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Tracking is when children, sometimes beginning as early as the primary grades, are grouped according to "ability", ie, their performance on standardized tests. The main problem with this system before high school is that children generally stay in these same groups all the way through junior high, and they become identified as "smarties" or "dummies" not only by other students but by teachers as well as by themselves. It breeds arrogance among the kids in the high ability groups and poor classroom behavior among ones in the lower groups because children often act the way they're expected to act. Do not think that even first and second graders don't figure out that the "bluebirds" who finished four reading levels are "smarter" than the "redbirds" who only finished two. Tracking also contributes to cliquishness and bullying because these groups tend to remain pretty static throughout elementary and middle school.
And yet even in a mixed ability, self contained elementary classroom, where EVERYTHING is mixed as DI will magically change everything, these kids are WELL AWARE of their shortcomings, or that others are moving at a faster pace.
1) Is segregation in public schools a problem today in the United States? Does segregation still exist?
2) What can be done to fix it, if anything?
3) Is it possible to have wide-scale integrated schools? Or will people, despite any policies put into place by the government, still find a way to separate from one another?
4) Do school choice programs make segregation better or worse?
Please keep this discussion on-topic!
If you really want to keep this thread open, please re-read the OP. There's another thread about why schools fail that addresses tracking.
People are largely segregated based on income, which is then reflected in the schools. Parents don't want integration which is why they're willing to bust their butts to afford houses in desirable school districts. What's the point of doing that if you're kid is just going to get shipped off to some crappy school in the inner city in the name of "keeping things fair."
There are so many social problems within the poor black community that need to be fixed before you can even approach the argument of fixing the school system in urban areas.
I would want my kids in the most competitive school environment possible, and those occur in mostly white areas. It's just a fact of life.
I do not support forced integration as I support neighborhood schools. Schools in areas with one majority race or ethnic group are naturally going to be "segregated".
Yes, it's possible to have integrated schools. My zoned elementary, junior high, and high school were all almost exactly 30% white, 30% Hispanic, and 30% Asian with smaller numbers of other groups. It worked, and no one really cared about race. However, our neighborhoods were also integrated.
I teach in an inner-city all black high school. I find it ironic that the prevailing wisdom of SCOTUS in overturning Plessy V Ferguson was that segregated schools were "inherently unequal". Yet today we allow segregated schools based on neighborhood demographics. I can tell you for certain that even the good students in my classroom get an inferior education to what they would get in a suburban school. This is due to the amount of educational time that is lost from dealing with distractions of the many students that have no interest in being at school. And I taught in a highly performing school in Arizona. Most of my current 10th grade World History students would have failed my 8th grade Social Studies class in Arizona if I held them to the same standard that I held my 8th graders to.
It's funny because one of the biggest complaints I hear from teachers is how they're forced to teach to the "lowest common denominator" because our feel good education system wants the dummies mixed in with the smart kids. Precisely why we have a nation full of college kids who can't even write a proper essay. Personally I'm all for tracking. It's not racism if your kid doesn't have the grades and test scores to take AP classes. Either get them into a better school or tell them to study harder.
It doesn't work tgat way. The way you are tracked in 6th grade does a prety good job of determining where you end ipup jn collge if at all. I had plenty of classmates who had the right grades to get into honors classes in middle and high school yet their teachers said no. And they missed the boat on AP classes.
When I was 12 my famiky moved across the country and wanted me to resume honors classes at the new school. The new school district accused my parents of forging my scores as they were incredulous that a black student could have those. They wanted me take tests given in October to "prove" i qualified for the classes. Obviously joining said class halfway through the semester would make it difficult to catchup. And not taking pre-albebra in 7th grade would mean no AP math in high school.
My parents convinced them the tests were real by threatening a lawsuit. Suddenly they believed my scores. (I went on to do just fine in those clases).
Our schools are segregated and teachers have been socialized in many cases to set low expectations for black and latino students and high expectations for asian students. This behavior impacts how students are disciplined and what opportunites they are exposed to.
I live in a city that is nearly evenly mixed between all groups. Elementary schools reflect their neighborhood composition. Many are quite mixed. By middle school give or take, all schools in all neighborhoods are 75-95% black and latino, and the economic characteristcs no longer match the neighborhood. Basically all white kids and people who are middle class and up leave the district by moving out of town or going to private school, leaving schools segregated and less diverse than their neighborhoods.
Schools have improved a ton all over the city at every level, but are still really segregated.
It's funny because one of the biggest complaints I hear from teachers is how they're forced to teach to the "lowest common denominator" because our feel good education system wants the dummies mixed in with the smart kids. Precisely why we have a nation full of college kids who can't even write a proper essay. Personally I'm all for tracking. It's not racism if your kid doesn't have the grades and test scores to take AP classes. Either get them into a better school or tell them to study harder.
No, that's not why we have a nation of college kids who can't write a proper essay. The kids can't write because too many teachers refuse to teach grammar and writing. I've seen teachers say it's not their job to teach that. I know kids in HS around the US who say their "English" teachers have them prepare presentations with powerpoint, do video projects, and other electronic media projects with no focus on the composition skills needed to make a good presentation. I don't understand how teachers have been allowed to walk away from their responsibility to teach language and writing skills.
No, that's not why we have a nation of college kids who can't write a proper essay. The kids can't write because too many teachers refuse to teach grammar and writing. I've seen teachers say it's not their job to teach that. I know kids in HS around the US who say their "English" teachers have them prepare presentations with powerpoint, do video projects, and other electronic media projects with no focus on the composition skills needed to make a good presentation. I don't understand how teachers have been allowed to walk away from their responsibility to teach language and writing skills.
We don't "refuse"...it's no longer, in many cases, part of our teachable curriculum. As for electronic products, you can thank every school board and superintendent that thinks putting an iPad in a child's hands will make everything better.
I teach in an inner-city all black high school. I find it ironic that the prevailing wisdom of SCOTUS in overturning Plessy V Ferguson was that segregated schools were "inherently unequal". Yet today we allow segregated schools based on neighborhood demographics. I can tell you for certain that even the good students in my classroom get an inferior education to what they would get in a suburban school. This is due to the amount of educational time that is lost from dealing with distractions of the many students that have no interest in being at school. And I taught in a highly performing school in Arizona. Most of my current 10th grade World History students would have failed my 8th grade Social Studies class in Arizona if I held them to the same standard that I held my 8th graders to.
Those neighborhood demographics also include low socioeconomic status of the residents. If all your students magically became white tomorrow, they'd still have the very same problems tomorrow as they have today. Poverty, family dysfunction, substance abuse, mental problems, and poor attitudes toward society, work, and education are not exclusive to blacks or Hispanics or Native Americans but are found generally among poor people whatever their color or ethnicity. You see similar patterns among white students from low socioeconomic families as you do among black students from the same kinds of families.
People of color are just easier to see by judgmental individuals with agendas, especially because they tend to be concentrated in specific urban neighborhoods, so it's easier to say it's "black/Hispanics are poor students" rather than admit that it's poverty and its attendant pathologies that are the real problem. The fact is, in my county, at least 95% of the students are white, an awful lot of them are from poor families, and most exhibit the same problems that black students in poorly performing schools exhibit. That they're scattered among 10-12 small school districts, their impact on each district is diluted.
If blacks and hispanics were more evenly scattered among a metropolitan area's population, the impact of the number of poor students, whatever their color, would also be scattered. Unfortunately, the geography of most large urban metros doesn't allow that. Poor people have limited choices of where they can afford to live.
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