle. This study proved that both
types of “grouping systems reinforce initial inequalities in achievement” and
“students in high ranking groups gain an achievement advantage over students in
low ranking groups by virtue of their group placement” (Rowan and Miracle,
133). Rowan and Miracle gave two
possible explanations for this reinforcement: teachers and peers.
“Teachers
produced achievement differentials in grouping systems by treating students in
higher ranking instructional groups more favorably than students in low ranking
groups” (Rowan and Miracle, 133).
Without question, differently ranked ability groups require different
instruction. Such is the argument for
sorting students into homogenous learning groups. However, that instruction should be equal
across the board, and should not allow for one group to be treated in a more
favorable, or pleasant, manner than another.
This difference in teacher attitude can be linked to the fact tracking
often “leads to unequal educational opportunities by distributing formal and
informal educational resources unequally to different students” (Braddock and
Dawkins, 325), especially in the quality of teachers. Lower track classrooms are usually assigned
the least experienced teachers, even though they hold the students with the
greatest needs and who may be the most challenging to teach. This is a result of many school districts
letting the teachers with seniority choose the tracks they wish to teach; many,
if not most, wish to teach the higher tracks for the reason that they are not
very challenging to teach.
“Ability
group systems stratified peer contexts in schools and that peer contexts
affected educational outcomes” (Rowan and Miracle, 133). In high school, tracking and ability grouping
affects a student’s achievement through the stratified peer contexts it
produces. “Students in high ranking,
college-bound tracks acquire higher ability friends” (ibid, 135) which
positively affect achievement. Friends
act as resources to a student’s learning experience through the encouragement
of ideas, notions, and plans for further success as an adult, whether it is
through further education or another field.
Peers also can affect the values a student holds, and these values will
undoubtedly affect their activities, both inside and outside of the school, and
therefore also their achievement.
The
practice of tracking further affects a student’s achievement in a broader sense
by widening the achievement gap between Whites and minorities, all the while
perpetuating “divisive racial and socioeconomic stereotypes” (Cooper,
191). In tracking, but not ability
grouping, a student that starts out in a lower track has an extremely difficult
time jumping up to a higher track in the next grade level. In essence, “the effects of tracking produce
slower and slower rates of learning and lower and lower levels of motivation
for those at the bottom and smaller and smaller chances of receiving better
track assignments” (Braddock and Dawkins, 326).
Once placed in the low track a student has a virtually impossible chance
of climbing into a higher, more advanced, track. Ability grouping does manage to
somewhat curb this particular problem for it allows for a student to take a
variety of levels of courses. A student
attending a school that uses ability grouping is not stuck in one sole
track. However, it is equally difficult
for them to jump from a lower track to a higher in the same subject area.
Both
grouping practices also have a negative affect on the overall classroom
climate. Low-track classes can get
easily stigmatized by feelings that “the students aren’t capable learners and
cannot be expected to master the same kinds of skills demanded by other
classes” (Braddock and Dawkins, 326).
The consequences of this sensed stigmatization are large, as they can
lead to teachers preparing and fully covering fewer curriculum units, as well
as generally slowing the pace of instruction.
Students also feel this stigmatization and as fewer demands are made
upon them to learn the higher order skills their high track peers are taught,
they began to take their homework, their education, and the system much less
seriously.
On
the other end of the spectrum, it is widely argued by critics of detracking,
including parents and administrators, that it is the students in the high-end
of the tracking or ability grouping system that benefit the most. There is a great importance in enabling
gifted students to work together for sustained periods of time in order to
learn from each other as well as the material.
The biggest concern regarding detracking is that it “may slow down the
learning of the high-achieving students, for there is evidence that such students
do better in gifted and talented classes” (Ascher, 1). This argument is countered with the notion
that all students would be able to benefit not from the homogeneity of the
group that seems necessary for the high-end students, but rather from the enriched
curriculum that lower-track students would also thrive on, given the adequate
support. Also, at times tracking and
ability grouping can work against the high achieving students, especially where
a large number of students are above average in educational achievement. “Suburban, middle-class districts, where
students perform above the national average, generally have high cut-offs for
their gifted and talented programs, and are therefore most likely to send many
capable students to regular or unaccelerated classes” (Ascher, 1).
Proposed Solutions
Jeannie Oakes
proposed an alternative plan to tracking and ability grouping in 1985 that has
become the most popular and widely debated alternative in this discussion. Cooperative learning involves students
working together in small, mixed-ability learning teams. This sorting system “views student diversity
as a valued resource to be used in the classroom rather than a problem to be
solved” (Braddock and Dawkins, 335) and allows students to demonstrated “individual
accountability and responsibility for working with others toward a shared goal”
(Ncrel). All the students in the
cooperative learning group learn the same coursework together and share the
responsibility for the success or failure of their group work.
The
cooperative learning plan, while it seems valuable in certain situations, does
not seem to me to always be the most appropriate, or best, sorting choice. For starters, it seems to do nothing more
than allow students to work on low-level tasks, such as worksheets,
together. These techniques will not
solve any of the problems tracking and ability grouping face with the quality
of instruction given the classroom. Also,
with projects such as these, I find it rather probable that the high-track
students will take up most of the work, as many would rather finish the
assignment than spend the time and effort guiding the lower-tracked students
through the process. Cooperative
learning could be most effective with the high-achieving students when used in
conjunction with ability grouping, but does not seem to solve many of the
dilemmas tracking and ability grouping cause in the education of the lower
tracks.
A second
alternative is the Accelerated Schools notion proposed and developed by
academics at Stanford. In the
Accelerated Schools program, all the students receive the enriched curriculum
and problem-solving techniques generally reserved for high-track students under
the current sorting systems. The
curriculum for all tracks, or ability levels, is fast-paced, engaging, and
includes concepts, analyses, problem solving, and interesting applications of
the material, rather than just bland memorization of facts and dates (Ascher,
1).
My proposed
alternative, while in no means simple, is a combination of the principles of
Accelerated Schools and ability grouping.
I feel that the notions set forth in the Accelerated Schools plan is of
the utmost importance; our students desperately need to be instructed through a
variety of mediums and modes of thinking and educating, and critical thinking
practices should be fostered, encouraged, and expanded by teachers on all
levels.
Tracking does
not work, for the variety of reasons listed above. However, it seems as though ability grouping
could be used to best benefit all if the educational institution scheduled it
appropriately. I propose the plan of
Transformative Ability Grouping, or TAG, which follows the practice of ability
grouping in that the students are allowed to learn at different levels for different
subjects. I will outline my plan using
only the subject of history as an example, but it would follow for the main
subjects, English, math, history, and civics.
Each subject is given a specific period of the day. For example, all history classes would be
taught during 3rd period.
Starting in the 9th grade and working through 12th,
there would be three options a student could be placed in: Beginning,
Intermediate, and Advanced History. The
student would be placed in an ability group based upon recommendations of the
teacher, as well as a basic test on the subject distributed in the 9th
grade.
In TAG,
Advanced 9th History would have the same equivalency as Intermediate
10th History, and Intermediate 9th History the same
equivalency as Beginning 10th History, and so on for all the grade
levels. There would be a graduation
requirement that each student must complete the level of Beginning 12th
History, or its equivalent, in order to graduate. For the students that would complete the
equivalency of Beginning 12th History earlier than the 12th
grade, there will be a series of electives in that subject that they would take
in order to focus more deeply on a specific subject. While students would have the opportunity to
select the elective they have the most interest in; they would still be
required to take a History class.
Another graduation requirement would be that each student had taken a
full four years of each subject. This
aspect of TAG will force the students to continue to learn in that subject
area, and will resemble a typical college program for each student will have to
finish the “major” of Beginning 12th History before they can move on
to History electives. There will also be
two periods in TAG that will offer only electives, but these electives will
cover a variety of subject areas so that all students will have the opportunity
for vast critical thinking in the areas they are most interested in.
Issues with
teachers and teaching are one of the main negative consequences that can and do
result from the practices of tracking and ability grouping. TAG attempts to address some of these
concerns, especially that of teacher quality, through the way teachers are
assigned classes and course levels. All
teachers will be required to teach at a variety of levels, covering from
Beginning to Advanced. The teachers will
go through a selection period each spring in which they can make requests for
which levels of the basic subjects they will teach, as well as propose possible
elective courses they would like to teach.
However, the scheduling decisions will ultimately be determined by a
joint committee of administrators, teachers, and students to ensure that all
levels are supplied with competent, engaging, and successful teachers and
teaching programs. A sort of “quota”
system will also be installed, in which a teacher will be ensured of teaching
an elective, or any other course they chose, every fourth year, after they have
completed a year each of teaching Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced courses
in their subject.
Undoubtedly,
it will be the teachers who may find the TAG program the most problematic, but
I hope that this series of incentives will offer them the opportunity to
explore their methods and modes of teaching, while simultaneously handling new
subject material, new levels of student ability, and a new-found sense of
cooperation with the administration, their peers, and their students. In order for TAG to work successfully, it
does require a complete restructuring of a school’s educational framework. However, the benefits of the students should
be held in the highest priority and TAG works for all students without adding
feelings of hopelessness to their daily routines. TAG works to benefit the students by ensuring
that they have a core grasp of required material as well as the opportunity to
explore the many facets of academia for themselves.
SOURCES
Ascher,
Carol. “Successful Detracking in Middle and Senior High Schools.” ERIC
Clearinghouse
on Urban Education Digest 4. 4 April 2002
http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu/digests/dig82.html
And
Attainments: Evidence from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988.”
Journal of Negro Education 62.3 (Summer 1993): 324-336.
ERIC
Clearinghouse on Urban Education Digest 5. 4 April 2002
http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu/digests/dig111.html
Improving
the Schooling Experiences of African American Students.” Journal of Negro
Education 65.2 (Spring 1996): 190-208.
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/entareas/math/ma1group.html
the
Balance Between Excellence and Equity.” ERIC Digest 10. 4 April 2002
http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu/curriculum/detracking.
Rowan,
Brian and Andrew W. Miracle. “Systems of Ability Grouping and the Stratification
of Achievement in Elementary Schools.” Sociology of Education 56.3
(July 1983): 133-144.