![]() ![]() So decisions such as which students take Algebra 1 in eighth grade, and which ones take pre-algebra, depend more on grades and teacher recommendations. Most schools use standardized test scores to decide each student’s track, but the pandemic canceled standardized tests in many districts last year and this year. In eighth-grade math, roughly 75% of schoolchildren are tracked by ability, according to the Brookings Institution. Mathematics is the most tracked subject in American classrooms by far. Students must earn their way into the faster tracks, and studies show that this encourages children to identify themselves as good or bad, whether correctly or incorrectly, in math or other tracked subjects. Tracking also can reinforce students’ sometimes-flawed perceptions of their ability in a subject. “Separating students by ability or prior achievement inevitably creates classes segregated by race and socioeconomic background and offering different curricula to tracked classes exacerbates achievement differences.” “The resurgence of ability grouping really is surprising,” he says. One critic is Tom Loveless, whose book, “The Tracking Wars ,” was published in 1999. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump characterized tracking as government overreach and “a federal mandate.” Some schools begin tracking as early as second grade to make teaching a diverse student body easier. What’s more, it doesn’t appear that tracking works: Studies don’t show that it raises overall student performance. But for critics, allowing public school bureaucrats to decide which children should be in the smart class and which should be in the slow class is giving government far too much power. Separating students in the same grade into different classes by ability-tracking-has been seeing a resurgence. ![]()
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