Detracking for High Student Achievement
By: Jeannie Oakes and Amy Stuart Wells
From: Educational Leadership, March 1998
Exercises: J. Geffen
5
10
15
20
25
30
1.
Standards reform in the United States aims at providing all children with a more
challenging curriculum and holding schools accountable for their achievement. High
academic standards, proponents argue, will alleviate inequalities in curriculum,
instruction, and expectations for students. Purportedly, standards will also bring
excellence by requiring all students to demonstrate higher levels of achievement and
by providing all students with equal educational opportunities while preparing a more
informed citizenry and a better trained work force.
2.
But what about the firmly entrenched system of tracking that exposes students
to dramatically different and unequal levels of curriculum? Consider the daily
experiences of many lower-track students – particularly low-income students of color
– whose classrooms offer fewer resources, low-level curriculum, and less powerful
learning environments. How can these students reach higher standards?
The Reform Possibilities
3.
For three years, we have followed the progress of 10 U.S. secondary schools
where administrators and teachers have worked to restructure their schools in ways
that could bring all students to high academic standards.1 The schools, which vary in
size from 500 to 3,000 students, have racially and socioeconomically mixed student
populations. They are widely dispersed across the country, with one in the Northeast,
three in the Midwest, one in the South, two in the Northwest, and three in various
regions of California.
4.
Faculties at these schools became disenchanted with their tracking systems,
which had created academic, racial, and socioeconomic divisions among students.
White and middle-class students were over-represented in honors and advanced
classes, while lower-income African American and Latino students were
disproportionately represented in general and remedial classes. These educators saw
detracking as a way to pursue both excellence and equity. In addition to reducing or
eliminating tracks, the schools created new schedules, reorganized teachers into
teams, provided all students access to honors programs, instituted integrated
curriculums, and created opportunities for students to get extra academic support – all
in an effort to make standards-based education possible.
Toward Detracked Courses
5.
For most schools, the first step was to do away with low-level classes. Union
High School (all school names are pseudonyms) eliminated remedial tracks, leaving
only one regular and one advanced track. Grant High School’s English department
Detracking for High Student Achievement / 2
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
75
eliminated its low-level 12th grade electives; all current electives are of equal rigor
and offer an honors option.
6.
Other schools required students to take a core of heterogeneous courses. Two
middle schools, King and Explorer, developed a common curriculum for all students.
Some of the high schools required all students to pass benchmark classes – English I
at Green Valley, biology at Grant, and algebra at Union. At Central High, all students
begin 9th grade on a college-prep trajectory in English, science, and math.
7.
Many schools simultaneously opened the top levels by allowing almost
everyone access to honors programs. Others provided honors activities within
heterogeneous classes. Teams at Explorer Middle School offer either multilevel
activities or pullout challenge classes, available to all students, several times a week.
Traditionally low-achieving students and mainstreamed special education students
frequently participate.
8.
Green Valley also offers challenge projects within heterogeneous English
classes. Students must complete at least one challenge class per quarter to receive an
A in the class. Grant High’s honors-option language arts classes allow any student
who completes the work to receive an honors designation on his or her transcript.
Plainview started a “Jaime Escalante” campaign that encourages minority students to
enroll in advanced placement classes.
Double Doses of Curriculum
9.
Many schools created opportunities for students to get extra help to master more
challenging curriculum. Central High’s faculty designed a customized calendar to
provide a “double dose” of instruction for students having difficulty.2 The
intercessions allow low-achieving students a chance to repeat classes they had
previously failed, without affecting their course load during the normal sessions.
Several schools offer resource classes for low-achieving students; students enroll in
these classes in place of an elective. Union High encourages capable students to
double up in math courses and offers a support class, Transitions to College Math, for
students who need a review of algebra concepts while enrolled in Algebra II or geometry. Bearfield Middle’s maths teachers offer tutoring sessions before or after school.
10. Grant High operates a math homework center one day a week in which teachers,
community volunteers, and upper-level students tutor students who need help. In
addition, two math teachers offer a summer challenge program in which minority
students can complete a year’s worth of math in an eight-week course. Students who
complete the summer challenge may then skip to a higher-level math class in the fall.
The class has already produced increased enrollments in calculus among formerly
under-represented minority groups.
Accommodating Diversity
11. Many teachers adopted classroom strategies that allow students to demonstrate
their ability in previously unrecognized ways. Teachers at Explorer Middle School
use Socratic Seminars, where students discuss open-ended questions in a format
Detracking for High Student Achievement / 3
80
85
90
95
100
105
110
115
described by one teacher as “analogous to a conversation around the dinner table…. It
allows those kids who don’t feel comfortable in other settings a chance to speak their
minds because they know they can’t be wrong.”
12. Grant High School developed a Marine Science curriculum that relies very little
on textbooks; instead, students take frequent field trips and complete small-group
projects. Students might make anatomical models of fish out of play dough, or collect
and identify various forms of ocean plant and animal life. All Marine Science students
are required to design and teach a week of science classes at a local elementary school
and guide a group of children on a beach walk.
13. Several high schools adopted programs that provide low-achieving students
access to a broad span of math concepts. Interactive Math at Central and Liberty and
Integrated Math at Grant interweave concepts from algebra, statistics, geometry,
probability, and logic, with the conceptual demands increasing each year. Bob
Jackson, math chair at Grant, credited the Integrated Math program for enabling a
diverse group of students to learn math well: the math chair at Central High, Faith
Jacobs, told us that you can’t detrack in a traditional curriculum. Her colleague
Christie Jeffries summed up their new curriculum: “We teach problem solving,
writing, and communicating your mathematical thoughts.” She also emphasized
problem finding as an important dimension of mathematics: “They have to figure out
what problems to do before they can even do the problems.”
14. A Green Valley team of teachers piloting an integrated math and engineering
program were excited about the content of combined mathematics and vocational
studies. Math teacher Gloria Pedroza said,
It is really good math. It isn’t watered down, and it is very much applied. You
won’t ever get this question from a kid: “When will I ever use this?”
15. Many schools developed multicultural curriculums, such as Grant’s required 9th
grade World Cultures course and Liberty’s Ethnic Studies class, which engage
students who show little interest in traditional curriculum and allow low-achieving
minority students to display their culturally specific knowledge. Many schools offer
African American or Mexican American History, African American or Latin
American Literature, Ethnic Literature, and Women’s Literature. As an English
teacher at Green Valley stated, “We have got to find ways for all kids to find entry
and go as far as they can.”
16. King’s Middle School Project Equal incorporates multicultural literature into
the curriculum and the library. Last year, several 8th grade teachers attended a course
on how to teach a unit on the Holocaust. Teachers at other schools studied culturally
related learning styles.
17. We also found teachers who based their curriculum and pedagogy on theories of
the multidimensional nature of intelligence and giftedness. Plainview English teacher
Olivia Jeffers developed an interdisciplinary, individualized course that a multiracial
group of both high- and low-track students take to help satisfy college-entrance
Detracking for High Student Achievement / 4
120
125
130
135
140
145
150
155
English requirements. Students choose much of their own reading and work on
research projects at their own pace. Jeffers does not feel that she is holding the highachieving students back by having them in the same room with low-achieving
students. In fact, she sees it as quite the opposite. She described the benefit of the
detracked classroom for a high-achieving white student from a wealthy suburban
family:
In class discussions, this girl not only contributes her ideas, but she also gets
insight from somebody else who hasn’t had her experience, or doesn’t own a
horse, or a place out in the country – a kid who gets on the bus every day and
lives in two rooms. She listens to kids who’ve had to struggle just to survive.
18. Jeffers says she has constructed a learning environment for students where she
can find “the genius within them.” She finds that when students develop insight into
their own ways of knowing and learning, they become highly motivated students in
the broader sense of the word, thirsty for a greater understanding of the world around
them.
19. Like Jeffers, other teachers changed their conceptions of ability after creating
environments in which all students could be smart. One teacher told us, “Heterogeneous grouping has made teachers think differently about all kids; they see more
potential.”
20. Another teacher stated, “The program has done amazing things for standardtrack kids. All of a sudden, somebody says, You can do this!”
A Cautionary Note
21. Most of the educators we studied changed their practices in the belief that
colleagues, families and students would happily support reform that enhanced the
achievement of students previously in the low track, without harming – and perhaps
even enriching – the experiences of students who would otherwise be in high tracks.
Yet they quickly learned that their challenges were compounded by formidable
cultural and political obstacles. They ran headlong into deeply held beliefs and
ideologies about intelligence, racial differences, social stratification, and privilege.
Conventional conceptions of intelligence, ability, and giftedness combined with the
local community culture and politics around race and social class to fuel enormous
resistance.
22. In the end, none of the schools achieved the extent of detracking and curriculum
reform hoped for. Their promising efforts toward high standards for all students were
cut short by fears that the advantages of high-achieving students would be
compromised.
23. The experience of the gifted education specialist at Explorer Middle School,
which offered challenge courses to all students, captures the essence of the battles.
Parents of identified gifted students severely criticized her for not offering their
children separate enrichment classes. What upset the parents most was not the quality
Detracking for High Student Achievement / 5
of the curriculum. It was that their children were no longer being singled out and
treated differently:
They didn’t ask, “Well, what are our kids learning in your classes?” I found that
really dismaying, because I was prepared to tell them what we do in class. I had
course outlines. I send objectives, goals, and work requirements home with
every class, and nobody asked me anything about that…. I’m dealing with their
egos, more than what their kids really need educationally.
24. This political battle was ostensibly fought over which kids – gifted or not gifted,
and according to which definition – would have access to which curriculum and
which teacher. The cultural underpinnings of such battles, however, are far more
profound. At risk for the families of high-track students is the entire system of
meritocracy on which they base their privileged positions in society. As this system
begins to crack, these parents often employ tactics that make reform politically
impossible. Given that detracking is basic to standards-based reform, policymakers
and educators stand forewarned.
160
165
170
Notes
1
2
Funded in part by the Lilly Endowment, the study used qualitative methods to examine
changes in school organization, grouping practices, and classroom pedagogy. Our research
associates were Robert Cooper, Amanda Datnow, Diane Hirshberg, Martin Lipton, Karen
Ray, Irene Serna, Estella Williams, and Susie Yonezawa. For a detailed report, see Beyond
the Technicalities of School Reform: Policy Lessons from Detracking Schools, by Jeannie
Oakes and Amy Stuart Wells (Los Angeles: UCLA Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies 1996).
MacIver uses the term double dose to describe strategies that provide low-achieving
students with extra time and instruction on the regular curriculum, rather than a separate
remedial curriculum. See Helping Students Who Fall Behind, by Douglas MacIver
(Baltimore Center for Research on Students Placed at Risk, Johns Hopkins University
1991).
Detracking for High Student Achievement / 6
Answer in your own words in English, unless otherwise indicated.
1.
Answer the question below in English.
How does the problem of tracking arise?
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
Discuss in English.
2.
The underlined statement in paragraph 4 could serve as an illustration of
confusing cause and effect; explain.
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
3.
In what sense could the steps taken by the above mentioned faculties –
paragraph 4 – be considered presumptuous? The answer could perhaps be
inferred and is a matter of opinion.
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
4.
Discuss the underlying assumptions of detracking and tracking.
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
5.
Describe the opposition to detracking encountered by the reformers.
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
6.
Suggest how detracking, if universally practised over a long period, could
threaten – paragraphs 23-24 – the very fabric of stratified societies.
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
Detracking for High Student Achievement / 7
Discuss
7.
The article would be a lot more convincing if the schools in question were
named and their experience analyzed.
Answer : ____________________________________________________________