Talking Points #6

“Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route” by Jeannie Oakes


This article is about…

Education
Tracking
High-level students
Low-level students
Unspecial students
Change
Separation
Learning
Enthusiastic/Unenthusiastic
Richer environment
Equality
Parents
Teachers
Administration


Author’s Argument:

Jeannie Oakes argues that the tracking system in schools needs to be taken out and replaced with a more beneficial system that will affect all students equally in order to help all students be successful.

“Students who are placed in high-quality groups have access to far richer experiences than other students.” pg 179

“Alternative strategies, while not simple to implement, promise to help schools reach their goal of providing high-quality, relevant education to all students.” pg 179

“If students of all abilities are to benefit from being taught together, classrooms will probably need to be organized far differently, providing a diversity of tasks and interactions with few “public” comparisons of students’ ability.” pg 181


When I was younger I had a reading problem, which required me to have extra help in reading, writing and comprehension. I think that if I had to completely go into a lower level class because of that I wouldn’t have been able to succeed. I don’t really like to talk about how hard school is for me and about everything that I had to do in order to be where I am today, but I am at the stage in my life where I feel it is okay to talk about my learning troubles and not be judged about it because I am in college. In elementary school I think because I was in a mainstream classroom I was able to improve my learning ability and the speed at which I learn because I had no other choice. But I also was able to learn from my peers by watching how they would approach a problem and how they learned. It made me work even harder because I wanted to be able to help some of my classmates the way they helped me. Maybe I am just naïve, but I feel like tracking didn’t occur as much in my elementary school. I was given the extra help and support when I needed it, but people weren’t put in separate classes in elementary school because of their learning levels, I see this occurring more in middle and high schools. It started in the eighth grade when you could take algebra or just regular math, then in high school with college prep classes or honors classes. I eventually made it to the honors classes, but it took a lot of hard work.

I think that the main thing that teachers have to do is know that every student does not learn the same way, and because of that they must teach each individual student and not the class as a whole. In order for every student to benefit the teacher must learn not to compare the learning speed of one child with the learning speed of another child because we are all different. If it comes down to teachers taking a different approach to a certain unit in order to help and benefit each individual better then that is what the teacher should do. If we are to separate the high-quality students from the low-quality students and teach them differently then we will have less successful students. Then if you have a separate category that has the “unspecial” students, or the average students, then they will not have the confidence in themselves to succeed because people consider them to be “unspecial.” Some of those average students grow up to be millionaires because they have different strengths, and that is because every student is different. Tracking need to be a thing of the past because what really matter is each individual student.