American in Black and White by Stephan Thernstrom & Abigail Thernstrom

Author:Stephan Thernstrom & Abigail Thernstrom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1997-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

TRACKING

If standardized tests are unfair to blacks—or more broadly to students from other than middle-class homes—it follows that using them to assign students to particular courses or academic tracks is unjust and indefensible. In recent years civil rights activists and educational progressives in general have demanded the elimination of what has been variously called “tracking,” “ability” grouping, or “performance” or “competency” grouping. FairTest maintains that, although children are “different,” none have academic “deficits.” 88 The Massachusetts Advocacy Center declares that schools should promote “a sense of community and social justice, not privilege or definitions of “deserving’ and ‘undeserving.’” 89

It is impossible to tell how much actual practice in the schools has been changed as a result of such attacks, but criticisms of this sort dominate the professional educational literature. The very process of sorting and grouping students is said to be a self-fulfilling prophecy; students labeled as less competent quickly become so. It is a well-founded concern when long-term judgments about likely academic performance are made on the basis of tests at an early age. It is also legitimate to object to every form of dumbed-down schooling. Almost every student can meet academic standards higher than those generally in place in the United States.

Critics of tracking charge that identifying students as academically deficient has a special impact on black children; minority status (in and of itself) lowers teachers’ expectations, with the result that students learn less. 90 That was an argument that Judge Skelly Wright made in the D.C. desegregation case, which was in turn cited approvingly by Judge Peckham in his first Larry P. decision. 91 Judge Wright referred to teachers’ “misjudgments” about the ability of black students. Other tracking critics are not so kind. They make the very serious charge that racism—not poor judgment—determines who ends up in what level classes. In a September 1990 newscast an ABC News reporter stated flatly that “throughout the nation schools are sorting students into high-and low-ability groups, often with racial bias regardless of their test scores.” The program went on to quote UCLA’s Jeannie Oakes. “Often you’ll see high-scoring kids in low tracks, low-scoring kids in high tracks and often that relates to ethnicity and social class,” she said. 92 It’s a perception that, on occasion, has triggered organized parent protest. This was the case in early 1990 in Selma, Alabama, when parents took to the streets in part over the tracking issue. “We have black children who are high achievers, who have high test scores, who have not been allowed to take algebra,” an attorney and activist with a high school daughter complained. 93 A year later, parents in the Richardson, Texas, school district charged that black children were put in special-education classes not only because they spoke, dressed, and acted differently, but also because whites didn’t want any academic competition from blacks. 94

No qualified child should be “not allowed” to take algebra; indeed, schools should expect almost all children to take geometry and trigonometry as well. And there is

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