Are enough American students on track to graduate high school with the critical-thinking skills needed in today’s economy? Are schools partly to blame for pushing kids off track?
Some schools still track students, sorting them by abilities into general, basic, accelerated or honors classes by test scores, or by subtly channeling poor and minority students into less demanding classes.
Research shows lower achievers perform better in classes with mixed abilities. Research is less clear on whether high achievers benefit as much, though detracking advocate and researcher Carol Corbett Burris says they, too, can benefit if teaching and instruction are strong.
“When detracking is done well, all kids get the opportunity to be among a community of learners that includes the most motivated kids who excel in schools. If you take a child on the track team and you put them with elite runners, even if they may not be the best, they are going to stretch,” says Burris, author of the new book “On The Same Track: How Schools Can Join the Twenty-First Century Struggle Against Resegregation.”
Burris fears the escalating drumbeat for greater school choice could result in de facto tracking.
Under choice programs, entire schools become tracked by admissions testing and entrance policies, she said. What becomes of the schools that are not chosen and see their top students flee? The achievement gaps widen as more affluent kids and savvier parents take advantage of choice options that produce less classroom diversity.
Burris cites Pataula Charter Academy in South Georgia, which draws students from five counties. The school is in Calhoun County, where 2 percent of public school students are white. Yet white students make up 75 percent of the charter’s students.
In a telephone interview about her new book, Burris said, “When all students are given the highest levels of instruction, all rise to the challenge.”
She put that belief to the test at the New York high school she’s led for 17 years as assistant principal and now principal. South Side High School both detracked and adopted the demanding International Baccalaureate program for its upper grades. In 2012, all 11th graders took IB English, and the school’s scores on the New York Regents exam were the best ever.
The detracking was a gradual process that began with the elimination of lower tracks, teacher training and support for struggling students. For example, only after IB English for all students was in effect for two years was it then expanded to the 12th grade.
Her school builds into the schedule support time for students struggling with the tougher material, and it offers help sessions every morning — mandatory for failing students. “When we first put that into place, there was a lot of students grousing, ‘You can’t make me go.’ After a while, if you are consistent, you wear kids down, and they start to go,” said Burris.
A criticism of detracking is that it forces teachers to dumb down instruction or teach to the middle.
“You don’t teach to the middle,” said Burris. “What the heck is the middle? You teach an enriched curriculum, and you differentiate your instruction and provide support for kids. We have never watered down anything on this journey. We have found better ways to provide instruction. Our teachers became more ingenious as classes became more heterogeneous.”
Burris acknowledges that detracking is a greater challenge in the financial realities of 35 students crammed in a class. “When you start to go over 28 students in a class, you feel it. Everything becomes more difficult. But think of a class size of 34 that is also a low-track class.”
The benefits of detracking outweigh the challenges, she said. Teachers are more collaborative. Discipline problems fall as all students become more engaged. Scheduling is far easier with everyone on the same track, and class sizes are more consistent.
Burris cites a veteran math teacher who maintained detracking would never work. Years later and about to retire, the teacher told Burris she had been wrong. Now, said Burris, “She preaches the whole idea of detracking and heterogeneous grouping at the college where she teaches.”
