Many schools have abolished the remedial track to provide more challenge for low achievers. Some have no advanced track either. Tracking and Detracking: High Achievers in Massachusetts Middle Schools, a Fordham report by Brookings scholar Tom Loveless, finds “tracked schools did better, but there aren’t many of them left.” From Education Gadfly:
Loveless finds that most middle schools have done away entirely with tracking in English language arts, science, and social studies, though this practice endures in math, albeit with fewer tracks than two decades ago. Further, “detracking” — reducing the number of subject-area courses offered in a given grade in a given school — may adversely affect high-achieving youngsters in math. (That’s not the case in English; history and science achievement were not analyzed.)
Middle schools with more tracks have more advanced and proficient math students, while detracked schools have more failing and “needs improvement” students.
Loveless also found that, when schools’ socioeconomic statuses are held constant, each additional track in eighth-grade math (up to three) is associated with a 3 percentage-point rise in students scoring at the advanced level. That means the advantage for a school offering three tracks instead of one is associated with a 6 percentage-point gain in the number of students performing at high levels.
Because math achievement is so low overall, that’s a significant difference.
In the late ’60s, my high school had five levels in English, three in math and two in science. In history and foreign languages, I think only AP courses were Level 1. I loved tracking. The low-level classes may have been a rotten deal for the slower learners, but tracking saved me from terminal boredom.
Update: On Flypaper, Mike Petrilli cites Caroline Hoxby’s research, which finds that students do best in “boutique” classes designed for their needs. A little mixing — average students with above-average students, for example — but too much disparity causes problems.
Michael E. Lopez,
They’re called special ed teachers and I thank god for many of them. But even they can fall into what Stacy calls “magical thinking.”
Your last three paragraphs are really spot on. When everyone here says “slow learner” it looks like they mean different things.
I’ve watched grade schools hand off the slow learners (some special ed, some just a little slower) to the newest and most inexperienced teachers. The veterans at my school often got the gifted. Right off the bat it gives the impression that teaching slower kids isn’t rewarding and will simply be a drag. Often it is when kid has a behavioral disorder, but the school offers no support.
At the middle school, my special ed son was taught math lessons on many days by an aide who had not attended college. Across the hall, my gifted son was in math class with a teacher whose doctorate was in math. I wonder who got the better teaching.
I’ve had veteran teacher friends tell me that they would lose their minds if they had to only teach the slower ones. As the parent of one such kid I can’t tell you had sad that makes me feel. But I would have felt the same, I suppose, if I hadn’t walked the walk as a parent.
It can be rewarding to get a slacker motivated, but the child with the borderline IQ needs teachers to get excited about them and where they’re at academically, as well. These kids are facing frightening prospects since the government is resistant to help anyone who isn’t considered mentally retarded (70 and below).
Yet most kids who reside in the murky 70 to 85 IQ range cannot compete in the labor market against people with higher IQs. Without a great deal of help from the family, they are extremely vulnerable in the world.
Okay, somehow I got separated from the pack. Don’t quite know how that happened….
Mr. Lopez,
You nailed it. There is no greater motivator for teachers than having students who want to learn. My favorite classes are high school general math students who want to win. The same subject attracts a fair share of disciplinary problems, recalcitrants and sociopaths of superior ability; but lower achievement. Give me ten special ed kids who try, over one apathetic genius any day.
Interesting study. But where is the intersection between ‘no tracking’ and inclusion of student with disabilities? Rather than magical thinking, where’s the research on how such practices– adopted from the civil rights approach–actually affect teaching and learning for all students?
Miriam,
I worry that the amendments to the IDEA in 1997 to promote mainstreaming and access to the general curriculum became an excuse to water down and change the essential nature of math, science, and language arts instruction. Research into 1998 practices show just such recommendations and changes.
In a detracked, mainstreamed classroom, don’t the limitations of some students become a barrier for all?
Can we obtain equity and create justice by insisting classrooms must provide equal treatment of students who are academically very dissimilar?
IDEA made the mistake of failing to distinguish between providing “access” to the curriculum, versus providing the opportunity to learn/master the curriculum. Many children with disabilities of different sorts can both access and master the grade-level curriculum for their age cohort; some can’t, and are not only having a distorting effect on regular classrooms but are also not being provided with the curriculum that will most effectively build their knowledge base and academic skills.
Lightly Seasoned,
Well, it is good to know you can teach grammar/usage. Too bad YOU’RE not that great at reading comprehension.