Educational Tracking: The Socio-demographic Effect

             Tracking (homogeneous grouping), a practice that dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century, combines students for instruction, based on their ability and achievement potential. The first form of a flexible grading system, the Harris Plan, replaced the age grading in public schools (Pulliam, 1999).  Initially, the plan was to develop an educational system to help nurture individual student differences rather than suppress them. Over time, homogeneous grouping has become a vehicle for sorting and isolating. Researchers have documented the existence of school-level variation in tracking systems, linked variation to students' outcomes, and suggested a relationship between students' socio-demographic characteristics and tracking systems (Lucas & Berends 2007).

            This method of education has been contested for years.  Proponents of tracking believe that it promotes learning by providing an adequate balance between the level of instruction and students' learning needs.  Others, however, have contended that tracking inescapably involves racial, ethnic, and class segregation (Ansalone 2006).

Recreating Segregation

           

            Lack of resources has caused immigrants and poor minorities to remain at a low social economic status.  Most poor minority students are sent to school in buildings of deteriorating condition. The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (now at UCLA) has documented that more than two million students, including more than a quarter of black students in the Northeast and Midwest, attend schools in which 99 to 100 percent of the students are nonwhite (Sentilles, 2008).  These children are expected to learn in overcrowded classrooms, with limited supplies and unprepared teachers.  As a country, we spend less money to educate them than we do their white counterparts. 

            Tracking has been identified as the greatest second generation threat to equality of American educational resources (Ansalone, 2006).  Homogeneous grouping alone does not enhance the academic success of all children. Tracking may actually be academically disadvantageous to students in average and low tracks because it may deprive them the intellectual stimulation present in heterogeneously grouped classrooms (Ansalone, 2003).

            Minority groups have continued to be stigmatized. Explicit stigmas are easily identified, but the affects of implicit stigmas often go undetected. Tracking, coupled with negative in-group evaluations, stifles learning and motivation.  I propose surveying children and their parents in order to better understand their expectations. A stronger initiative must be made to sustain equal educational resources for all children. Tracking may unfortunately cause self-fulfilling prophecies. If these categorized students are told that they have a threshold for knowledge, their potential for learning could possibly never be discovered...  

Ansalone, G. (2003). Poverty, tracking, and the social construction of failure: International perspectives on tracking. Journal                 of Children & Poverty, 9(1), 3.              

Ansalone, G. (2006). Tracking: A return to jim crow. Race, Gender & Class, 13(1), 144-153. 

Lucas, S. R., & Berends, M. (2007). Race and track location in U.S. public schools. Research in Social Stratification and                   Mobility, 25(3), 169-187.  

Pulliam, J. (1999). History of education in America. New York: Prentice Hall.

Sentilles, S. (2008). Separate and Equal. The Christian Century, 27-30. Retrieved from         

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