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Schools aren’t getting “A”s in equity
From home room to the lunch room, middle and high school students are segregated by intellectual ability, socioeconomic status, race, and gender. Masquerading as valid methods of differentiated instruction, tracking and ability grouping legalize discrimination and prejudice in the classroom. Ironically, the Great Equalizer is the largest producer of inequality in American society.
Tracking and ability grouping aim at preparing kids for the real world. Tracking separates students into classes best tailored to their jobs or education after graduation. Ability grouping is similar, allowing students to take classes they are best suited for, but no matter their career ambitions. Tracks and ability groups are usually formed based on recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors, and standardized test scores.
Middle and high schoolers who test or behave poorly are more likely to enter the lower tracks and ability groups. These qualifiers don’t account for differences in student learning which stem from socioeconomic status, gender, and race. In the public education system, being white, middle-class, and male equates to most likely to learn.
Stereotypes ensure that children are judged by their skin color, sex, and even the brand of clothing they are wearing before their individual capabilities. White middle class kids are disproportionately represented in the upper tracks, while minority races, mostly African Americans and Latinos, make up the majority of the lower ones. Asian Americans are more frequently placed in the upper tracks, proof that the model minority stereotype has not disappeared from American society.
Gifted children benefit the most from tracking and ability grouping; their teachers want to be there, the material is entertaining and challenging, and the pace of the course matches their ability. Students in gifted programs don’t get bored waiting for their classmates to catch up, or get distracted by disruptive students. However, accelerated learners don’t have to help the other students with their work as they would in inclusive classrooms. They don’t have to consider the needs of people who aren’t like them.
Though tracking has decreased since the mid 1980s, prejudice still exists in schools. Students opt to take honors or advanced placement classes to bulk up their resumes for college. Kids enrolled in BOCES, or other types of vocational programs, hardly see the rest of their classmates during the day. Because students are given few opportunities to interact with each other during classes, they are even less likely to after school. Some students are ashamed to admit they take vocational training classes; children acknowledge that their upper-track peers consider them intellectually inferior.
In Greg Michie’s book Holler if you Hear Me (1999), one of his middle school students, Armando, said he felt like he was “bad,” and that the other classes were “smarter” than his. Kids who feel like they aren’t learning, challenged enough, or valued are more likely not to participate, or exert effort in class. Students would rather not show up to class at all than get guff for going.
Not only do peers ridicule low-ability students, teachers admit that they feel inferior to colleagues who teach upper-level classes. Studies show that teachers’ encouraging attitudes positively affect student desire to learn. The opposite is also true; struggling students have less desire to learn from discontent teachers.
Education should not just be about getting good grades for the sake of admittance into an Ivy League university and the prospect of earning a six-figure salary. Students should want to learn because of the intrinsic hunger for knowledge. All kids start school wanting to learn, not having to be threatened or bribed to go to class; unsurprisingly, somewhere between the straight rows of desks, regents exams, and workbook exercises, a lot students stop trying. Sadly, not every teacher or parent is able or willing to help their children like learning again.
Every educational method has pros and cons, but tracking and ability grouping have more than their fair share. That’s why cooperative learning is practically perfect comparatively. Thanks to mixed-ability grouping, students are compelled to rely on themselves for the answers, not their teacher. Every student is challenged appropriately by the curriculum.
Proponents of tracking fear alternatives won’t as satisfactorily meet gifted students' needs. However, advanced students in cooperative classrooms say otherwise. Anne Wheelock’s Crossing the Tracks credits Amy Pelletier, a Mount Holyoke student, with saying, “It is in these groups where people realized and learned to respect everyone’s interests and talents…I can honestly say I don’t feel I was held back by any other student.”
Though cooperative learning is more likely to foster inclusion and acceptance of everyone in the classroom, teachers are still accountable for making every child welcome, valued, and excited about learning. No matter how rigid the structure of education, teachers have the power to make a difference in students’ lives through example and compassion.
For information on the No Child Left Behind Act’s policies toward tracking and ability grouping reform, visit Education World and Davidson Institute’s GT-CyberSource online.
Image found through Google image search, taken from http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/article/Children/Facts_No_Child_Left_Behind.
