Tracking Criticized
When was the last time Tom Loveless worked in a public high school? His protracking bias in "Will Tracking Reform Promote Social Equity?" (April 1999) was all too evident. He just doesn't get it. Tracking simply doesn't belong in the school reform movement.
First, students in tracked classes are not necessarily the best and the brightest. Often, they are the "good" students who have exemplary behavior, text study and memorization skills, and parental involvement.
Second, data assembled in the early 1980s to support Loveless's tracking sympathies hardly reflect today's volatile, technology-savvy, and multicultural student populations. When teachers believe that all students can learn and be successful, challenges abound in every classroom.
Third, once the "good" students are removed from the untracked classes, their test scores may remain constant or rise slightly. But the remaining students, having lost the role models, standard-bearers, and high achievers, show declining scores. The schoolwide effect is a significant drop in test scores.
Fourth, what does it say about a school if its value and reputation rest on the high achievements of a select few students? I certainly wouldn't want to teach there.
Detracking is not a mistake, as Loveless claims. Rather, it is an imperative. Further, there is no point in conducting rigorous research on tracking in schools that are not employing authentic teaching and assessment practices that meet the needs and talents of all students. Tracking is a self-indulgent cop-out that caters to the convenience of a few at the expense of the inconvenience of the many. I hope that the schools of the future will have neither the time nor the inclination to track. They will be too busy focusing on high achievement for all students.
—Judith A. Gray, Science teacher, Henry M. Jackson High School, Everett, Washington
Standards and Assessments
The focus on standards and assessments in the March Educational Leadership goes to the heart of what is confronting public education. When a school's standardized test scores are published, the principal must respond to the central office to explain the results and propose remedies, interpret the data in the reports that accompany the scores, reassure parents and students that teaching and learning are the top priorities of the school, and struggle to reconcile the mission of the school with the bottom line of the test results.
W. James Popham, in "Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality," gets to the core of what we do and do not learn from the results of standardized tests. Educators rarely speak up to say that these tests are not the only indicator of what is being taught and learned in school. The complicated two-tier system—district tests, such as the CAT or the Stanford-9, and state assessment tests—needs to be both simplified and made deeper.
I believe that the recommendation made by Ronald Takaki in "A Different Mirror" (April 1999) that educators themselves need to determine core knowledge is the point. We must establish what needs to be taught, how to teach it effectively, and how to assess what students have learned. The current system is not working.
—Mary G. Bennett, Senior Fellow, National Center for Urban Partnerships, The Bronx, New York
