Creating Equitable High Schools: Strategies to Eliminate Tracking and Ability Grouping

A Forum — December 12, 2003

Forum Summary

Kevin Welner, author of Legal Rights, Local Wrongs: When Community Control Collides with Educational Equity, provided a general introduction to tracking. He described tracking as the practice of dividing students into groups for some or all of the school day based on perceived ability and then providing differentiated instruction to each group. Historically, tracking is grounded in the factory model of schooling, with efficiency as the primary goal. It is based in part on the belief in the possibility and desirability of scientifically assessing student mental capacity through standardized testing and sorting students into groups based on measured and perceived ability. Proponents believe differentiated instruction provides each group with access to a challenging curriculum. Ideally, a goal is to raise those in the lower track up so that they can catch up with their peers in the higher track. 

Despite the prevalence of the practice, however, no researcher could responsibly defend tracking as currently implemented, Welner argued. The practice and theory of tracking are commonly justified by the claim that it is possible to scientifically determine ability or talent. We know now that it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the exact nature of a student’s abilities and talents, according to Welner. However, even if we could do so, tracking as currently implemented cannot be justified. The tracks are rigid; any movement between tracks tends to be downward, and consequently, students in the lower tracks do not catch up to their peers in the higher tracks. “Early judgments of capacity tend to persist” and labels become fixed in students’ self-conception as well as the conceptions of their teachers. Parental influence also plays a role in a student’s track assignment. We know that tracks are highly correlated with students’ race and class, Welner said. Finally, students’ placement is influenced by teacher recommendations, which are based partly on students’ behavior: those who are well-behaved are placed in higher tracks than those who are not. For all of these reasons, tracking tends to perpetuate problems associated with issues related to racial discrimination and the denial of equal educational opportunity to those who are already disadvantaged. 

Nonetheless, tracking persists in our schools for a variety of reasons, said Welner. School personnel often are concerned that detracking would require more money for staff development and remedial instruction to help low-track students catch up with their peers – money that generally is in short supply. Teachers who teach in a tracked environment also resist change; many believe that schools can and do make valid distinctions between students’ ability levels. Some people fear detracking would expose those in the high track to disruptive students. Despite the high expectations for all students expressed in policies such as No Child Left Behind, many believe that some, but not other, students are college material. Consequently, they argue, we should acknowledge this reality and prepare members of each group for their likely future. 

In addition, there exist political reasons for tracking, according to Welner. Detracking involves a redistribution of resources, and many resist this. Detracking would mean that the best teachers, who are now assigned to the top tracks, might be reassigned to work with lower-achieving students. Some parents with students in the top tracks fear detracking would deny their own children a challenging curriculum. These parents would also be denied the symbolic reward of having a child in the top track. Further, people who support tracking are more likely to have their voices heard in the policy arena, despite the fact that “policymakers should be able to hear and respond to the educational interests of all children,” Welner asserted. Finally, he noted that some parents of children in the top track also buttress tracking by threatening to pull their children out of the public school.

Welner, a lawyer, ended his presentation with a discussion of some legal issues regarding tracking. He noted past challenges to tracking as a form of “second-generation” discrimination. That is, after courts forced school districts to desegregate school sites, schools used tracking to resegregate students within those sites. White students were placed in higher tracks; African-American and Latino students were placed in lower tracks. Welner pointed out that the Brown decision decreed “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal;” this applies to classrooms as well as schools. 

Opponents can also file complaints with the federal Office of Civil Rights, under to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires schools to provide justification for practices such as tracking that have a disparate, discriminatory impact on particular groups. Additionally, if a state’s laws require that all schools prepare students to achieve at certain levels and schools do not do this for certain groups of students, opponents of tracking can insist the law be enforced. Similarly, opponents of tracking can argue that if a state requires all students to achieve at certain levels, and some students (those in the higher tracks) have better opportunities to achieve than others (those in the lower tracks), some students are in effect denied equal protection of the law.

Welner closed his presentation with the observation that the simple elimination of tracking does not by itself result in equal educational opportunities. Schools must do more than redistribute students: redistribution must be supplemented by other changes in schools. Many of these changes were then discussed in the following presentations by the educators on the panel.

Tom Ledue, Assistant Principal at Noble High School, North Berwick, Maine, believes detracking is critical to our democracy. He and Nancy Freese, a teacher at Noble High School, spoke about the move to detrack at their school. Noble serves students from three towns in Maine; it is located in a rural community and its cost per pupil is below the national average. Many of the students come from poor families, and parental education levels are low. Despite these demographic challenges, efforts to detrack Noble High School and improve the educational outcomes for all students have been successful. 

Freese said the culture of the district helped make this possible. An astute principal used state funding to build a new school building that is designed to support team teaching; the school is divided into 15 learning communities, each with 80 to 100 students. The small size of these communities and an overall school culture of rigor, equity, high expectations, and personalization “have been key to the success of detracking at Noble.”

Ledue identified some additional factors essential to detracking, including an “enlightened” superintendent who decided to make a change in school leadership and a new principal “with uncommon vision and tenacity who believes that every single student has amazing potential.” This principal became an instructional leader and helped develop a core curriculum for all students. District and school leaders also held community awareness activities and spoke to parents with concerns about detracking, although in the end, some parents did decide to leave the school. Ultimately, however, student test scores improved significantly over time. School leaders have seen now that detracking and a commitment to equity can change more than the distribution of students in classrooms; it had a dramatic impact on teaching, the curriculum, and learning; in effect, it transformed the entire culture of the school.

Delia Garrity, Assistant Superintendent at Rockville Centre Free Union School District in New York state, spoke about the move to detrack in her district, which has very different demographics from those of Noble High School. Rockville is a suburban community with a student body of 3,500 students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds; 22 percent of the district’s students are ethnic minorities. Parents in the district have high expectations and generally have supported the move toward detracking. 

When she first arrived in the district, Garrity said, the schools were tracked. These tracks were clearly segregated along racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, and there were large achievement gaps across tracks. The segregation and achievement gaps visible in middle school persisted throughout students’ educational careers. “We saw that we were closing doors for some of our students,” said Garrity, “and we knew we had to level up and make the top curriculum available to all students.” However, dismantling the tracking system did not happen all at once. At first, the district changed to an open-door policy; if students wanted to take higher-level math courses, they were allowed to do so. This increased the number of students choosing a more rigorous curriculum. However, only those students whose parents were pushing them took advantage of this policy. School leaders realized that this curriculum needed to be provided to all students. 

Some subject areas have been easier to detrack than others. English was the easiest and mathematics has been the most difficult. Many in the district believed that some students just were not prepared for a more demanding curriculum in math. To prepare students to function successfully at a higher level, the district looked first at the curriculum in the years prior to high school and began to detrack there. At the eighth grade level, classes have been detracked, and all students now achieve at a level equivalent to the second year of high school. 

This year is the eighth year since students were leveled up in math. Every year more students have passed math in grades six through nine, and each year students’ mean and median scores on standardized tests have increased. Several things helped to make this increased level of achievement possible including the development of a compacted curriculum, teachers making a commitment to invest the necessary time, providing these teachers with additional planning time so they could make changes in the curriculum, giving students the academic supports necessary to succeed in detracked classrooms, and having a supportive group of parents in the district. 

Carol Burris, Principal at Southside High School in the Rockville Centre School District, described the detracking process that took place within her school. When she first entered the district, tracking had already begun to disappear. The rigorous curriculum of the International Baccalaureate program, which had been open only to those identified as gifted, was opened to all students who chose to participate. However, as Garrity observed, inequities continued as youth of color chose not to become involved. With the realization that this approach to detracking would not address the inequitable opportunities available to students, their school moved to eliminate tracking altogether and instead work toward raising all students to the highest track. They rewrote the science curriculum at the ninth-grade level and now all classes in the nith-grade are heterogeneously grouped. This year, social studies and 10th grade English were detracked, providing all students with the curriculum that previously had been available only to the high-track students. 

School leaders did receive some resistance to detracking in the community, particularly from parents; however, their administration was courageous and maintained the course. At the same time, they told parents that if practices associated with tracking prove not to work, they would be modified. Burris said that detracking has been successful overall because the staff believes that students can achieve to high standards, and they provide support for students who are struggling to achieve at those high levels. 

Participants noted that detracking has produced some very positive changes in their schools: in addition to increases in test scores and achievement, students who had been in the lower track now shine because they know they can achieve; teachers have improved their instructional methodology; and incidences of violence have gone down dramatically. Detracking has produced improvements in the community outside the school as well. Property values have risen as more people try to move into the district because of its excellent schools, and race relations have improved significantly now that students are in heterogeneous and diverse classes. 

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