Tracking can lead kids down wrong path

In my high school years I was somehow placed in the honors
track. I took honors English and honors biology and I was expected
to be one of the smart kids, the kind of student who took Advanced
Placement tests and went to a four-year university straight out of
high school.

Well, I wasn’t one of those kids, not by a long shot. I
was the kind of kid who smoked cigarettes and stole booze from my
parents’ liquor cabinet while getting Ds in my honors
classes. I ended up doing the community college thing for a few
years and eventually made it here to UCLA, but not in the way in
which I was expected. While taking those honors classes, I often
wondered why I was even there.

The fact is that from early on, I was identified as a
“smart kid.” Some useless standardized test placed me
in a track for gifted students. While my supposed
“gifts” (or at least my motivation to use them) faded
at an early age, I remained in this track, lost in the system.

Being an honors student got me out of a lot of trouble. Smoking
on campus was a slap on the wrist for so-called “good
kids,” while “bad kids” were reprimanded to the
fullest extent. Trouble was, those bad kids were my buddies, and I
never quite understood why they were labeled “bad” and
enrolled in resource or remedial classes while I was supposed to be
so different.

For the most part, our intelligence, motivation and level of
articulation seemed to be the same ““ not to mention our
intake of controlled substances. So what was really going on
here?

According to the Applied Research Center, “tracking is the
practice of placing students in different classes based on
perceived differences in their abilities.” For a long time,
research has suggested that placing students in tracks (remedial or
honors) can have a major impact on their academic and social
success.

In a 1977 study, researcher John Meyer concluded that a
student’s placement within the educational structure can be
more influential than how a student performs in that place.

Students are supposed to feel more comfortable in a classroom
filled with their intellectual equals, and their teachers are
supposed to be more attuned to students’ needs.

But students placed in a remedial track may have a more taxing
educational experience, regardless of their academic success.

A 2003 UC Davis research brief by Faith G. Paul titled
“Re-Tracking Within Algebra One: A Structural Sieve With
Powerful Effects for Low-Income, Minority and Immigrant
Students” concludes that tracking can result in “very
different opportunities to prepare (students) for college and for
direct entry into the workforce.” That is, students placed in
slower tracks didn’t take their education as far as
others.

These researchers followed the academic careers of 3,574
students and their involvement in one of multiple tracks for their
Algebra 1 class. There were three major groups: those who took
Algebra 1 in eighth grade and moved on to geometry in ninth grade,
those who enrolled in the yearlong ninth-grade Algebra 1 class, and
those who took a two-year Algebra 1 program.

In California, students must complete advanced algebra in order
to be eligible for CSU or UC admittance. So the students placed in
slower math tracks must take a longer path to get to Algebra 2, and
have more work to do in order to meet the college admittance
requirements.

The unfortunate results of the study show a major gap between
students in different tracks. An impressive 96 percent of
eighth-grade Algebra 1 students took Algebra 2, but only 42 percent
of the students from the ninth-grade Algebra 1 program moved
ahead.

Even worse, the research showed that only 6 percent of other
students took Algebra 2, making it very clear that once you are
placed in a slow track, it is nearly impossible to get out of
it.

Singling out students as different based on their learning
styles can be harmful to their self-concepts and even stunt their
education in the long run.

Children develop at different rates, and while it makes sense to
put them into groups depending on skill level, it seems tracking
can be an educational life sentence. The original intent was to
help students, not hinder them, so perhaps this method of tracking
in elementary and high schools should be rethought.

Part of the problem may be that these students don’t
receive the attention they need in order to progress. And once
students are identified with a certain social group (a remedial
track, for instance), they are expected to behave and perform in a
certain way.

As noted in the brief, Meyer’s research suggests that a
student’s perceived performance can create a
“socialized identity of academic adequacy or
inadequacy.”. This means that students may perform a certain
way, only because of the socioeducational circle in which they are
perceived to be.

For me, this meant that I was always assumed to be smarter than
I felt I was. Perhaps this eventually motivated me to pursue a
college education; others may never get that chance.

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