Topic: Tracking Students

10-second review: What is the problem with “tracking” students? Tracked students achieve/behave according to the level of their track. We need to see them as individuals. We need to know and encourage their aspirations.

Source: R VanDeWaghe. English Journal (July 2005), 85-86. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Comment: Tracking works against students both ways, at the top and the bottom. Just because students are in the highest-tracked classes does not mean that they are all equally talented. We need, as the author said, to recognize them as individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses, as individual human beings. On the other hand, students who are tracked at the low end of the scale are treated by teachers as “dummies” and the teachers’ expectations and the students’ are just that—dummies. The lifeless curriculum and the discouraged attitude make sure that the students live up to their expectations. I have seen too many true-life examples of that.

Example: A teacher invited me in to see her teach grammar in a mixed group of fifth-grade students. She did a marvelous job. Her enthusiasm for what she was teaching was contagious. The students had a great deal of fun and they learned the grammar she was teaching very well. I stayed around to see her teach reading groups. She started with the bottom group. Her teaching turned from lively to lifeless. The best way to describe it was “wooden.” Her questions lacked any enthusiasm and the students almost fell asleep as she droned and they droned answers to questions about a basal story.

On the other hand. I have also had very talented teachers take on the problems of working with difficult students. I have seen some of the best stay with it for a year or two and then request not to continue. The students were achieving so little that the teachers became discouraged. There’s a problem here. Tracking is certainly not the solution. Tomorrow’s article deals with that problem. RayS.