Grouping/tracking

3 Pages 701 Words

Tracking

Thomas Jefferson once stated, “We are all created equal,” but we are not, we are all unique in different aspects in our lives, one aspect being the ability to learn. In Jeannie Oakes’ Tracking: Can Schools Take a Different Route?, she states, “Track level differences get produced as teachers and students interact at school.” The competition many students feel academically is hard and furious. Some students do not have the desire to compete and wish to merely go with the flow at school. This is the reason that tracking comes about in schools. The teachers notice the levels of competition the students feel, and make their decisions of how to teach based on how they respond in class. The ability of a student cannot truly be measured by an educator, but rather by the student himself.
In all reality no one knows a person better than that person himself or herself. The student makes the decision about whether he or she wants to challenge him/herself more or less. Granted, as Jeannie Oakes states, “when schools group by ability, teachers are better able to target individual needs and students will learn more,” this may be true for the teacher, but if a student places him/herself into a higher ability group it may help to push and encourage him more academically being around people who have that higher ability. Many students are able to grasp one subject better than another, and they realize this on their own. “Tracking is both a response to significant differences among students and an ongoing contribution to those differences,” everyone knows their strengths and weaknesses and need not be reminded of them by being placed, by someone else, into an ability group. By doing so, again as Jeanne Oakes states, “students experience lower self-esteem and expect less of themselves when schools publicly identify them as less able.”
Teachers have no excuse to give up on or be less enthusiastic towards their...