Tracking
is a technology. You can't plug it in, but--like 3-ring binders, twelve grade
levels, and the agrarian calendar--tracking is an educational technology. A
device dreamed up for the purpose of making schooling more "efficient."  A tool.

And
just as a man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, school technologies
are often considered the "obvious" solution to every dilemma we face
in schools. Many of these durable cogs in the vast education machine date back
to the era when poor immigrants were flooding city schools at the same time the
industrial age promoted a technical approach to everyday tasks. Everything from
traffic management to measuring the intelligence of army recruits could be done
better through science--and many of these efficiencies were translated into
educational practice as the system expanded.

We
seem to have a national compulsion to sort, identify, select, test, standardize,
compare and compete in our schools. Intellectual growth, unfortunately, does
not automatically thrive via classification or homogeny. Human learning is neither
predictable nor controllable, and doesn't happen at a consistent rate. Students
respond in different ways to varying content, disciplines and instructional
models--not to mention different teachers and emotional states.  Lots of bad education policy has been created
by people who assume that uniformity is a great virtue. And even more bad
policy has been instituted by folks who believe that the way they learn best is
the way all people learn, or should learn.

And
so it is with tracking, the technological solution to the non-problem of having a roomful of learners
who don't know precisely the same things.

Here's
my worst experience with tracking, from the early 80s, when I was teaching one
section of 7th grade math. The 7th graders were divided, using reliable assessment
data from 6th grade state tests, into five tracks: Honors (which was Pre-Algebra),
Advanced, High/Low Basic, and Special Education. I taught Low Basic. Every 10
weeks, we gave a common assessment (from the math text) and moved kids from
track to track, based on their scores-- in theory, a system that would allow us
to continuously fine-tune our stratified instruction, and use the
"motivation" of quarterly opportunities to move up to higher tracks. Even
though students were not studying the same topics at exactly the same time, the
assumption was that since we were all following a sequenced curriculum, but
differentiating the pace and amount of practice, kids who mastered something in
September (or 6th grade) would still know it in January. That turned out to be
not true.

After
the first 10 weeks, 16 of my 30 students qualified to move up--two went all the
up to Honors--and I got 16 new kids who'd struck out in the higher tracks. With
every 10-week shuffle, I got dispirited kids whose math egos had taken a
beating, and had to convince them that they could indeed re-master ratios,
probability, negative integers or whatever had stopped them in their tracks.
Approximately a third of the kids got moved around every quarter. By the final
quarter, I had only 6 of my original kids (one of whom confessed that he
deliberately blew his quarterly move-up tests so he could stay with me).

It
was hard on my Basic kids, who felt that they'd been written off, early in the
game. But it was hardest on the kids who started out in Honors, then drifted
downward all year, ending up in Basic. Tracking did much more than impact egos
and the social system--it made a muddle of instruction. My Basic kids were
constantly saying "I already learned this"--even when their tests
indicated that they were clueless. In each of the four quarters, my group--scientifically
selected for uniformity-- had superstars and laggards. And students continued
to need different ways of learning critical content and skills.

There
are a number of education critics who believe that differentiating learning in
mixed-ability groups is not truly workable. I know that it is, because I've
done it, for decades. You start building equity by demanding excellence from
everyone, rather than trying to figure out who might not be "capable"
of excellence, or how to stretch achievement data over a curve rather than pushing
everyone as far and fast as possible. Everyone should get the good stuff--the
most rigorous content, their teachers' confidence that high levels of learning
are within reach for all. There are more insidious beliefs hidden by the
practice of tracking. But let's not go there--because that would be giving the
creaky obsolete technology of tracking more power and attention than it
deserves.