The current German system divides at too young an age for Americans to accept. The trouble is, it works within that structure. Tracking allows the system to give their upper third a high school system which is much more rigorous than the American system.

The proposed changes are analogous to NCLB’s goal of universal proficiency by 2012. I’m not surprised middle class parents are up in arms in Hamburg. If you read the original German reports on the issues, it’s very clear that the feeling is that “too many” middle class students are going to university. In the German system, it is possible for the government to decide to change the makeup of the university’s student body by fiat. That is a very scary prospect for middle class parents.

In the end, I predict that such changes in the German system will lead to an influx of talented German students–into the American University System. Germany will drive away a good portion of its most talented students.

Placement into Gymnasium is a complicated process. It’s done by teacher recommendation. Parents can challenge the placement. A relative’s was at first not recommended for Gymnasium by her elementary school teachers. This happened in Bavaria, in the late ’90s, and NO girls were recommended for Gymnasium. Her mother challenged the placement, and the daughter was eventually permitted to go to Gymnasium. She first had to pass a written and oral test.

So, at present, parents can challenge an incorrect placement. A German professor has estimated that ~1/3 of the school placements are incorrect. Some parents don’t want their children to go to Gymnasium, hard as that is for Americans to believe. We know a family who refused to send their son to Gymnasium, although the teachers recommended it.

The Gymnasium curriculum is very hard, and proceeds at a fast pace. It is not suited to every student. The parents are correct. Whatever they’ll be teaching at the new high schools, it won’t be anything like the teaching and curriculum at the Gymnasiums outside of Hamburg. It’s like taking a local voc-tech school, giving the existing teachers Stuyvesant High School’s curriculum, and expecting them to do it well from the first day. Even if they had a tracked student body, it would take at least 3 years to adapt.

The proposal to create “neighborhood schools” with a pre-abitur curriculum would destroy the curricula in place at the Hauptschulen and Realschulen. This includes the apprentice systems which receive so much praise in the US.

In order to understand the parental furor, you should also take into consideration that the German University system is public. There is a limit on the number of spots available for students, as the state covers tuition. In the past, the division of schooling early on managed to constrain the numbers of potential university students. When competing for spaces, the score one receives on the Abitur affects one’s standing through the Numerus Clausus. Unlike the US, then, not all high school students are permitted or encouraged to study at university.

Add to that, the university system as a whole recognizes that different Bundeslaender (roughly, states or counties) provide different degrees of rigor in their school systems. The southern states are known to be more rigorous, so a Bavarian Abitur, for example, is worth more than an Abitur from a northern state, even if they have the same numerical score.

Hamburg’s allowing all their students to follow the path to the Abitur does nothing to increase the number of seats available at German Universities for their students. It may even decrease their standing in the tables, if it is thought that the “value” of an Abitur from the Hamburg system has decreased.

Having spent a good deal of time in Germany, I’ve known a good number of young Turkish Germans who spoke fluent German and were doing splendidly. One should add, however, that Turks had few prospects of becoming German citizens when I was there–even if they had been born in Germany and spoke only German. Perhaps things have changed since then. Still, there was little incentive to assimilate when citizenship was such a distant possibility.

The Turks in Germany are a large ethnic group. Though Germany doesn’t keep stats on ethnicity in its census, estimates are that 4 million people are of Turkish decent in Germany. Turks in Germany, that is, Turkish resident aliens, number more than 1.5 million, and are 1/4 of the foreign population. The demographics are interesting too:

wikipedia says:
54.2% of Turks in Germany are male and 45.8% are female. Of the population, 50.5% are between fourteen and twenty-nine years old, whereas among Germans the comparable rate is only 25%. In the Turkish population, 33.8% are between thirty-nine and forty-nine years old, while 32% of Germans are within this age group. Only 15.7% of Turks are age fifty and above, while this rate is 43% among Germans. So Turks in Germany still make up a younger population than do Germans.

Hamburg, with a population of about 1.8 million has a population of over 300k foreign residents The Turks aren’t integrating or assimilating, and much like the rest of Europe, the young and newest Muslim immigrants are more radical than prior generations. The number of resident alien turks in hamburg is 50k–that’s people who aren’t citizen-immigrants, but just resident aliens. Another 22k resident aliens are from Afghanistan.

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20090125-16987.html has this quote:
“Reiner Klingholz, director of the institute [that led the study], said language remained the key to education and successes.

“For too long we’ve been used to the fact that we have primary school classes in which 80 percent of the children don’t understand German,” he said.”

So perhaps to discuss tracking without discussing if anyone teaches the Turks German is a bit far afield.

Uh, none that I know. I’ve been fortunate to know many children who came from very troubled backgrounds but were driven to be high achievers, and I’m proud to say that my colleagues all work to help these children do just that.

also in the US how many educators look at a kid and his family and write them off because their family never achieved or they come from a broken home vs looking at the child and saying I wonder how I can help? I wonder what talents are hidding in this child and how can I help them achieve to their highest potential? in many districts the weakest/least experienced teachers still go to the kids that need to the strongest teachers (not advocating by any means that the middle and high achievers get the weakest/least experienced teachers)…we need excellent and highly effective teachers in every classroom…

nothing wrong with generations of craftsmen, plumbers, carpenters, electricians etc either but the kids do need to be able change tracks if they so chose

I expect the parents concerned about their kids being held back by this attempt to reduce inequailty will hire tutors to make sure their kids make the cut. I believe that is what they do in Japan. So much for reducing inequality.