Tracking, phasing or streaming refers to grouping students by academic ability for all subjects or certain classes and curriculum within a school. Track assignment is typically based on academic ability, such as test scores, but other factors often influence placement.
In a tracking system, the entire school population is assigned to classes according to whether the students' overall achievement is above average, normal, or below average. Students attend academic classes only with students whose overall academic achievement is the same as their own. Tracking remains a controversial practise due to the positive and negative effects for advantaged and disadvantaged learners respectively, and some schools have lead efforts to detrack their curricula.
Tracking generally applies to comprehensive schools, while selective school systems assign the students to different schools. Students with special educational needs may be tracked into a self-contained classroom or a separate special school, rather than being included in a mixed-ability class.
Contrasted with temporary ability grouping Ability grouping is not synonymous with tracking.Slavin, R. E. (1987). Ability grouping: A best-evidence synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 57, 293–336. Tracking differs from ability grouping by scale and permanence. Ability groups are small, informal groups formed within a single classroom. Assignment to an ability group is often short-term (never lasting longer than one school year), and varies by subject. Assignment to an ability group is made by (and can be changed at any time by) the individual teacher, and is usually not recorded in student records. For example, a teacher may divide a typical mixed-ability classroom into three ability groups for a mathematics lesson: those who need to review basic facts before proceeding, those who are ready to learn new material, and those who need a challenging assignment. For the next lesson, the teacher may revert to whole-class, mixed-ability instruction, or may assign students to different ability groups.
History in the United States
Background Tracking and its various modifications are among the predominant organizing practices of American public schools, and have been an accepted feature of the country's schools for nearly a century.Rubin, B. (2008). Detracking in Context: How Local Constructions of Ability Complicate Equity-Geared Reform. Teachers College Record. Retrieved from:
Coming into use at a time when schools were enrolling growing numbers of immigrant children as the result of compulsory schooling laws, tracking was adopted as a means of sorting those children viewed as having limited preparation or capacity for schooling from native children. Unfortunately, however, tracking quickly took on the appearance of internal segregation.Wheelock, A. (1992). Crossing the tracks: How "untracking" can save America's schools. New York: New Press.
The types of tracks have changed over the years. Traditionally, there were academic, general, and vocational tracks, identified by the kind of preparation they provide. By the 1920s, some schools had developed up to eight distinctly labeled tracks that represented particular curricular programs that reflected an assessment of students’ probable social and vocational futures.
Many secondary schools now base track levels on course difficulty, with tracks such as basic, honors, or college-prep. Public schools might track in terms of high, average, or lower ability. As noted by Oakes and Martin, "school policies determine three structural qualities of the tracking system: extensiveness (the number of subjects tracked and the type of distinct curricula offered); specificity (the number of track levels offered); and flexibility (whether students move from one track to another)".Oakes, Jeannie and Lipton Martin. "Tracking and Ability Grouping: A structural Barrier to Access and Achievement." Goodlad, John I. and Pamela Keating."Access to Knowledge." New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1994. 187–204
Origins of race-based tracking in school desegregation The origins of race-based tracking reach as far back as the federal court ruling in Roberts v. The City of Boston in 1850, a case that upheld separate school curricula for blacks and whites on the belief in inherent racial differences in intelligence. With the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court ruling of 1954, which determined that the separate school statute established by Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional, the stage was set to address between-school segregation/tracking. However, for schools in most southern regions of the United States, integration did not occur until the early 1970s. Moreover, desegregation at the school level often led to pronounced tracking within schools, as Grant ( 1988) chronicled in The World We Created at Hamilton High. Haney's (1978) historical analysis at the secondary school level found that less qualified teachers were assigned to teach racially tracked classes.
During the mid- to late-1980s, federal court cases in Mississippi and Georgia took up the question of unfair race-based tracking in school systems. However, Quarles v. Oxford Municipal Separate School District, NAACP v. Georgia, and Montgomery v. Starkville Municipal Separate School District each ruled in favor of school districts based on the argument that tracking was being properly utilized for the purpose of assisting students’ ability to learn—in spite of statistical imbalances in track assignment.
In Mickelson's (2003) detailed study of between and within school tracking/segregation in Charlotte North Carolina, she argued that tracking was used as a tool to maintain white privilege by placing African-American students in lower academic tracks. Other studies by Lewis and Diamond (2015), Kelly (2009), Riegle-Crumb, Kyte, and Morton (2018), Schuhrer, Carbonaro, & Grodsky (2016), and others continue to show large disparities in course taking among whites and minorities.Riegle-Crumb C., Kyte, S.B., & Morton, K. (2018). Gender and Racial/Ethnic Differences in Educational Outcomes: Examining Patterns, Explanations, and New Directions for Research. In Schneider B. (ed.) Handbook of the Sociology of Education in the 21st Century. Springer.Schührer, S., Carbonaro, W., & Eric Grodsky. (2016). Reproduction of Inequality in Educational Attainment through Curricular Differentiation in Secondary School: A Case Study of the U.S. In Blossfeld, H. P., Buchholz, A., Skopek, S., & Triventi, M. (Eds.) Models of Secondary Education and Social Inequality-An International Comparison. Edward Elgar. The baseline chances of being in the high track are often twice as high for whites as for disadvantaged minorities.
Track assignment The ways by which students are assigned to tracks differs both between and within schools. Today, it is less common for schools to rigidly track students in all subjects. Administrators and teachers in a given school may purposefully avoid using the term “tracking” to describe the organization of their school's curriculum. Yet, schools maintain a variety of policies that sort students into different programs of study including: test scores and grade requirements, pre- and co-requisite requirements, and teacher recommendations. Schools also use over-arching programs of study such as “college prep” as a guidance technique to track students. Non-academic factors such as schedule conflicts can limit students from taking courses of varying level as well. Thus, while most systems allow for some amount of student and parent choice, this choice is constrained by course taking requirements and guidance policies. Within the context of this system, researchers disagree over the extent to which highly involved parents intervene to give their own student a course taking advantage.
Historically, high school students were sorted into “business/vocational,” “general,” or the “college” track, which had profound implications for the nature and extent of academic course taking. In more recent decades, vocational course taking has declined, while academic course taking has increased. For example, Domina and Saldana (2012) report that the graduating class of 1982 took an average of 14.6 academic courses while the class of 2004 took 19.1 academic courses. Likewise, the percentage of students graduating with pre-calculus or calculus coursework increased from about 10.3% of students to 32.9% of students. This increase in academic course taking, especially in the public sector, has narrowed the differences in academic rigor between high- and low-track students somewhat. Academic intensification has also reduced differences in the academic experiences of public vs. private school students.
Despite some loosening of high school tracking systems, most schools remain highly differentiated, with policies that encourage students to take the same level of coursework in different subjects. In a study of high school tracking policies in North Carolina, Kelly and Price (2011) report that the typical school had five or more levels of mathematics, with some schools having three or more levels of Geometry alone. Larger schools and schools with a greater diversity of student achievement level have more extensive tracking systems than smaller, homogenous schools. In many schools the track assignment process remains a high stakes decision.
Debate
Advantages Proponents of tracking say that tracking has several important strengths.
Lessons meeting the ability level of students A major advantage of tracking is that it allows teachers to better direct lessons toward the specific ability level of the students in each class. While tracking for regular instruction makes no real difference in scholastic achievement for low and average ability students, it does produce substantial gains for gifted students in tracks specially designed for the gifted and talented.Rogers, Karen B, Ph.D., The Relationship of Grouping Practices to the Education of the Gifted and Talented Learner, (The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, 1991) p. x.
Tracking meets the need for highly gifted students to be with their intellectual peers in order to be appropriately challenged and to view their own abilities more realistically. Tracking can allow students to receive lessons targeted at their ability for each subject separately, attending lessons set at different levels at the same school. For example, a student at a higher level in math may attend a class with advanced math students, but if at a lower level in English they may be grouped with peers at their level in English.
Another positive aspect of tracking is that since it separates students by ability, students' work is only compared to that of similar-ability peers, preventing a possible lowering of their self-esteem that could result from comparisons with the work of higher ability students, or inflating the egos of the high-ability students when compared to low-ability, same-age students. Being with students of similar ability could allow students to realistically compete against one another for the highest marks with a reasonable chance of reaching the top of a class.
Higher achievement of high-ability students Supporters of tracking also note that it allows for higher achievement of high-ability students. Kulik and Kulik (1992) found that high-ability students in tracked classes achieved more highly than similar-ability students in non-tracked classes. Similarly, Rogers (1991) recommends that gifted and talented students spend the majority of their school day with ability peers.Rogers, The Relationship..."