Individuals like Jeannie Oakes have proven that tracking students is a terrible practice and promotes inequality in education regardless of how “necessary” some educators and administrators deem the practice to be. Few fail to come to grips with the fact that tracking was originally used as a means to “Americanize” immigrants so that they would adopt the customs of our country (an obvious need during the age of the “factory system”).
Tracking perpetuates a system of cookie-cutter schooling for all students. I agree that everyone is ready to learn at different points in their lives, but doesn’t that mean that we should be grouping students across grade levels by different ability metrics? In other words, rather than creating Honors, Accelerated, and all these other names for tracked groups of the same age students, we should be allowing students to progress through grade levels as they are ready. No longer should we be accepting that grade “x” is made up of students who are “x” years old. This eliminates a need for tracking of students as we currently know it.
Learning and obtaining knowledge is important for all students of all cognitive abilities and every one of them should be afforded the same opportunities. What concerns me the most about tracking as it currently exists is the inability of students to move fluidly between tracks as they develop during their years of K-12 schooling.
Even if a student is far exceeding his or her expectations in a general level class under the current structure, the types of skills and functions that he or she is missing out on in the general level course prohibits the student from moving up to the Honors track seamlessly. Contrast this with the idea of allowing students to move up in grade level when they are ready. All students would receive the same rigorous instruction and schooling, but it wouldn’t happen until each of them was comfortable and capable with prerequisite skills and information. If a student advanced two grade levels over the course of the year, then it should be because the student has had a developmental growth spurt that allows for him or her to do so.
We work way too hard to perpetuate a system of inequality in education. We force students into specific kingdoms and then further stratify those kingdoms to show students who is “smart” and who is not. All students should be afforded the opportunity to develop at their own pace. If we begin to emphasize to students that we each have unique, individual differences that allow us to grow at varying speeds, it will instill confidence in working with diverse groups of people and begin to level (& diminish) the stratification that currently exists.
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You are right on. When I win the lottery I’m starting a school that operates this way.
I’ve introduced something similar in English in a number of German schools, whereby children progress through Levels independent of their progress through the school. English is taught in competence groups, rather than classes and so we have children from different years in the same class. (I should add the pilot school is broadly similar in profile to an inner-city public school – it is in no way some elite private college.)
This allows precisely the development flexibility you talk about. It meets a lot of resistance from certain teachers, because the system is very transparent, and it requires significantly more administration. It also needs much more objective testing than some people are happy with, otherwise it leads to children progressing who haven’t got the requisite skills.
Having said all that, it provides the kids with a fair challenge throughout their schooling and allows the best to come significantly further than they used to under the traditional system. The acceptance from employers is very high and that shouldn’t be underplayed in an area where having the wrong school name at the top of your report can be a distinct disadvantage.
One point about your suggestion though… I wouldn’t want to be the timetable planner in the school that introduced such a system across the board! (Come to think of it, I wouldn’t like to be a timetable planner in any case!)
Olaf
What are your thoughts then on this type of system? This example is in Alaska but there’s a district in Colorado that’s moving this way too.
For a strong recommendation against tracking, complete with proposed legislation that would make it illegal, check out:
http://epicpolicy.org/publication/universal-access
If you don’t care to read the whole brief, check out the 8 recommendations on pages 16-22.
Students should be able to move according to their needs. If they are in “4th grade” in reading and “8th grade” in math, we need to allow that to occur (and provide the resources and flexibility to make it work.