21 Jul 2005 - 01:20

Tom Loveless on tracking

Loveless' survey of the research on tracking is interesting, especially given the philosophical opposition to all tracking that seems to be part of constructivist pedagogy:

Slavin’s support largely resting on the benefits uncovered for grouping in mathematics in the upper grades of elementary school.

I'm confused by the phrase upper grades of elementary school.

Does this mean 4th and 5th grade?

Or is middle school considered technically part of elementary school?


Here in Irvington, de-tracking students was part and parcel of bringing in TRAILBLAZERS.

Differentiated instruction is the buzz word.

tracking good for talented students?

Kulik finds that tailoring course content to ability level yields a consistently positive effect on the achievement of high ability students. Academic enrichment programs produce significant gains. Accelerated programs, where students tackle the curriculum of later grades, produce the largest gains of all. Accelerated gifted students dramatically outperform similar students in non-accelerated classes. Slavin omits studies of these programs from his analysis. He argues that the gains, though large, may be an artifact of the programs’ selection procedures, that schools admit the best students into these programs and reject the rest, thereby biasing the results.38

Three things are striking about the Slavin- Kulik debate. First, the disagreement hinges on whether tracking is neutral or beneficial. Neither researcher claims to have evidence that tracking harms achievement, of students generally or of students in any single track. Second, accepting Slavin or Kulik’s position on between-class grouping depends on whether one accepts as legitimate the studies of academically enriched and accelerated programs. Including these studies leads Kulik to the conclusion that tracking promotes achievement. Omitting them leads Slavin to the conclusion that tracking is a non-factor.

Third, in terms of policy, Slavin and Kulik are more sharply opposed on the tracking issue than their other points of agreement would imply. Slavin states that he is philosophically opposed to tracking, regarding it as inegalitarian and anti-democratic. Unless schools can demonstrate that tracking helps someone, Slavin reasons, they should quit using it. Kulik’s position is that since tracking benefits high achieving students and harms no one, its abolition would be a mistake.

So....just a few short paragraphs ago, Loveless has told us that inconclusive findings have to be interpreted with caution.

Is this finding of 'no harm done' a positive finding?

Or is it an inconclusive finding?

And why aren't we told?

we need editors!

Now that I'm reading think-tank & NRC pubications, I have a Firm View on the question of book editors.

Every book needs one.

I don't care how smart the author is.

talented kids need accelerated classes

High School and Beyond (HSB) is a study that began with tenth graders in 1980. The National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) started with eighth graders in 1988. These two studies followed tens of thousands of students through school, recording their academic achievement, courses taken, and attitudes toward school. The students’ transcripts were analyzed, and their teachers and parents were interviewed. The two massive databases have sustained a steady stream of research on tracking.

Three findings stand out. High track students in HSB learn more than low track students, even with prior achievement and other pertinent influences on achievement statistically controlled. Not surprising, perhaps, but what’s staggering is the magnitude of the difference. On average, the high track advantage outweighs even the achievement difference between the student who stays in school until the senior year and the student who drops out.40

I say again: think tanks need editors.

I believe what he is saying here is that the gap between the high & low track student in the HSB study was larger than the track between high school graduates and high school drop-outs.

it figures

African-American students enjoy a 10% advantage over white students in being assigned to the high track. This contradicts the charge that tracking is racist. Considered in tandem with the high track advantage just described, it also suggests that abolishing high tracks would disproportionately penalize African-American students, especially high achieving African-American students.

A worthy mission for the fuzzies, de-tracking the whole entire country.

Thanks, guys.

tracking & the achievement gap

Moreover, NELS shows that achievement differences between African-American and white students are fully formed by the end of eighth grade. The race gap reaches its widest point right after elmentary and middle school, when students have experienced ability grouping in its mildest forms. The gap remains unchanged in high school, when tracking between classes is most pronounced.41

Sophie's choice

Third, NELS identifies apparent risks in detracking. Low-achieving students seem to learn more in heterogeneous math classes, while high and average achieving students suffer achievement losses—and their combined losses outweigh the low achievers’ gains. In terms of specific courses, eighth graders of all ability levels learn more when they take algebra in tracked classes rather than heterogeneously grouped classes. For survey courses in eighth grade math, heterogeneous classes are better for low achieving students than tracked classes.42

These last findings are important because we don’t know very much about academic achievement in heterogeneous classes. When the campaign against tracking picked up steam in the late 1980s, tracking was essentially universal. Untracked schools didn’t exist in sufficient numbers to evaluate whether abandoning tracking for a full regimen of mixed ability classes actually works. The NELS studies that attempt to evaluate detracked classes, which thus far have been restricted to mathematics, point toward a possible gain for low achieving students and a possible loss for average and above average students, but these findings should be regarded as tentative.43

grouping versus tracking?

The elementary school practices of both within-class and cross-grade ability grouping are supported by research. The tracking research is more ambiguous but not without a few concrete findings.

Will somebody please get the Fordham Foundation an editorial staff?

What is grouping?

What is tracking?

Why aren't these terms defined?

OK, I'm assuming 'grouping' means grouping kids according to ability within the same class, as Christopher's school does for reading.

I'm assuming 'tracking' means creating separate classrooms with separate teachers for kids of differing ability.

Singapore vs U.S.

Assigning students to separate classes by ability and providing them with the same curriculum has no effect on achievement, positive or negative, and the neutral effect holds for high ,middle, and low achievers. When the curriculum is altered, tracking appears to benefit high ability students.

This is exactly what happens in Singpoare--separate classes, same curriculum--but in Singapore this practice has a large positive effect.

race & income

When it comes to race, the disparities are real, but, as just noted, they vanish when students’ prior achievement is considered. A small class effect remains, however. Students from poor families are more likely to be assigned to low tracks than wealthier students with identical achievement scores. This could be due to class discrimination, different amounts of parental influence on track assignments, or other unmeasured factors.44

what do black parents say?

A study conducted by the Public Agenda Foundation found that "opposition to heterogeneous grouping is as strong among African-American parents as among white parents, and support for it is generally weak."45 If tracking harmed African-American students, one would not expect these sentiments.

choose your poison

The public labeling of low track students may cause embarrassment, but the public display of academic deficiencies undoubtedly has a similar effect in heterogeneous classrooms. There, a low ability student’s performance is compared daily to that of high-achieving classmates.46

At our school the tracking-obsession among the kids is brutal. There's a huge amount of taunting; at least, there has been when I've been around. 'I'm a 4!' 'You're a 2!'

Yuck.

jumped the track

A study of transcripts from five Maryland high schools showed 59.9% of students changed math levels during their high school careers, 65.4% in science. A national survey of high school principals reports substantial movement among tracks, especially upward (see Table 7). But an analysis of NELS data found that only 16.5% of students who were in low-ability classes in 8th grade went on to take either geometry or Algebra II by 10th grade (in comparison to 81.0% of 8th graders in high-ability classes).

Which reminds me, I've been meaning to post the strange goings-on with Phase 3 & Phase 4 this spring.....

you don't say

Without a push, a lot of students remain in low tracks who are capable of moving up.

Singapore vs. U.S. redux

It appears that high tracks are taught by better qualified teachers, however, in the sense of having teachers more schooled in content know-ledge.48 High school principals are inclined to assign teachers who know advanced subject matter to teach advanced subjects.

Another glaring difference.... (more on this another day).

Catholic schools

Reba Page’s 1991 study, Lower Track Classrooms, painstakingly reports on the daily activities of eight low track classes, documenting how they often function as caricatures of high tracks, how teachers and students in low tracks make deals to not push each other too hard so that they can cope with their environment. Low tracks may be used as holding tanks for a school’s most severe behavior problems. Even under the best of conditions, low tracks are difficult classrooms.

Intellectually stimulating low track classrooms do exist, however, and researchers have found the most productive of them in Catholic schools. Margaret Camarena and Adam Gamoran have described low track classrooms where good teaching, lively discussions, and ample learning take place. In 1990, Linda Valli published her study of a heavily tracked Catholic high school in an urban community. The school’s course designations publicly proclaimed each student’s track level. Textbooks and instruction were adapted for each track. Yet Valli discovered that "a curriculum of effort" permeated the entire school, even the lowest tracks. The school culture centered around academic progress, and the tracking system was but another facet of the school that served this aim. Students of all abilities were aggressively pushed to learn as much as they could. Every year, low track students were boosted up a level. By the senior year, the lowest track no longer existed. A judicious tracking system teaches low track students what they need to know and moves them out of the low track as quickly as possible.51

I hate like the dickens seeing Catholic schools go out of business.

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