Eliminating tracking can benefit all students, educators find

01/06/04 -- Getting rid of tracking and having students of varying ability levels in the same class can be a challenging process but is well worth the effort, say school leaders who have done it.

Officials of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, N.Y., and Noble High School in North Berwick, Maine, say their efforts to end tracking have led to improved academic performance for students at all achievement levels and have also led to a better school climate.

Tracking, which refers to the grouping of students for all or part of the school day according to their intellectual ability, stems from the factory model of schooling, which stresses efficiency, sorting, and standardization, says Kevin G. Welner, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, school of education.

The goal of tracking is to create homogeneous classes, allowing teachers to target instruction to students' ability levels. Yet classes in a school with tracking are not as homogeneous as people think, Welner says.

While the mean test scores in advanced classes might be higher than in non-advanced courses, the range of scores in both types of classes are not that different, he says.

Welner also notes that low-income and minority students tend to be concentrated in low-track classes.

And, he adds: "Once placements are made, they tend to take on a life of their own. Labels do become fixed." It's much more likely for a student in a high-track class to be moved to a lower track, rather than the other way around.

No more labels

The Rockville Centre Free Union School District, located 20 miles from Manhattan, has 3,500 students, and 22 percent of them are minorities. Students come from families with a wide range of income levels.

The de-tracking effort began in the middle school, says Assistant Superintendent Delia Garrity.

"Where you put children in the sixth grade sealed their fate," Garrity says. "We knew we were closing doors for kids, starting when they were 11, and we wanted to stop doing that."

Assistant Principal Carol Burris says South Side High School began eliminating ability grouping in English and social studies. Biology and other science classes were next, followed by ninth-grade math.

Then, last year, when the school looked at de-tracking 10th-grade math, it "started to meet a little resistance from the community," Burris says.

There was "a very long, tough board meeting," she says. "Because of the courage of the school board and the central administration, we stayed the course."

Burris says most high-achieving students were not burdened by de-tracking. That's because, instead of dumbing down the curriculum, the school kept the accelerated curriculum and provided extra supports to students as needed.

The school offered extra training for teachers and support classes to help low-track students adapt to more challenging courses, and sent information to parents to explain the changes.

Rising test scores

Garrity says the de-tracking experiment has worked well. After de-tracking, the passing rate on the state Regents exam rose from 78 percent to 92 percent. Students earning a more demanding Regents diploma rose from 72 percent in 1997 to 95 percent in 2004.

There were also dramatic gains in percentages of African American, Latino, and low socioeconomic status students taking and passing advanced math courses.

What Burris didn't expect was that scores of high-achieving students also went up significantly. She speculates this is because when classes became more heterogeneous, teachers had to improve their teaching methods. As a result, all students benefited.

Burris says low tracks simply don't work. Before eliminating ability grouping, the school tried "double-dose math with lots of support" for low-achieving students.

That didn't work because the students with behavior problems were concentrated in the same class. She tried moving the most disruptive students to the high-track class. That lead to improvements for the individual students who were moved, but it didn't help the students who remained in the low-track class.

That shows that even the best-designed, most supportive tracking system fails, Welner says. It disproves the main argument of people who support tracking: that the theory isn't flawed, it just isn't applied well in most schools.

Welner says "tracking places enormous burdens on teachers. We don't see low-track students catching up." That's because teachers get the message, implicitly as well as overtly, not to have high expectations for low-track students.

Despite the failure of tracking, Welner says, it continues to be popular for several reasons:

• Teachers in a school with a tracking system don't want to change the way they teach.

• Schools don't have the resources for support classes and professional development necessary to eliminate tracking.

• Some educators and parents believe that without tracking, high-achieving students would be more likely to be assigned to low-performing teachers and be exposed to disruptive classmates.

• Those who support tracking tend to be high-achieving citizens who are more likely to have their voices heard.

Heterogeneous teams

Noble High School, located in a poor area in Southern Maine, was designed to accommodate the concept of heterogeneous teams and interdisciplinary learning.

Students are randomly assigned to one of 15 learning communities, and the school embodies "a culture of rigor, a culture of equity, and personalized learning," says Assistant Principal Tom Ledue.

The school began the de-tracking process by expanding the number of Advanced Placement courses and encouraging more students to take them. After de-tracking, Ledue says, "our test scores shot up dramatically."

Officials from both schools say de-tracking has also led to an improved school climate.

When there were clear stratifications of students, Ledue says, there were more than 20 violent incidents in one year. This year, there have only been three so far, even though the school is much larger.

Burris says that when minority students had been concentrated in the lowest track, there was some racial tension at South Side High School. After de-tracking, "racial relations are much better."

Officials from both schools agree that professional development is crucial for de-tracking to be effective.

"You absolutely have to have staff training," says Nancy Freese, a chemistry teacher at Noble High School. "It's much harder to teach in a heterogeneous classroom."

The Rockville Centre district brought in teams of consultants to work with teachers in the classroom. As a result, teachers are now more willing to collaborate. "If teachers are positive, it keeps the momentum going," Garrity says.

In dealing with parent resistance, Burris advises school leaders to stay the course, collect and share data, and tell parents that if it doesn't work, you'll go back to the old way.