Tracking

Magnifying Initial Differences in Student Achievement

The early research on tracking was frequently concerned with whether or not the track placement process was meritocratic and with describing students' opportunity for upward mobility. Are track placements based on legitimate criteria such as achievement and effort, or do particular groups of students have an unfair advantage in securing placement in the college-prep track, whereas other groups of students are relegated to low-track classrooms? Once a student is in the low track, what opportunity does he or she have to move into a college-prep curriculum? As James Coleman articulated in the introduction to Alan Kerckhoff's landmark book Diverging Pathways, in order for structural differentiation of students to lead to growing educational inequality, there need not be any bias in the assignment of students to learning environments within or between schools. If learning environments differ in their intensity, then increasing inequality could result even if assignment and opportunities for mobility are completely based on student achievement levels. In other words, differences in the quality of instruction in tracked classrooms will lead to growing educational inequality no matter how students are assigned to those tracks. This observation is essential to understanding the role of tracking in producing educational inequality.

It turns out that track placements from year to year are, in fact, mostly meritocratic; they are determined in large part by the achievement level of students. For example, most of the difference in the track placements of students from different race/ethnic groups can be explained by differences in students' grades and test scores when track decisions are made. Students from advantaged family backgrounds appear to have somewhat of a nonmeritocratic advantage in securing high-track placements, but most of the total difference in track placements among students from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds is still due to levels of achievement. Nevertheless, tracking makes an important contribution to growing educational inequality as students of differing initial achievement progress through school. Among Black and White students, for example, initial differences in achievement are magnified as White students progress through school in intense, high-track learning environments, and Black students in less-intense, low-track classrooms. By the time Black and White students leave high school, the initial achievement gap has doubled.

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