I think student-demographic gathering should exclude data on whether they are brown-skinned or round-eyed(?!). It should include test scores. When their test scores go up, they move into a different (i.e., higher-achieving) classroom.

We are a long way from MLK’s dream.

This doesn’t look like a win to the parents of the brown skinned children.

The present system of mixed ability/mixed achievement classrooms has the pale, brown, black and green bright kids hanging out waiting to learn something. The present system has N students not learning. If tracking has N-1 students not learning that is at least an improvement.

Unfortunately, though the research supports acceleration as a good option for most gifted kids most of the time (since no solution is perfect for everyone always), prevailing prejudices make this a road rarely taken, regrettably.

Good thing at the Melk School, we can accelerate on an as-needed basis.

Assuming your point is valid, I’m wondering if it’s such a bad thing that the performance gaps get wider in a tracked situation. Consider two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Mixed-level environment focusing on the lowest achievers. The learning gap between the top performer in the class and the bottom is two years worth of content. After a year of instruction, the gap is one and a half years. The bottom student picked up 3/4 of a year while the top performing student pick up just 1/4 of a year.

Scenario 2: Tracking environment. Two year gap between top and bottom, as in the first scenario. The class is broken out into instructional tracks. At the end of the year, the gap is three years. The bottom member of the original cohort picked up a full year of learning while the top member picked up two.

Which scenario is better for the kids involved? It seems obvious to me that Scenario 2 would mean better outcomes for the individuals involved because each kid learned more than he would have under Scenario 1.

What’s my point? Focusing on achievement gaps while neglecting content learned on an individual level is folly since it creates a pressure to close the gap by keeping the top performers underachieving.

Also, if anyone knows of some good research in the area of tracking and actual gains vs. performance gaps, I’d be interested to read it.

Purely from the standpoint of our collective best interests (and not the individual interests of the students), I wonder if the best bang for the buck is to spend a lot of time with the slow students. Is time you spend getting Slow Fred through remedial reading returning more or less to society than spending the same time getting a smart kid through calculus.

It’s hard to figure. Some smart kids are self-motivated and really don’t need much instruction, but that’s not all of them. On the other hand, slow Fred is never going to find a cure for some cancer, but Smart Sally just might – if she gets a good enough education.

Maybe, in light of the fact that we really can’t solve this equation, teachers ought to spend an equal amount of time with all of their students. This generally seemed to be the case when I was in school, back in the dark ages. What’s changed?

If 5% of the kids are struggling and monopolizing 80% of the instructional time, put them in a smaller class where they get the individual attention they need. If the top 5% are bored out of their skulls waiting for the rest of the class to catch up, put them in an accelerated class where they will learn at their own pace. Everybody wins in this scenario; what’s the problem?

The historical problem with this has been that brown skinned children tend to wind up in the remedial classes and that pale skinned children or children with less round eyes wind up in the accelerated classes.

This doesn’t look like a win to the parents of the brown skinned children.

-Mark Roulo

I certainly agree with this. I’ve seen some very bright kids I know end up in classes with endless basic math and reading drill, with science and history (and even recess) squeezed out. I don’t even think that’s good for the struggling kids in the class.

Here are two summaries of the advantages and challenges associated with tracking:

http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=127&pubsubid=778#778

http://www.principalspartnership.com/tracking.pdf