Talking Points #6

Jeannie Oakes: "Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route"

Premise:

~ schooling
~ teachers
~ students
~ tracking
~ difference
~ alternatives
~ consequence
~ ability
~ opportunity
~ class
~ low-ability
~ combination
~ curriculum
~ learning
~ capability
~ change

Argument

Oakes argues that children placed in low-ability or high-ability groups in elementary school tend to remain in those groups throughout high school. She believes that the students shouldn't be labelled so early on and that all students should be brought together at one point in time.

Evidence

1. "Typically, low-track high school students have been in low-ability groups and remedial programs since elementary school. The gap between them and more successful students has grown wider - no only in achievement but in attitudes toward school and toward their own ability to succeed. By the time students reach secondary school, track-related achievement and attitude differences are often well established." (181)

2. "Students who are placed in high-ability groups have access to far richer schooling experiences than other students." (178)

3. "If students of all abilities are to benefit from being taught together, classrooms will probably need to be organized far differently, providing a diversity of tasks and interactions with few 'public' comparisons of students' ability." (181)

4. "Students who need more time to learn appear to get less; those who have the most difficulty learning seem to have fewer of the best teachers." (179)

Other Stuff:

I'm not too sure what I think of this article. I liked it because I never realized the idea of tracking before. If I got Oakes' argument correct, then I agree and disagree with it. I agree with the second part of the argument because i think that combining all students is the fair thing to do. I also agree with the first part of the argument but I don't think it is for the best. I agree with how the children are separated and diagnosed at a very young age, but I don't understand why they have to be kept like that throughout their 12-year school career. Children learn and will get better and being placed into a low- or high-ability group is not right because they are way too young to even know how they think or learn. I had a little bit of a hard time finding Oakes' argument but once i got a hold of it, getting the points of evidence wasn't that difficult at all. I'm curious as to what everyone in our class has to say about the idea of "tracking".