Tracking by itself is obviously discriminatory. Tracking could and would work one of two ways. Once low-ability students are identified, the process should not end there. The low-ability students should not be shuffled off away from the rest of the class, into being labelled as slow learners, but immediately resources must be applied to these students, so that they can be brought back up to the level that the rest of the class of students are currently operating at.
Once that you have "labelled" someone as low-ability and it then becomes common knowledge if and when they are moved, you have unfairly stigmatized these students among their peer groups. There may be a certain amount of teasing when this happens as kids can be cruel to one another, and may not even be aware of the harm that is caused. This was during the fifties and early sixties.
I referred to a childhood friend of mine, who had ADHD and was wrongly classified as mildly retarded. This immediately "marked" him with the neighborhood kids, and they started calling him retard. The sad thing is that while he was slightly slower in comprehension and the poor school system of Central Falls could not afford to give him one-on-one counseling, he was a pretty good athlete, and read the Daily Providence Journal from cover to cover. He was in many ways far smarter than most of the strictly book learning students and had a great memory for football statistics.
Once Dennis was "classified" and put into a class where the other kids had all kinds of physical and mental handicaps, the real damage was done. He was ashamed in front of his parents, and his grandmother who lived with his family. Worst yet, his Baby Brother Bruce went on to become the Central Falls High School Principal, and then later in Lincoln, RI, he became the School Superintendent.
Had any remedial resources been applied, life for Dennis would have been much more satisfying and he could have gone on to college, like his brother. In a poor school system like C.F., there is little or no resources, and very little pity, and very few do overs. My friend Dennis was pigeon-holed unfairly and it followed him the rest of his life. He settled into a job as a janitor in a local nearby school system, in a nearby city of North Providence, and he met a really wonderful girl and married. But because of his being wrongly "stigmatized" as slow and put into a class of very slow and handicapped Students, he decided never to have any children.
The state of Rhode Island years later took over the running of the C.F. School System and has for many years tried to right the wrongs of being wrongly classified such as Dennis. This is WHY I am very much against this type of Tracking. Left to its own devices, without the added resources required, but unavailable, the school system fails the student in a really big and damaging way. The opportunities are few and far in between once this tracking yields its results, with no way to redeem themselves and to be retested. You are pushed into a corner, and basically ignored and marginalized for life.
I know that there has to be some sore of tracking and classifying, but there must be retesting and resources made available to correct any learning deficit. I like the Team Method or Group Learning method and I see it work twice a week at the Met School. We need to replicate what the Met School is doing and change the paradigm for teaching. Fred Issa
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