Article Summary

"Making Sense of the Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate"

Loveless, T., & Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, W. D. (1998). The Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate. Volume 2, Number 8. Retrieved from http://proxy-remote.galib.uga.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED422454&site=eds-live

What is Tracking and Ability Grouping? Should these techniques change?

Tracking is the grouping of students between classes based on prior learning, so more advanced students take on more advanced classes.
Ability Grouping is the grouping of students within classes, which looks like a language arts class having a red group for advanced readers and a blue group for more challenged readers.
Tom Loveless presents the debate of tracking's effectiveness and the research behind it. The conclusions he draws from the study are:
- Schools should be granted autonomy for grouping policy and not policymakers due to principals and teachers proximity to the situation
- Tracked schools should focus on improvement in the areas of challenging low-track students and emphasizing academic progress
- Untracked schools must alleviate parents' fears that the lack of tracking serves a purpose outside of dubious social agenda (increase the research on untracked schools)

Evidence and Argument

Loveless' paper's evidence is found mostly in tables that surveyed teachers and principles on the flexibility of tracking or the participation of students in certain courses of varying levels
This is not the most detailed study with potential bias coming from each teacher or principle due to the incendiary nature of the topic of tracking and also some administrators may not have an entirely accurate sense of student participation in tracking, but the research is a sufficient indicator for the broad nature of this paper.
Loveless encourages the idea in this paper that tracking is much more complicated today than it once was, with greater flexibility in terms of tracks in secondary schools. For example, in the past there was primarily an upper, middle and lower track with little variety whereas at the time of this research and more so today individuals in school could be in an accelerated track for once subject, like math, while being in a remedial course for another.
Loveless seems to present tracking as less of a negative action in this piece, but acknowledges the racial and economic bias found in most tracking programs. He encourages further research on schools without tracking in order to promote the possible benefits of heterogenous classrooms in terms of capabilities.

My Thoughts

After reading Loveless' research paper, I find myself reviewing the opinions that I had on this heated debate. I used to vehemently despise tracking due to its apparently unfair nature and despite benefitting from it personally, I recognized that this system has flaws. I still recognize flaws in the system now, like the obvious educational self-esteem problems with students on lower tracks, but the flexibility of tracking programs must be highlighted and academic progress encouraged for tracked schools. I agree that research, especially randomly assigned experiments, must be done to see if not tracking creates benefits, mainly for those typically depreciated by tracking, but also that schools should have monitored autonomy on grouping and that teachers of lower tracks should be no less quality than those of advanced tracks in schools.

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