Talking Points #6 (Oakes)

Tracking:Why schools need to take another route
Jeannie Oakes

Oakes argues that tracking in schools is not a "good route." She states that a diffent path must be followed, which involved heterogenous classrooms which would mix high & low ability students together. She also states that unless teachers are willing to take the time and make the effort, this method will fail and tracking will resume, which results in wide gaps between students in all aspect of life.

"...tracking leads to substantial differences in the day-to-day learning experiances students have at school. Moreover, the nature of these differences suggests that students who are placed in high-ability groups bave access to far richer schooling experiences than otber students. This finding helps explain, at least in part, why it is that tracking sometimes seems to "work" for highability students and not for others."
When I read this quote, I immediately thought of my junior high experiance. At my junior high, we had a "team" system, which meant that kids were split up into all different teams, each having about 90 students. (making 2 teams of 7th graders and 2 of 8th graders) Within the teams, there were "high ability" classrooms. I was in these classrooms, and like the kids with me, 95% of us moved on to comprise most of the populations in the upper level (honors, AP) courses in high school. We are also a majority of the students who went on to colleges/universities or other options with a "plan." In other words, what the Oakes states happens, happened. I am by no means trying to say we were "better" than other studens or that we are better than them now. There are students who were non honors kids who are doing great after high school just like I am sure there are honors kids who are not doing great after high school. Regardless, this happened to me. And when I went through it, I thought nothing of it. Most of my "best friends" weren't in my classes and it was never an issue. But now that I look back on it, I can totally understand where the author is coming from.
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students in high-ability English classes were more likely to be taught classic and modem literature, provided instruction in expository writing and library researcb, and expected to leam vocabulary that would eventually boost their scores on college entrance exams-,In these classes, critical thinking and problem-solving skills seemed to emerge
from the high quality ofthe course ce tent. Few low-ability classes, on 1 other hand, were taugbt these topics a skills. Students in the latter class learned basic reading skills taug mostly by workbooks, kits, and eo" to-read stories. Learning tasksconsist most often of memorizing and repe ing answers back to the teacher. Sin so much of importance was omitt from their curriculum, students in the low-ability classes were likely to ha
little contact with the knowledge a. skills that would allow them to rna into higher classes or to be success' if they got there."
This was my senior year English class. For senior year, the options were either AP or college prep, no honors. I chose not to take AP because the teacher who was going to be teaching I had had in 9th grae and she would constantly giving me failing or nearly failing grades on essays, telling me I could not write at all and providing no insight as to how I could fix my "problems." So, I was put in a college prep class. Essentially, it was an interesting group of people. I treated the class as I normally would for the first few weeks...and then I realized I was about 150 pages ahead of everyone in my class. Now, I do not mean to sound cocky but these are the kind of kids who just didnt try and more importantly, didnt care. SO i relaxed a bit.I mean, my teacher realized where I was and didnt even make me read the final book because he figured it was pointless. When final presentations came around, I literally had a fellow student tell me it was the best thing he had ever heard...I wrote it in 15 minutes while watching TV. Like, I had a test on the movie Braveheart! This was the type of class it was, totally laid back. I felt like this quote fit my experiance to a T...and I wish I didnt because its setting you up for failure then and later in your life. (If I came across as cocky, I really didnt mean to but I didnt know how else to explain this class).
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First, lessons will probably be most successful if they require active learning tasks rather than passive ones, and if they have students working together rather than alone. "
I agree and disagree, with reasoning. My psych class in high school was often group based...and I learned nothing. Its probably why I hated the class because I would have to go home and re-teach myself. My teacher would give us topics in groups and we would have to learn them, summarize and present to the class. What bothered me was that different people think different things are important and more importantly to me was that my teahcer thinks different things are important. If the group thought they summarized the section, and my teacher just smiled and didnt add anything, you might think it was summarized and you may study off of that...but what if they didnt and the teahcer expects you to teach yourself the info anyway? If that is the case, what is the point of group work? On the flop side, group work is great when each person has something to bring, like going over math homework or a collaborative SL paper. You can pick up new tricks or learn new things to apply to your life. I just, I dont think group work is a successful way to have students of different speeds in a classroom be successful, when it is presented in the example I gave.

Overall, the article was an easy read. It reminded me a lot of my high school classes, especially English and Hisotry ( a little bit of Psych). It was interesting to look back at them this way. I had thought about it while in high school so it wasnt a huge shock. It doesnt seem "as bad" when it is you in the situation and I know in my school district, it probably wasnt a huge problem because there isnt much diversity ( in every aspect of the word). I feel like the last column on the last page also summed up what I was trying to say with my first quote. Overall, I thought it was an interesting article that got to the point, kept my attention and providen succint ideas.