Nina Svirsky's Critical Conversation Response #3

In answering the question of whether tracking should be eliminated in schools, it is less the definition of tracking (grouping students in classes by ability) but rather its execution that should be considered. Many advocates of tracking call upon the mantras of meritocracy, of fixed intelligence, of some kids just being smarter than others. However, in attempting to execute and perpetuate a system that keeps struggling kids in clearly alienated and often worse-quality classrooms, we've shut the doors of meritocratic opportunity on children who simply don't - and, as a result of tracking, will probably never get - the same educational opportunities. Every year, tracking makes possible the rounding up of millions of young children, as young as kindergarten or first grade level, to be told that they are simply not good enough. Not good enough to satisfy the convoluted expectations and measurements of intelligence required by public school curricula and DEFINITELY not good enough to ever get out of that class they were first placed in. Just like how underserved schools with high minority populations tend to receive less funding and more meager support from government and community, thus perpetuating those schools' underachievement, tracking minority kids to classrooms with less passionate teachers and no fellow students to engage and assist in the learning process perpetuates the failure of these kids as learners in schools and later, as members in society. Studies have shown that there truly is no detrimental effect on higher-achieving students when they are placed in a classroom with heterogenous composition, which is not to say that homogenous grouping within the classroom is not still a great and effective way to teach students. Obviously, progress by the lower-level students (comprised mostly of minorities who are behind due largely to systemic educational inequity and girls who tend to be more afraid of having a bigger voice in the classroom) tends to skyrocket, and as soon as educators and administrators see that this achievement gap is clearly a racial and gender issue, solutions can be sought.