Talking Points #6 on Oakes "Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route"

Premise:
This article is about...

• Ability grouping
• Tracking
• Educational matters
• Stereotyping students
• Learning opportunities
• High and low ability students
• Tracking alternatives
• Different types of curriculum's
• Classroom environments
• Teaching habits
• Student evaluations

Authors Argument:
Oakes argues that students need to be taught better by using better practices other than "Tracking." By tracking students, it provides them with fewer learning opportunities due to the fact that the teachers focus only on students who are more advanced or less advanced then others instead of providing them with the same treatment. Oakes suggests that we should come up with alternatives to tracking to benefit every student.

Evidence:

1. On one side of the issue, many educators and parents assert that when schools group by ability, teachers are better able to target individual needs and students will learn more...On the other side, growing numbers of school professionals and parents oppose tracking because they believe it locks most students into classes where they are stereotyped as "less able," and where they have fewer opportunities to learn.
2. One fact about tracking is unequivocal: tracking leads to substantial differences in the day-to-day learning experiences students have at school. Moreover, the nature of these differences suggests that students who are placed in high-ability groups have success to far richer schooling experiences than other students.
3. In classrooms where the curriculum consists of a sequence of topics and skills that require prerequisite knowledge and skill master, mixing students who have different skills is difficult. Students do differ from one another, and the most striking differences among them might be in the speed at which they master sequentially presented skills. Unless students are similar in learning "speed," such a curriculum raises horrendous problems of pacing. Some students are ready to race ahead, but others lag behind. Enrichment for the quicker students often becomes make-work; reteaching becomes a chore; being retaught can be humiliating for the slower students.

Questions/Comments/Points to Share:
I think that this article makes a good point about how schools should come up with alternatives for "Tracking." When i was in elementary school and high school, I was considered to be of the normal student who got mostly A's and B's, along with a C or two here and there. I was not of the high or low ability students. I was eligible to take college prep classes but yet was not eligible to take honors classes with most of my friends due to the fact that my GPA was not at the level it needed to be until towards the end of my junior year of high school. When I was finally able to take a college course and receive the credits for it, I noticed a major change in the way the teacher taught the materials and they way she treated us in the classroom. The teacher treated us more maturely then those of my other classes all because we were in a college classroom setting. Which to me did not seem right because it was not right for the teachers to treat the students differently. I agree that teachers should not use the practice of "Tracking" only because it can make some students feel out of place and not as equal as the rest of their other classmates.