Mr. Seemy has just returned from a teacher conference during which teachers discussed the pros and cons of academic tracking. He’s interested to hear what his students think about the idea.

“I wish our school used academic tracking,” sighs Candice. “Different students are good at different things. Separate tracks would make things easier for everyone!”

“Maybe,” says Rohan, “but tracking policies can involve some unintended negative results. I read online about a famous study done in 1964 by a professor named Robert Rosenthal. He told some elementary school teachers that a special new test had shown that certain students were probably about to make huge academic advances. In reality, Rosenthal had chosen the students at random. But at the end of the school year, those students really had done better than their classmates, because of the high expectations of their teachers. And other studies have shown that teacher expectations are an important component of student achievement.”

“I doubt that,” says Candice. “I can’t see how a teacher’s expectations would affect a student’s aptitude.”

“I can,” says Warren. “Here, let’s do a little informal experiment. I’m going to draw two short comic strips. Both show a student and a teacher on the first day of school. I am going to ask people which cartoon shows a teacher with high expectations and see which one they pick.”

In which comic do you think the teacher expects the student to do poorly?

Why did you make the choice you did about which comic shows which scenario? Do your classmates see these comics the same way?

Discussion Question:

How do you think scenarios like these, repeated many times over the course of a school year, might affect the student?