Should tracking be eliminated?

No. Tracking is important to ensure that each student has an equal opportunity to learn. Tracking's main goal should be that students who are in the standard track are provided resources to ensure that they fully understand the material while students that are in the advanced track are provided resources that can challenge them. The problem with tracking is that assumptions are made based on the appearance of the student, it has been shown that students who are minorities are largely put into the standard track whether they have been doing well in school or not. Another problem with tracking is that not enough resources are funneled into the standard tracks, most of the funding going to advanced tracks. This may be because people view advanced tracks as more promising. Therefore, tracking itself is not a bad idea nor should it be eliminated. Instead, schools should focus on having tracking be based off of performance and funding should be equal for both tracks. Speaking from a personal experience, I believe tracking is very important. I have been in a regents class before where I constantly felt held back by students who didn't show they cared for the class nor that they wished to learn at all and it was because of this that I felt I had to learn at a slower rate and repeat subjects because another student didn't understand it. From this I learned to try and be understanding of the fact that students learn at different rates which is what I believe tracking does.