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       #Post#: 222--------------------------------------------------
       Tracking Wars
       By: forbitals Date: June 13, 2022, 7:07 pm
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       The Tracking Wars
       State Reform
       Meets School Policy
       Tom Loveless
       Brookings Institution Press 1998
       I was expecting that Tom Loveless would have been a parent of a
       child in the Gifted Program. It is usually they who are the most
       adamant about defending tracking. So I was expecting I would be
       reading the suburban real estate section of the news paper.
       But no, Loveless taught for 9 years in CA public schools. Then
       he went to U Chicago to do a doctorate. The work for this book
       started with his thesis.
       As Loveless explains, the Anti-Tracking Movement started in CA
       and MA, and a little bit in NV and MD. And it was mostly because
       of the Jeannie Oakes book, Keeping Track (1985), and also
       because of Annie Wheelock in MA.
       I talk about reading the Oakes book before.
       Other Loveless books?
       Yes, about Math scores.
       Loveless also invoked the work of this John Kingdon, to explain
       how untracking became such a political issue:
       Agendas, alternatives, and public policies / John W. Kingdon.
       (1995)
       Basically decades after Brown v Board we still have this racial
       achievement gap.
       And so there was a hunt for the cause and it looked like the
       cause was school tracking. This was mainly coming from Jeannie
       Oakes and her UCLA mentors.
       And yes, decades ago tracking was done by IQ tests and it was
       quite racially driven. But this is not the case today.
       And going back to the 19th century, organized labor originally
       opposed having vocational programs in high schools.
       By the 1890's though organized labor changed positions. They
       were strongly committed to having vocational programs in high
       schools, as they have remained ever since.
       They'd seen the rise private trade schools, and they did not
       want support siphoned away from the public schools. They say the
       public schools as the best opportunity for economic advancement
       for their own children.
       And this was before there we IQ tests!.
       Now, the efforts to remove tracking have only gone so far. In
       urban schools you have had the most untracking, and it is the
       remedial programs which have most likely gotten cut. Suburban
       schools still have the most tracking.
       The subjects most tracked, in order are:
       Math
       English
       History
       Science.
       And then English Dept's are quite receptive to untracking. It is
       Math where there is the most commitment to tracking.
       Even Oakes talks about this, when you untrack, what you often go
       to are cooperative learning enviroments, and these often involve
       team teaching and oversize classes.
       To me this sounds like stuff shown in the movies To Sir With
       Love and Black Board Jungle.
       If you want world class knowledge, even putting aside concerns
       about college, these types of exercises do not do it.
       And also I would say that the Gifted Movement is not supposed to
       mean a top track. The original idea was of some few students who
       really stand out. And then what is usually wanted are things
       like AP classes, grade acceleration, and early college entrance.
       AP is like a top track, but the other stuff is not.
       There was also this Middle School Movement. This was teachers
       who did not want jr high to be like high school. They wanted it
       to be more like elementary school. So they sent the 9th graders
       to high school, and then often they extended the lowest grade do
       to the 5th.
       They wanted it all untracked and they wanted generally qualified
       teachers, not narrow subject specialization.
       ANd then of the racial achievement gap, it got to an all time
       low in the late 80's.
       BUt then it started widening again. Is this untracking or school
       defunding or the rise of charter schools?
       Public schools are still the best for achieving equality and
       tracking, or at least ability grouping, is part of how this is
       accomplished.
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