OPINION: Tracking is an off-track approach to education
Kevin G. Welner is director of the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado. Carol Corbett Burris is the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre.
What a difference a decade makes. Ronnie and Tyrone both attended South Side High School in Rockville Centre. Both were raised in public housing. Both are African-American. Both entered high school with academic struggles.
Ronnie began ninth grade in 1991, when the school assigned struggling students to low-track classes, separate from more successful students. Placed in unchallenging and unengaging classrooms defined by low-academic expectations, Ronnie dropped out three years later.
Tyrone (like "Ronnie," this name is a pseudonym, but both are real students) entered the same school in 2002, after the school eliminated tracking in grades 9 and 10 and opened the gates to all its most challenging classes. He was placed in the same academically demanding classes as students from middle-class households. Each class was integrated - not only racially, but socioeconomically. The school responded to Tyrone's needs with support classes, and he also responded, passing International Baccalaureate courses and then going on to college.
Ronnie's story is replicated every day in struggling schools across the nation. In New York, 88 percent of all white and Asian-American students earn their Regents diplomas, while only 32 percent of African-American and Hispanic students do. Most of these schools continue to practice student tracking, placing struggling students on paths of near-certain failure and condemning them to low skills and little opportunity.
But a few schools, like South Side, have promoted the idea that all students can succeed. The results speak for themselves. Last June, 95 percent of South Side's minority students graduated with a Regents diploma, nearly three times the state rate. Thirty-four percent of the class of 2009 achieved the prestigious IB diploma.
Across the nation, school districts are scrambling for ideas to improve student achievement. Yet simply removing the obstacle of tracking and committing to challenging curriculum for all remains one of the best bets for delivering long-term school improvement.
In successfully detracked classrooms, all students learn a challenging, common curriculum. They deliver equitable opportunities, regardless of race, economic status, disability or previous academic achievement. They work to phase out curricular stratification while providing meaningful access to opportunities such as advanced placement and International Baccalaureate classes.
While they don't assume that all students will pursue college, they also don't presume to know which students will. So they decline to coddle the less motivated or less prepared students with low-track classes and watered-down curriculum.
By refusing to resort to tracking, educational leaders reject a path known to exacerbate existing disadvantages. They realize that when students who experience difficulty are provided an inferior curriculum, they are certain to fall farther behind. In contrast, high-quality detracked schools give all students access to the best curriculum and to an academic support system that helps ensure that they take advantage of it.
We are not arguing that this reform should be expected to overcome the harm caused by insufficient school resources or the ravages of poverty. But we do strongly believe that high-quality schooling opportunities, coupled with the effort of the student, can profoundly affect student success.
As virtually every school district in the country races to demonstrate its commitment to improvement, there is a great deal to be learned from South Side High and other schools that have eliminated tracking. In a time of sagging high school graduation numbers, and when far too many Ronnies are the result of inadequate schools, the Tyrones of the world show that we can move from idealistic intent to proven outcomes. If we are committed to truly improving our public schools, we need to put all students - regardless of race or socioeconomic status - on the same detracked path of opportunity. It is the only way we can truly race to the top.
