Achievement Gap and Tracking, International Evidence

Tracking groups students on the basis of academic ability or achievement. It also involves curriculum differentiation, presenting higher-achieving groups of students with more advanced academic content than their lower-achieving peers. Proponents of tracking and closely related practices argue that they facilitate all students' learning by providing students with course material well matched to their current skills and knowledge. However, others oppose tracking, believing that it increases the achievement gap between initially higher-and lower-achieving students. For example, they suggest that classes consisting entirely of low-achieving students may be less conducive to learning than those including higher-achieving students. They also point out that the less challenging curricular materials presented in low-achieving classes could well produce less learning than the more advanced content covered elsewhere, even for low-achieving ...