Tracking in Our Education System
The process of student tracking, despite seeming practical, has had many unhindered consequences on student education, particularly with the education of minority students. Tracking, or ability-grouping, is the process of separating students based on perceived academic ability, as assessed by teachers, into different levels of classes. At first glance, this system makes perfect sense by having students placed into classes seemingly catered to their experience and abilities, but studies on the effects of tracking suggest it may be perpetuating systemic racial and socioeconomic inequality.
Tracking has had a relatively short history in the United States. Beginning in schools during the early 20th century, the implementation of tracking was a response to the influx of immigrants of various backgrounds that emphasized the needs of students at different levels of English proficiency. At its conception, tracking served to divide students between academically specialized tracks and vocational tracks where only a certain privileged few were college-bound, while the others were preparing for low-paying jobs like secretarial work or machine repair services. By the middle of the century, the majority of schools across the country utilized these tracking systems and were increasingly moving towards the 21st century’s higher standards for America’s students. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the American education system began to look how it does today. A 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education revealed evidence of various failures in the United States education system, compared to other countries which prompted a series of efforts and legislation. On the federal level, intensive standardization of schooling was adopted with tracking, exams, and curriculum to effectively measure the quality of schools and to work towards improving them.
Despite being a prominent part of the American education system, tracking has received a great deal of backlash from educators, especially due to its effects on low-performing students which have had racial and socioeconomic implications. The primary problem with tracking is that the system is inherently a form of “intelligence segregation.” Students are identified as either high-achieving or low-achieving students and are separated accordingly as early as elementary school, with 60% of elementary schools engaging in stratified tracking. By equivocating grades to intelligence, being put into different level classrooms (regular, honors, or AP classes), and visually being able to compare themselves to their peers, students very easily create conceptions in their heads whether they are smart or not which deeply impacts their school performances. As stated in Kenneth Clark’s report entitled “The Effects of Segregation and the Consequences of Desegregation,” students who believe they are a part of the inferior group often have “a defeatist attitude, a lowering of personal ambitions… and a depression of educational aspiration level.” Upon examination of psychological research, this claim makes a lot of sense. For example, the well-regarded psychological concept of Learned Helplessness in Robert and Myrna Gordon’s book The Turned Off Child explains why students believing themselves to be unintelligent and inferior to their peers try less in school and thus perform worse. Normally to get put into lower track classes, students perform poorly with their grades and test scores. With the school system identifying them as less intelligent and visually showing students they can’t succeed in their classes, students begin to believe no amount of effort can prevent them from failing. Just like that, students stop trying in their education. This is a compounding issue because students in the lower tracks often have “the weakest teachers in a school, an unchallenging curriculum, few academic role models, and low social status,” as stated by Maureen T. Hallinan, director of the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity at the University of Notre Dame. These students, who oftentimes tend to be minorities from low socioeconomic backgrounds, are fighting an uphill battle that starts in elementary school and will have implications for the rest of their lives. To put it simply, low track classes are disproportionately teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds mediocrity, not excellence.
Due to the role generational wealth plays in education, American schools, despite efforts for meritocracy have implicitly retained a system of unequal opportunity. As Associate Professor Ann Owens discusses in her research paper entitled “Unequal Opportunity: School and Neighborhood Segregation,” current evidence suggests inequality of educational opportunity is pervasive amongst black and Hispanic students, who on average, have $1,000 less per-pupil expenditure than white students and attend schools where 63% of the student body being low-income, as determined by FRPL eligibility, which is twice the rate than that of white students. The truth of the matter is that white families are generally wealthier than other families, which gives them more options for their child’s education, such as enrolling their children into private schools or choosing to live in higher income areas with higher quality schools. There is some evidence to the notion that when the choice of private school is available, school racial segregation was significantly higher than neighborhood segregation. And even when white families do go to public schools, they still hold the most influence lobbying school administrations. As detailed in Amanda Lewis and John Diamond’s paper “Opportunity Hoarding,” white families are uniquely successful in getting their children into the most advanced classes, even if their children aren’t making the grade, and thus take away the coveted few spots available for advanced courses. Of the students in the 90th percentile on national math and reading achievement exams, 85% of the White students were enrolled in high-track classes, while only 63% of students of color were enrolled in those same courses. As Lewis and Diamond argued, current evidence strongly suggests that white students with their cultural, social, and economic capital are advantaged in a manner that makes tracking racialized.
Regardless of the reasoning behind tracking, it is an implicitly racialized system that does not provide equal opportunity for all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. If education is supposed to be this great equalizer that allows anyone to reach the American Dream of freedom, opportunity, and success, it should be uplifting those from unprivileged backgrounds instead of teaching them that they aren’t smart with unfounded labels. Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s work on the “Pygmalion Effect'' proved it best when they demonstrated how students, both low achieving and high achieving, in a randomized experiment gained confidence by being identified as academic “bloomers” and displayed significantly positive results in academic performance. This experiment showed that natural ability is not what is most important in education: it is motivation and confidence. This isn’t at all to say the tracking system shouldn’t exist, especially because different skill levels merit different classes, but its negative effects need to be mitigated. Instead of teaching students they are seemingly less intelligent than their peers, they need to be taught that intelligence in reality is a complex concept that isn’t at all stagnant or based on natural aptitude. The Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City took this to heart and what they saw was students who used to be the epitome of hopelessness in academia go on to not only close the racial achievement gap, but even give wealthy private school students a run for their money. Amazing things can happen when students are taught to believe in themselves, find passion in their education, and be shown a route to a successful future. So for the sake of an educated population, let’s not teach certain kids how “intelligent they are.” Let’s teach them they can succeed.