Brookings Institution Brown Center on Education Policy Senior Fellow Tom Loveless unveiled an important development in American education in this past March, noting that "despite decades of vehement criticism and mountains of documents urging schools to abandon their use [of tracking,] it persists-and for the past decade or so, has thrived." Tracking distinguishes students on the basis of academic ability, assigning each student to a level of instructional rigor. Yet, should Americans turn their back on this criticism of ability-based grouping?

The Schott Foundation for Public Education noted in a 2009 study that the poorest neighborhoods of Harlem, the South Bronx and central Brooklyn, N.Y. languish with inexperienced teachers and limited resources in a lower track. Meanwhile, wealthier schools found in the Upper East Side and northeastern Queens thrive with highly educated instructors and ample funding. Doesn't the existence of these two tracks seem fundamentally unjust? It is commendable for us to reinforce the potential of our high-achieving students-but in the process, we leave a whole cohort of racial and socioeconomic minorities with high potential in the dust. Tracking both within and between schools, leaves minorities to toil in a vicious cycle of limited academic achievement, reduced self-esteem and racial inequity.

There are those who will be quick to assert the utility of tracking-after all, it ensures that our high-achieving students do not have to adapt to the slower learning pace of others in the classroom. It allows for our nation to race ahead of countries that have now leapfrogged us in recorded levels of achievement in mathematics, science and critical reading. Yet, the majority of those high-achieving students are white and middle-class. How about black, Latino or Native American students? Sociologist Nora Hyland argues in a 2007 piece in Theory into Practice that "low-track classes tend to be primarily composed of low-income students, usually minorities, while upper-track classes are usually dominated by students from socioeconomically successful groups." Therefore, when standardized testing arrived as a means to "track" students into high schools with differing performance levels, the racial and ethnic minorities did not have the necessary instruction to perform well. These students should receive the abundant resources of the high-achieving institutions, but instead, they are left to their own devices.

This is where we see defeatism, resistance to academics and a turn toward self-destructive activities. Tony Samara of George Mason University conducted a study in 2007 that arrived to the conclusion that the majority of students noted "how disconcerting it is that these tracks are racially identifiable." Joanne Yatvin, past president of the National Council of Teachers of English, summed it up best in a Washington Post article from this past June, asserting that, "in the end, low-level classes can be a self-fulfilling prophecy... kids say "Everybody thinks I'm dumb. I'll show them just how dumb I can be!" If the alarm bells haven't sounded already, they should now. Our national discourse is predicated on expanded educational access through affirmative action, cultural pluralism and racial equality. Yet, if anything, we're backtracking from a diverse, multicultural learning environment.

The best means, then, to move ahead is to reintegrate, establishing a heterogeneous learning environment for all. School districts can pool their resources into one cooperative school, providing the necessary framework for students who need personalized, individualized instruction. Robert Slavin, professor of education at Johns Hopkins University, thus asserted in a landmark 1992 study that this model "stresses the building of team scores by mutual cooperation ... and sharing of responsibility for one another's learning." Formerly unprepared teachers can then be properly trained to interact with, as well as instruct, children who have disparate educational abilities. Students formerly relegated to the "lower track" would have equal access to the same instructional and online resources that facilitate success. This inclusiveness, then, has the potential to empower these students to transcend the self-perpetuating cycle of racial inferiority and self-destructive behavior.

Delia Garrity, in her 2004 text "Detracking with Vigilance," studied the outcome of such de-tracking efforts in the Rockville, N.Y. school district. The results spoke for themselves. Garrity noted how "three years after homogeneous grouping was eliminated, the percentage of low-income students who earned a Regents diploma increased from 22 percent to 71 percent." Yes, that is a 49 percent jump in graduation rate in just three years.

We see the great potential when every child-regardless of race or economic standing-is entitled to the opportunity of an equal education.

It is up to us to silence the alarm for these tracked school districts, and also, halt our descent back into racial inequity. How do we get the majority of our students-and our nation-back on the right track? We de-track.
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