Political Concerns With Classroom Tracking
Classroom tracking is the process of dividing students based on their academic potential. These divisions are intended to allow teachers to focus on specific student needs and give each group the best chance of performing well by addressing the unique needs of each group. Track divisions can also differentiate between entire schools based on overall student performance.
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Socioeconomic Factors
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Academic performance is often affected by the socioeconomic status of a student's parents. The possible causes include parental involvement in a student's education, accessibility to certain educational advantages and the past education of a student's parents. A classroom tracking system does not take these influences into consideration and can appear to favor students from families that have higher socioeconomic status. The political result is a dispersion in fund allocation away from lower-track schools and toward schools with higher-track students.
Assumed Stereotypes
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The socioeconomic dispersion of funds becomes a more severe political issue when it designates schools with a high percentage of minority students as being low track. Inside individual schools, this situation also exists. Minority students who find themselves on a low track due to academic performance can claim that tracking is a form of stereotyping. An educational system that targets minorities for lower-track education is a significant concern.
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Early Tracking
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Interests and classroom abilities change throughout a student's educational career. If a student is tracked too early, she could find herself forced to remain on that track throughout her high school career. Early tracking places too much of a significance on early academic abilities. A student may perform poorly in math at a younger age and discover years later that she actually enjoys the subject and is willing to put forth more effort. Traditional tracking systems resist a student's attempts to change her academic track. Politically, this can result in accusations of unfairness and academic disempowerment.
Tracking Methods
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The primary method used for classroom tracking is standardized testing. Standardized testing places too much emphasis on how well a student performs on a test on a particular day. The political concern is that student peer pressure often influences students to do poorly on academic tests and does not account for a student's out-of-class situation on the specific test day. Family problems or personal emergencies can decrease a student's success significantly, and the result is an academic track that a student may not have the power to change later.
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References
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