My Opinion on Academic Tracking

        I believe that academic tracking, as it is currently implemented in most of our nation's schools, should be eliminated - it harms the self-esteem of students in lower groups, perpetuates socioeconomic and racial inequities, and provides no proven benefits for most of the students involved.  However, I do not believe that the act of splitting students up into groups based on demonstrated ability is wrong in and of itself. I take issue with the way that we currently track students, the tests by which we determine students' ability levels, and the stigmas that have become attached to different levels.

        It is much easier for schools to split up students by ability level - teachers are simply better at lecturing and teaching one subject at a time to similarly "talented" students. However, in order to determine tracks, schools give out tests that measure students' prior experiences or knowledge rather than their learning potential, work ethic, or intellectual curiosity. In elementary school, I believe that it is usually too early to tell which students possess talents in certain subjects - each student comes into the kindergarten classroom with diverse home situations. Some students may have learned to read and add from their parents, while others may have never seen books or they may not know how to hold a pencil. Teachers must do everything possible to take students' prior experiences into consideration. If they split up students by 'ability level' on the first day, they will get a skewed, biased image of the students' talents that continually leaves minorities and girls by the wayside. Putting students in lower groups damages their confidence and stifles their potential to achieve more.

       Instead of grouping students into distinct, rigid groups in elementary school and middle students, we should hire effective, well-trained teachers who are able to maintain a classroom of diverse students - they could organize the students into groups, yet these groups would be fluid and would thus not have the same stigma attached. The groups would categorize students by different learning styles, and students could collaborate with the teacher to decide their group. This would allow every student to achieve his or her potential. In high school, students should have more freedom to take the classes that appear more interesting to them. Naturally, students would pick subjects that they are more 'talented' at - however, this system would allow them to take more initiative in their own education and find more pleasure in learning.

      In order to implement these practices, we must invest much more money into our education system at all levels, to hire more well-trained and effective teachers. We would also need to reform our ideas of 'intelligence.' We need to focus more on 'input' (the tools that we are giving children to succeed) than 'output' (quantitative data like test scores). However, unless we make a conscious effort to change our current system, we will not give every child a fair chance to succeed, and we will thus be actively sustaining the current socioeconomic and racial orders.