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CBUW_ Dismantling the Barrier of Tracking_  Connect, Collaborate and Commit

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Initiating Critical Conversations on the Discontinuation of Tracking

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Initiating Critical Conversations on the Discontinuation of Tracking

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By NCTM President Robert Berry

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Initiating Critical Conversations on the Discontinuation of Tracking

The tracking of students for instruction in mathematics is a long-standing practice of schooling that segregates students of different backgrounds into separate experiences on pathways leading to different outcomes. The fact that the effects of tracking are consistent and predictable reflect the reality that this practice is built in to the structure of mathematics education. Students segregated into low-track mathematics are routinely exposed to instruction focused primarily on rote skills and procedures that do not stretch their higher order thinking and that give limited attention to developing their conceptual understanding. Students segregated into high-track mathematics typically experience mathematics that cultivates their mathematics identities, conceptual understanding, and critical problem-solving and thinking skills (NCTM, 2018). Tracking is a structural barrier with a large impact on the experiences of students and teachers in mathematics.

As a student and teacher of mathematics in urban and suburban schools in the United States, I have personally experienced and borne witness to the inequitable outcomes in mathematics learning. Tracking prevents students access to a high-quality mathematics curriculum, to effective teaching and learning, to high expectations, and to the necessary supports needed to maximize their learning potential. It is time to recognize and identify tracking as a systemic form of segregation. Tracking leads to the distribution of students in ways that are correlated with the inequities based on race, ethnicity, language status, and socioeconomic status found in our broader society. And it is time to begin the courageous work needed to intentionally and systematically remove the perniciousness of tracking and its associated curricular and instructional practices as we move toward creating pathways for success in mathematics for each and every student.

Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations recommends that high school mathematics discontinue the practice of tracking teachers as well as the practice of tracking students into qualitatively different or dead-end course pathways (NCTM, 2018; p. 15). While Catalyzing Change focuses on high school mathematics, tracking has equally significant implications for early childhood, elementary, and middle grades mathematics. There is a compelling body of research dating back nearly 40 years documenting the consistently inequitable impacts of tracking and the role it plays in perpetuating and exacerbating biases and inequities found in American society. Given the body of research and the negative effects of tracking, we must wonder why many schools continue to engage in tracking. Schools and educators are not immune to the tendency to continue doing things the way they have always been done. If a teacher was tracked in mathematics as a student and teaches in a tracked mathematics situation, the idea of detracking is likely to be foreign.

The discontinuation of tracking is often characterized as an attempt to group students heterogeneously as a means of ensuring that each and every student, regardless of race, ethnicity, language status, socioeconomic status, or academic ability, has access to high-quality instruction, curriculum, teachers, and material resources. Detracking requires far more than simply rearranging instructional group patterns. It requires:

shifts in beliefs about who is capable of doing and understanding mathematics

teaching focused on equitable instructional practices

access to rigorous mathematics curricula supportive of students' demonstrating intellectual, cognitive, and cultural diversities

building classroom communities where students and teachers feel safe and supported to engage in meaningful ways and

incorporating targeted and effective support for students and teachers.

Below are actions teachers, schools, and districts can begin doing to move towards detracking:

Identify, analyze and evaluate policies, practices, and procedures to assess the impact of tracking in restricting student access to and success in mathematics.

Provide each and every student access to a grade-appropriate, academically rigorous and intellectually challenging curriculum.

Provide students with additional targeted instructional time and other instructional supports to support their learning and success with the kind of curriculum in the previous bullet.

Analyze teacher assignments to develop balanced and supportive assignments to provide high-quality, engaging learning experiences for all students.

Analyze where research-informed equitable instructional practices are implemented and where not and facilitate changes. This includes the use of culturally relevant pedagogy, building on students' interests and knowledge, incorporating real-life experiences into the curriculum, and using practices that showcase students' strengths.

Provide teachers with access to mathematics coaches/specialists for ongoing real-time professional development and support. Ongoing professional development includes but is not limited to coaching, co-teaching, co-planning, and frequent interactions on teaching and learning.

Provide teachers and mathematics coaches/specialists with time and space to collaborate with one another on instructional issues and to continue their own professional learning of both mathematics and mathematics-specific pedagogy. Teachers need opportunities to share strategies, learn new teaching techniques, meet as a department or grade level, and collaborate for improved student learning. (NCTM 2018).

As stated earlier, detracking is more than simply grouping students heterogeneously. Detracking is a deep commitment and an investment in people, curricula, and time to reach the goal of supporting and engaging each and every student in learning mathematics and increasing their opportunities. Teachers and leaders must be committed to the actions above when working towards the discontinuation of tracking.

Because tracking is insidious (NCTM, 2018), I encourage you to use the steps outlined above and in Catalyzing Change to begin discussions and take action to intentionally and systematically dismantle the structural barrier of tracking. Please share your successes and challenges on MyNCTM.org

Robert Q. Berry, III

NCTM President

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Initiating Critical Conversations on the Discontinuation of Tracking - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

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The tracking of students for instruction in mathematics is a long-standing practice of schooling that segregates students of different backgrounds into separate experiences on pathways leading to different outcomes. The fact that the effects of tracking are consistent and predictable reflect the reality that this practice is built in to the structure of mathematics education.

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The San Francisco school board's controversial decision to delay algebra instruction until high school is paying off in more students taking higher-level math classes, district officials said.

Across the city's high schools, 4,660 students are taking precalculus, statistics or calculus courses this year, 456 more than last year - a 10 percent increase, according to district data obtained by The Chronicle.

The increase in advanced math enrollment beyond Algebra II was seen across several ethnicities, including African American, Latino, Filipino and white students, as well as among girls, English learners and students with disabilities.

"We know that families have been asking if their children can still get into advanced math courses in high school under the course sequence we began implementing four years ago," Superintendent Vincent Matthews said in a statement. "With these data, we can confidently say that not only can our students access higher level math, they are accessing it."

The previous year, the district actually saw a decline in the number of students taking those advanced math classes. The increase in enrollment this year made up for that loss, resulting in an 8 percent increase - or 277 more students taking courses above Algebra II - over the past two years.

While most student subgroups did see gains, the number of low-income students taking higher-level math has declined slightly over the past two years.

The class of 2019 is the first cohort to go through the new math sequence, which eliminated Algebra I in all middle schools.

The new math policy keeps all students together in math until junior year, when advanced students can then surge ahead by taking a combined Algebra II and precalculus courses and then take calculus during their senior year.

This eliminates the tracking of students into classes based on a higher or lower level of academic ability, which often separates white, Asian and wealthy students from their black, Latino and poor peers.

Most other districts offer an accelerated math course in middle school, combining eighth grade math with Algebra I.

Many parents have balked at the new sequence, saying it punishes students who are ready for more rigorous math concepts while making it harder to reach calculus. Previously, students could take Algebra I in middle school, and then progress through geometry, Algebra II, precalculus and then Advanced Placement calculus in high school.

While more students are taking precalculus now, the enrollment in Advanced Placement calculus courses has declined by nearly 13 percent over the past two years. Enrollment in AP Statistics, which requires only Algebra II as a prerequisite, has surged nearly 50 percent.

"It sends a message to San Francisco families that the district is not interested in students who want to excel," said parent Rebecca Murray, who has three children in the district in eighth, seventh and second grades, adding she believes the district can offer an accelerated course in middle school and still see the increase in advanced math enrollment for all students. "It doesn't have to be either/or."

Parent Maya Keshavan said the new policy has resulted in families bypassing the policy by enrolling their students in expensive online Algebra I courses during middle school or intensive geometry classes during the summer months to ensure they can reach calculus without cramming Algebra II and precalculus into one year.

"This is all dependent on if the parents know what they're doing or not," she said. "I'm worried about the kids who are ready and don't have the resources that other kids do."

District officials defended the policy, however, saying that universities are increasingly downplaying the idea that students need to take calculus in high school.

"For so long, people have held up this idea that AP Calculus is the gold standard (for college admission)," Lizzy Hull Barnes said, a district math supervisor, adding Stanford and UC Berkeley are among the universities downplaying the need for calculus. "Faster is not better."

Many university admission offices, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, say a rigorous high school transcript that includes calculus improves the odds of getting in.

"We haven't seen the effect on college acceptance yet," Keshavan said. "We're setting our kids up to be competing against the rest of the kids in California with one hand tied beyond their back."

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker

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SF schools' move to delay algebra shows positive results, district says

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The San Francisco school board's controversial decision to delay algebra instruction until high school is paying off in more students taking higher-level math classes, district officials said. Across the city's high schools, 4,660 students are taking precalculus, statistics or calculus courses this year, 456 more than last year - a 10 percent increase, according to district data obtained by The Chronicle.

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Four years ago, school district leaders did something counterintuitive in this tech-laden metropolis, where STEM isn't just a buzzword but practically a way of life.

They got rid of accelerated middle-school math classes.

Part of an ambitious project to end the relentless assignment of underserved students into lower-level math, the city now requires all students to take math courses of equal rigor through geometry, in classrooms that are no longer segregated by ability.

That means no "honors" classes. No gifted track. No weighted GPAs until later in high school. No 8th grade Algebra 1.

In terms of curriculum, this is about as controversial as it gets. And that's not just because of its math implications, but because of the parental pushback such a plan is guaranteed to generate.

In effect, by de-tracking math classes, San Francisco has done away with one of the key avenues that the well-connected use to give their children an academic advantage.

Fallout was swift. Parents, concerned about rigor and whether their children would be able to take calculus by senior year, barraged everyone from the district superintendent's office to City Hall with complaints and petitions.

But the district has held firm, and now, preliminary evidence suggests that San Francisco's gamble may be paying dividends for black and Latino students, without hurting students who otherwise would have taken algebra earlier.

But the question still remains: Is that going to be enough to keep the policy in place for years to come?

Context for a Debate

The 56,000-student district's theory of action is clear: Math is by far the most heavily tracked course in the American secondary education system, and the ramifications for students of color are life-altering.

Federal data show that white and Asian students disproportionately take Algebra 1-long seen as a critical gateway to advanced math-before high school, while African-American and Latino students are overrepresented among those taking it for the first time in grade 9. Many of them take it as late as their junior or senior year.

Like so many other elements of K-12 education, those disparities partly reflect parents' relative socioeconomic capital.

"Many of these parents are thinking, 'How can I get my kids into the few spots in Stanford and Harvard?'" said James Ryan, who was until last month the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics executive director for the district. "They think the earlier students distinguish themselves from their peers, the better off they'll be, rather than seeing math as a platform for equity."

As if the politics of de-tracking math weren't bad enough, a minority of mathematicians worry that it will hold back the most math-minded students-ultimately harming America's supply of well-trained graduates. Calculus is virtually an entrance requirement at top-tier colleges, they point out, and that usually means taking Algebra 1 in 8th grade.

The tug of war over these competing beliefs has led California to experiment with just about every possible algebra permutation over a decade. In 2008, the state all but required every 8th grader to take algebra. It reversed course in 2010 after adopting the Common Core State Standards.

Research paints a far more nuanced picture than either side in such debates typically acknowledge. For the average student, researchers say, early exposure to a challenging class like algebra probably does pay off.

But in a 2015 study, the University of North Carolina's Thurston Domina and colleagues tracked how California's uneven 8th grade algebra-for-all rollout played out across districts. In a surprise finding, they discovered that higher enrollments in early algebra were linked to a decline in students' scores on a state math test.

"I think the failure of 8th grade algebra was one of just not preparing teachers and school leaders to understand the policy and to implement it well," said Domina, an associate professor of education policy and sociology. "The whole idea was to have heterogeneous, rigorous classes, and schools didn't have the capacity to pull that off."

A New Approach

With that history in mind, San Francisco's commitment to de-tracking math tries to navigate between two rocky shoals: politics and implementation.

To address the first, the district permits students to accelerate after completing Algebra 1 in 9th grade-most notably through a compressed class combining Algebra 2 and precalculus. That way, students can still take advanced math as upperclassmen.

"All of the acceleration paths are family and student choices, not based on test scores or teacher preference," Ryan said. "You make the choice when you're 16, when you actually know a bit more about what kind of student you are."

It can still be difficult to explain the theory of action behind the new course sequence to parents, especially when they carry a preconception of which students should be grouped together in a math class, said Hoss Koch, an assistant principal at the district's Denman Middle School. In particular, Koch said, he tries to explain to parents that 8th grade math under the common core contains a significant amount of algebraic content, such as linear functions, that wasn't in earlier 8th grade math iterations. Algebra isn't so much gone from 8th grade as it is now taught much more deeply over two school years.

As for implementation, San Francisco administrators have shaped day-to-day teaching and curriculum to support the district's focus on equity. Heavily based on work by Jo Boaler, a Stanford University professor of math education, the curriculum emphasizes having groups of students work through a series of ambitious math tasks.

Traditional math teaching, the thinking goes, tends to reinforce rather than break down inequities.

"If you have a procedural textbook, not only is there nothing to collaborate about, the 'smart kid' in the group is always the one who gets the computation right," said Lizzy Hull Barnes, the mathematics supervisor for the San Francisco district. But when students wrestle over problems together, they can use different methods, compare approaches, and figure out why some work and others don't, making all of them active participants in the learning, she said.

The focus on instruction, rather than just courses, is laudable-and too often absent from discussions on de-tracking, said Patrick Callahan, a math consultant who has advised California school systems, including San Francisco's, on their math programs. "I talk to districts about this, and they think it's like switching textbooks. That's really missing the point," he said.

Teachers React

If you asked how San Francisco's math-teaching philosophy might ideally look in practice, it would probably resemble geometry teacher David Russitano's classroom. On a cloudy morning in May, his students at Burton High School are working on a probability and statistics task. They pull playing cards, one by one, out of a suit, using math to bet on whether a higher or lower card will appear next.

As the lesson progresses, the questions get tougher: How do the odds change if three cards are randomly taken out of the suit? Why would you want to bet in some situations and not others?

In groups, students approach the problem in different ways: One girl crosses out each card on a sheet of paper as it appears; others are more easily able to make the leap to a fraction notation.

Russitano breaks in from time to time to highlight some of the strategies-a technique math leaders here call "assigning competence"-and correct common errors, always while posing lots of questions for students. Productive chatter is an expectation, not a rare occurrence in his classroom.

"Don't be this quiet! Talk about it," Russitano tells his students, during a lull in the middle of the lesson. "Don't be afraid."

Most teachers praise the social-justice impetus behind the math plan. But they also say that heterogeneous classes pose unique problems.

Students bring vast achievement differences to class, a situation that's not helped by ambitious parents who, now, shell out thousands of dollars for students to take non-district algebra classes over the summer in the hopes of getting their children into geometry early.

"We have kids who have seen some of the math before. Their knowledge may not be deep, it may be procedural, but they come in thinking, 'I know this already.' You have to authentically challenge them, too," said Daniel Yamamoto, an algebra teacher and the math-department chairman at Burton High. "And there are other kids who say [in response], 'I have nothing I can add to this discussion.' "

It's something that occasionally throws a wrench into the group tasks, as visits to several classrooms demonstrate. Sometimes the groups fall into "tutorial mode," with one student doing most of the cognitive work on her own and then conveying her answers to the others.

Getting the balance right between equity and responding to real variation in student ability makes the work quite difficult for teachers, math experts say.

"Tracking is an evil. But fear of tracking is a problem, because you do have to talk about differences in students' backgrounds," said Phil Daro, a common-core-math writer who helped San Francisco design the new course sequence.

Does It Work?

This year, San Francisco got something of an ace in its back pocket to show skeptics of the plan: Data shows better math outcomes for students who took the de-tracked courses compared with the cohort before them.

The number of students repeating algebra has fallen among all ethnic and racial groups, and fewer are receiving D's and F's in Algebra 1. About a third more students are ready for calculus, and that pool is more diverse than it's ever been.

While it's not proof-positive that the new course sequence has caused the better outcomes, leaders say, it's a hopeful sign.

Nevertheless, the new math sequence remains high on parents' radar. Most recently, "protecting algebra" appeared on the campaign platform of London Breed, a candidate in the city's June 5 mayoral election. Breed said she'd create enrichment programs "so motivated students whose passion is not currently met by the curriculum sequencing can thrive." (She was narrowly in second place at the time of this writing, with the outcome not yet certain.)

Daro, the education consultant, said he continues to worry that San Francisco leaders' decision four years ago not to offer a limited amount of Algebra 1 in 8th grade might someday backfire. "I thought politically it was a mistake," he said. "It may still turn out to be one."

District leaders, for their part, are focused on more immediate concerns. Asked what challenges remain, Barnes points to the progress of black students as an area in which the city needs to double down. Those students have gained in math and science credits, alongside their peers, but those gains aren't yet showing up on state test scores or in enrollments in AP Calculus.

Her colleague Angela Torres, a math-content specialist, cites the difficulty in ensuring that all teachers feel confident in the new curriculum and teaching methods.

"This work is hard, and the challenge is to continue to come at it," she said. "You can't just put kids in groups and hope for the best."

Published in Print: June 13, 2018, as In San Francisco, A Bold Effort to De-Track Algebra

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A Bold Effort to End Algebra Tracking Shows Promise

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Four years ago, school district leaders did something counterintuitive in this tech-laden metropolis, where STEM isn't just a buzzword but practically a way of life. They got rid of accelerated middle-school math classes.

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Letter to the editor of Ed Week

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Letter

To the Editor:

As the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, I applaud the de-tracking efforts of San Francisco Unified School District in middle school math, which creates pathways for all students to have access to continued studies in the subject ("In San Francisco, A Bold Effort to De-Track Algebra," June 13, 2018). The article indicates that students who are traditionally underserved in math are showing improvement in achievement and increased enrollment in advanced studies in the subject without negative impacts on other students.

It's important to note that SFUSD made considerable investments in supporting teachers in refining their teaching practices and that the district provided math coaches for teachers. The district is also making curricula changes. As the story states, de-tracking requires far more than simply rearranging students into heterogeneous mathematics classrooms.

It requires supporting the mindset that all students are capable of doing rigorous math; it requires supporting educators who teach students with diverse needs and diverse ways of learning; it requires making sure that the curriculum is rigorous; and it requires building classroom communities that support all learners.

NCTM's recently published book Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations recommends the elimination of tracking students. Other school districts should look at SFUSD as an example. It is time to identify tracking practices and stop them. Tracking can lead to the distribution of students in high- and low-ability classrooms in ways that are correlated with the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities found in the broader society.

It's time to begin the courageous work needed to intentionally and systematically remove tracking's barriers and the associated instructional practices. Instead, we must move toward creating pathways for success in mathematics for each and every student.

Published in Print: July 18, 2018, as Don't Track Algebra

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How one teacher transformed math ed for his students

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What happens when the systems in which we teach no longer work for the students we serve? Do we hunker down and just teach? Or do we speak up publicly about the structures that perpetually hold students back?

A few years ago, I recognized a problem at my school: Tracking in our school's math courses was holding back students of color who were enrolled in less-rigorous math classes than their white peers. I quickly recognized that the tracking system at my school had little to do with students' innate mathematical abilities, and everything to do with their parents' engagement in traditional school structures. Parents who lobbied for their children to be enrolled in our school's advanced math classes were successful, and as a result, their children were exposed to more-challenging content.

Once I understood the system, I began to make changes within my sphere of influence. I started by opening the door to the advanced math class to anyone who wanted to be there. I educated both parents and students about how the system worked. I conferenced with students who were serious about getting into the advanced math class and asked them to have their parents call me. From there, I encouraged parents to call the administration and request advanced math for their children. I knew administrators would come to me with these requests, and I would open my door to the students. In this manner, I changed the demographics of the advanced math class.

I started recruiting students in the middle of 7th grade and continued through early in 8th grade. The advanced math class started with 23 students, and it grew to 30 students by the end of the fall semester. Six of the new students were students of color, and the other new student had an individualized education program.

It took a while before the school's administration began to realize what I was doing. When over half of the grade was enrolled in the advanced math class, heads started to turn. This didn't bother me. In fact, it encouraged conversations with administrators and colleagues about creating a more equitable system that I was excited to have.

If we truly want excellent education for all students, then we must allow all students the opportunity to engage with challenging content. Although tracking may be more appropriate for high school, far too often students of color and other marginalized populations are placed in lower-level courses before they have learned how to advocate for themselves. These are the skills we need to teach our students throughout their middle school years.

During their 8th grade year, when my advanced math students took the Keystone Algebra I exam, all but one passed. The student who did not pass was the last to join the class, and she was able to bypass Algebra I her freshman year of high school and pass the test in the fall of that year. The passing rate for the state of Pennsylvania on this test is 65 percent.

When Push Comes to Shove: Overcoming Challenges

Throughout the two years I spent teaching the tracked math class (including my recruited students), I engaged in conversations with coaches, principals, and other teachers at my school. I described the inequities that tracking had created in our school. With the help of data and support from parents and colleagues, I made a strong case for heterogeneous groupings. By the time my first students graduated, the administration and I had already come to an agreement that the following class of students would not be tracked.

Before the next school year even started, multiple parents approached me through email and in person. Parents of students who would likely have ended up in the advanced math course were concerned about their children not being appropriately challenged. I met with these parents multiple times in the first months of school and promised that if they just gave it time, they would see how effective the new model could be.

As a safeguard for me as a teacher, I requested that the administration make a statement that the school no longer supported tracking in any classes. When we took a deep dive into content, parents' concerns began to ebb, and the parent who had been the most vocal even remarked, "Now that we have seen the assignments [my son] is doing in class, we know that he's being thoroughly challenged."

During this process, I had expected that parents would need the most convincing, but I was wrong. It was my fellow math teachers who began to panic at the idea of having to teach a heterogeneous class. Some of our regular middle-school meetings became heated, and I often felt as though I was on my own island fighting to keep afloat.

Things did get better. I can't quite pinpoint what caused the change or when it happened, but eventually I started hearing other teachers using my ideas as if they were their own. For example, I heard teachers discussing a shift from a full class marching at the same pace all the time toward fully differentiated, self-selected groupings that focused on the same topic and required varying levels of support. Sometimes debates are won without the other side even knowing it. As teachers advocating for better education policy, it's not about us. It's about making school a better place for our students.

Is There Really an End Game?

Three years later, the first class of students who spent their entire educational career in heterogeneous groupings has graduated. After evaluating data collected using the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment, we have seen an increased rate of growth in both the middle and lower third of the students, while maintaining a consistent rate of growth for students in the upper third. Historically, students who were in the lower third of classes at our school rarely saw any growth. Now, these students are moving closer and closer to grade level each year. The change has come with growing pains- we've had an ongoing need for professional development around heterogeneous classrooms, and the introduction of a new standardized test in Pennsylvania has caused a recent shift in our curriculum.

But no matter what challenges we face in our schools, we must always lead with our students' best interests in mind. Most policy decisions are made with good intentions, but those who created the system are the least likely to want to change it. As teachers, we must remember that we have a unique understanding of what our students need. When we see an inequity in the system, we must not sit idly by and watch. We must act. Even if the steps we take are small at first-they matter.

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From Tracking to on Track: How One Teacher Transformed Math Education for His Students

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What happens when the systems in which we teach no longer work for the students we serve? Do we hunker down and just teach? Or do we speak up publicly about the structures that perpetually hold students back?

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Our students need mathematics to make sense of their world and increase their opportunities. As teachers, administrators, and education leaders, each and every student is counting on us, our policies, and our practices to support them, support their learning, and develop them as doers of mathematics.

NCTM has embarked on a comprehensive look at mathematics education from K-12. This involved administrators, higher education faculty, educators, and leaders in mathematics education. The results of this work address policies, practices, and issues and include practical recommendations to help create positive change.

NCTM's Catalyzing Change series looks to help you engage in critical conversations and create positive change.

Catalyzing Change in Early Childhood and Elementary Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations

Students' mathematical learning at Early Childhood and Elementary often sets the stage for their education trajectory. Examine how to make a positive difference for each and every student at this level.

Learn More

Catalyzing Change in Middle School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations

The needs of young adolescents are unique and impactful. Our policies and practices must consider support and contribute to how they see themselves, see mathematics, and use their skills to make sense of the world.

Learn More

Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations

Identify and address critical challenges in high school mathematics to ensure that each and every student has the mathematical experiences necessary to increase their opportunities for personal and professional success.

Learn More

Catalyzing Change Webinar

We all have a stake in the future of mathematics.

The Catalyzing Change  series empowers you to lead critical conversations to improve math education and student readiness.

Catalyzing Change Across All Levels: Opportunities and Challenges

May 26, 2020 7:00 p.m. EDT | Speaker: Trena Wilkerson, NCTM President and Robert Q. Berry III, NCTM Past President

The current situation sharpens our view of inconsistencies and inequities that exist within the teaching and learning of mathematics across all grade levels. NCTM's series of Catalyzing Change publications, including the recently released

Catalyzing Change in Early Childhood and Elementary Mathematics, and

Catalyzing Change in Middle School Mathematics

highlight critical issues and provide guidance areas of focus for critical conversations and decision making in this time of significant need and opportunity.
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Supporting Resources

News Release
NCTM Releases Two Catalyzing Change Publications to Help Transform Mathematics Education from Preschool through Middle School

In the News
Reports: Early inclusion strategies shape students' perception of math | Education Dive

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Catalyzing Change - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

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NCTM's new publication, Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations , is a must-read for anyone who's involved in high school mathematics education.

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What Tracking Is and How to Start Dismantling It

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What Tracking Is and How to Start Dismantling It

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by Carol Corbett Burris and Delia T. Garrity

By the time the Rockville Centre School District began to examine its levels of courses, rigid educational systems-ones that formally assigned students to college prep, general, or vocational curricular paths or schools-had been largely dismantled in the United States and replaced with somewhat less rigid tracking systems characterized by curriculum differentiation. In modern tracking systems, students are assigned to different levels of the same course, or to a course with a different curriculum that is either more or less rigorous (Lucas, 1999; Oakes, 2005).

In some schools, tracking begins with kindergarten screening. IQ and early achievement tests designed to measure so-called "ability" determine track placement in the elementary years, thus setting in place an educational trajectory for 12 years of schooling. In other schools, tracking is a meritocracy that relies on teacher recommendations, grades, and student motivation to determine placement. In still others, students and their parents are allowed to choose a track, with certain conditions attached to the placement. A common example is allowing students to take an honors class provided that they maintain an average of 90 or above. Standards for track placement are uniform in some schools; in others, each department determines the number of tracks and track placement. For example, in the high school where one of the coauthors taught prior to coming to Rockville Centre, any student was allowed to take AP English, but entrance to AP courses in foreign languages was determined by previous enrollment in the honors track and final averages in prior language courses.

Some tracking systems, referred to as ability-grouping systems, assign students to different classes based on their perceived ability in that subject. Still other tracking systems are called leveling systems -students, at least ostensibly, study the same curriculum, but they may need to first pass prerequisite courses (e.g., pre-algebra, pre-biology) or take the same course for a longer period. In a leveling system, a course might be taught to both high-achieving 8th graders and lower-achieving 10th graders. Or a course offered to most students in one period per day might be offered to students deemed "lower achievers" for two periods a day. Whatever the course's title or structure, grouping some students together and requiring them to take that course apart from other students is a form of tracking (Oakes, 2005).

Key Questions for Getting Started

Schools that want to dismantle their tracking system should begin by analyzing grouping practices in their school and district, regardless of the label used by the district. This analysis should focus on the long-term effects of the school's grouping practices. When South Side Middle School began the process of dismantling tracking in mathematics, it was because the school leaders recognized the deleterious effect that tracking in mathematics had on a student's ability to earn a Regents or International Baccalaureate diploma. It became apparent that the effects of tracking in the middle school extended far beyond 8th grade.

An examination of the present system in a school or district begins with asking and answering these questions:

1. At what grade level are students first grouped for instruction?

2. What is the rationale for starting to group at that grade level, and how many grouping levels are used?

3. What influence does this grouping have on students' later instructional placement and educational opportunities?

4. What assessments are the basis for placement decisions?

5. How accurate and valid are these placement assessments?

6. How are the effectiveness of placement decisions assessed?

The conversations spawned by these questions will help colleagues reflect on and communicate their beliefs about intelligence and the purpose of schooling. Some faculty members will question whether tracking allows all students an equal opportunity to take the school's best courses; others will believe that placing students in courses matched to their ability is an important obligation of schooling. Some teachers will believe that their instructional skills and manner of delivery play an important role in student achievement; others will see instructional issues as tangential and secondary to innate ability or student motivation.

During the detracking process in our school district, we listened carefully to the language that teachers used in those conversations to learn which of our colleagues would be on board and which would be resistant. Helping teachers (and parents) explore their beliefs is an ongoing and important process. Often we discover that our assumptions may not be supported by data, or that there are long-term ramifications to tracking that we had not previously understood. There is an additional benefit to these conversations. As with any other school reform, a detracking initiative can't be put on hold until everyone believes in it. There will always be some who will object to a new way of doing things. Early conversations can identify a cadre of teachers who are open to the idea of teaching heterogeneous classes. In addition, such conversations can help a faculty understand the belief systems that influence teachers' day-to-day interactions with students.

Belief Systems That Sustain Tracking

Language can be very revealing. Teachers talk about their "low" kids, their "advanced" kids, their "regular" kids, and their "overachievers." On an online message board for New York State chemistry teachers, one member had this to say:

The Regents kids of today are just a touch above our general level kids of a decade ago. Then I have the other kids who are nice kids and get decent grades, but are WAY behind the top kids. Gads, I love my period 1 and 4 honors chem classes!!!! They are some of the best kids I have ever had the honor of teaching. (ChemBond Listserv, April 2006)

Notice all the labels this teacher assigns to students: Regents kids, general kids, top kids, honors kids, best kids. If your child attended this teacher's school, which designation would you want him or her to receive? How might the teacher's labeling constructs affect day-to-day interactions with students? For which class is this teacher probably putting forth the greatest teaching effort?

As our school district began its detracking reform, we began to pay attention to our language. Language shapes our thinking and our beliefs. We began with the word "ability" and made a conscious effort to replace it with "achievement." Thus, we write about, study, and talk about students who are lower achievers or higher achievers. Achievement is a measurable construct that describes what a student knows at a given point in time; ability implies an innate quality that cannot change and that limits success. As we made this commitment personally, we shared it with our faculty. Our language began to change, and so did the way we viewed students. Discussions about the labels placed on students and the beliefs they represent can help a faculty that is embarking on a detracking reform question constructs and practices that they have taken for granted. Being conscious of our own language can help us understand how deeply ingrained the culture of student sorting is. Language awareness is also likely to help uncover other justifications for tracking.

Perhaps the most accurate description of the belief systems that sustain tracking comes from Jeannie Oakes and Martin Lipton. In their 1999 essay "Access to Knowledge: Challenging the Techniques, Norms, and Politics of Schooling," Oakes and Lipton discuss how the categories that human beings create to explain differences in children change from school-created labels of differences to reified "realities" that limit opportunities for learning:

Those who promote ability grouping, special education, gifted programs, and the myriad other homogeneous instructional groups in schools claim that these classifications are objective and color blind, rather than, as Goodlad suggests, reflecting myths and prejudices. Advocates of grouping explain the disproportionate classification of white students as gifted or advanced and of students of color as slow or basic as the unfortunate consequence of different backgrounds and abilities. They base their claims of objectivity on century-old (and older) explanations of differences that are neither scientific nor bias-free.

Both students and adults mistake labels such as "gifted," "honors student," "average," "remedial," "LD" and "MMR" for certification of overall ability or worth. These labels teach students that if the school does not identify them as capable in earlier grades, they should not expect to do well later. Everyone without the "gifted" label has the de facto label of "not gifted." The resource classroom is a low status place and students who go there are low status students. The result of all this is that most students have needlessly low self-concepts and schools have low expectations. Few students or teachers can defy those identities and expectations. These labeling effects permeate the entire school and social culture. (p. 171)

Do students differ in talents and achievement? They do. But when those observed differences are reinforced by track placement and grouping practices, and children then internalize those differences, learning opportunities become limited for all but the elite student. The talents of late bloomers go undiscovered, and the rewards of hard work and diligent study are never realized.

Here are some key questions about belief systems to discuss with colleagues:

1. What is human intelligence?

2. Is intelligence one-dimensional or multidimensional?

3. Which is more important to successful learning-aptitude or hard work?

4. Is it possible to make lessons more accessible to all students?

5. Is it possible for students to show what they know in a variety of ways?

6. If teachers' own children were to attend a tracked school, which track would they want them to be in and why?

Data and Detracking

The process of reassessing one's beliefs is a difficult one. It's even more difficult to persuade others to reassess their beliefs and, together, come to consensus on a new course of action. Too often educators find themselves stuck in intractable positions, unable to make progress on important issues due to disagreements.

Using data as a focal point for pedagogical discussion is a powerful way to help a school faculty and community begin to understand the deleterious effects of tracking. Focusing on data may result in the cognitive dissonance that will set doubters on the path to changing their beliefs. It also grounds early conversations in fact rather than opinion. Everyone has an opinion about tracking based on personal beliefs about human learning capacity and intelligence. These beliefs are often peppered by one's own experiences, vested interests, and at times, prejudices. In our district, whenever we focused discussions on data, participants began to be able to look at tracking in a more objective manner. Although a focus on data will not inoculate against controversy, it can help open discussions and minds.

Student Transcripts

One way to begin to assess the effects of tracking is to examine student transcripts. After carefully blocking any identifiable student information, such as names and addresses, transcripts can be used to compare the grades, standardized test scores, and course-taking patterns of students in high-track and low-track classes. When we examined transcripts from our schools, we noticed patterns that told us a lot about the trajectories that students were placed on by tracking; for instance, we learned about Ronnie and Peter, whom you met in the Introduction. Although we had been telling parents and students that it was possible for students to move to higher track classes after beginning in the lower tracks, we found no evidence that this upward movement was in fact taking place. Instead, the opposite was happening-it was not uncommon for students to move from the middle track to the lowest track.

The propensity for middle-track students to move to lower tracks rather than higher tracks during their high school years is not unique to our district. In his book Tracking Inequality, Samuel Lucas (1999) uses national test data to demonstrate that track movement occurs in a downward direction far more frequently than it does in an upward direction. Often, when faculty and parents see how dramatically different educational experiences can be from the high track to the low track, a healthy sense of social justice enters the conversation. In addition, it is always interesting to look at grades after the downward movement has occurred. Grades often fail to improve, even though the curriculum is easier.

Achievement and Track Placement

Proponents of tracking assume that tracking is fair. They believe that when school personnel decide to place students in different classes, there is wisdom, based on objective data, supporting these decisions. This is a very important assumption to verify, because the decision to deny students access to high-track courses, such as AP or IB courses, will affect their candidacy to competitive colleges.

When coauthor Carol Corbett Burris (2003) studied the effects of detracking mathematics in the middle school as the focus of her doctoral dissertation, she was shocked to discover how many high-achieving minority students did not study accelerated math prior to detracking, and how many majority students with far lower achievement test scores did so successfully. Again, these findings are not unique. The inequity and inefficiency associated with track placement are well documented in both national and international studies.

The Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) was a comprehensive survey of mathematics taught and learned around the world. Twenty-two nations participated in this broad and longitudinal study that took place from 1976 to 1989. SIMS researchers Kifer, Wolfe, and Schmidt (1993) identified four levels of 8th grade math study typically found in most American middle or junior high schools, which they termed remedial, regular, enriched, and algebra.

For the SIMS study, 8th graders in all four tracks completed a pretest of pre-algebra arithmetic skills at the beginning of the year. Researchers examined the distribution of scores on the test by student and by math track. Although it was expected that class-type performance would be different, Kifer and colleagues' (1993) analysis of student and classroom performance found considerable score overlap among tracks.

Only half of the students who achieved the top 10 scores on the pretest and one-third of the students in the top 25 had actually been placed in the algebra-level classes. Inequities existed on the other end of the proficiency spectrum as well: Nearly 50 percent of the students assigned to remedial classes had scores that were better than 25 percent of the students in general math. In addition, Kifer and colleagues found that 5 of the 23 remedial classes had higher mean scores than 75 percent of the students in general math, 50 percent of the students in pre-algebra, and 25 percent of the students in algebra.

Welner (2001) found a similar pattern in his extensive study of San Jose, California, schools in the process of detracking: There was a vast overlap in prior achievement across all tracks in all of the schools studied. During Welner's study, he discovered that tracked classes were far from homogeneous in either ability or skill. Although mean scores were different, the overlap in the range of scores was remarkable.

These examples illustrate that the basic objective of tracking-the formation of homogenous classes with relation to skill and prior achievement-is rarely realized. Tracking does not create classes in which students are alike. The studies also illustrate that students of lower achievement are often placed in high-track classes, either accidentally or by design. What is of greatest interest is that when this happens, the formerly lower-achieving students are often more successful. For example, one study of the effects of tracking in mathematics found that if lower-achieving students were mistakenly placed in the high-track mathematics class, their chances of successfully completing a college prep course of math study dramatically increased (White, Gamoran, Porter, & Smithson, 1996). This phenomenon has certainly been borne out in our own experience with accelerating all students (Burris et al., 2006).

Strategies for Beginning

Once you've made the decision to begin the detracking process in your school or district, you'll need to make a plan. The strategies that follow will assist in creating a blueprint for successful curriculum integration for all students.

Engage in Thoughtful Study

Detracking needs to begin with a conversation that questions the status quo. Sometimes this conversation takes place among school leaders; at other times it is a conversation among teachers or other stakeholders. We once gave information and guidance to a group of parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, who were anxious to begin a detracking reform. Although the educational roles of those who challenge tracking may differ from school to school, advocates of detracking share a common belief that the status quo is not serving the needs of all students, and thus they are anxious to advocate for change. Once the conversation begins, however, supporters of tracking are highly likely to become defensive. We recommend that those who want to create more equitable schools become familiar with facts that will help them focus emotionally charged conversations on data rather than opinion.

A good place to start is with studies such as those discussed in the previous section, along with others that identify the factors that influence track placement, from class size to parent pressure (see Hallinan, 1992; Useem, 1992a, 1992b). Summarize and discuss these studies and their implications with your colleagues. When Delia Garrity began talking about detracking middle-school mathematics, she grounded her statements in the results of the TIMSS study, which showed that 8th graders around the globe were successfully taking algebra. Next, take a look at your school data. We suggest that you analyze data in a manner similar to the studies described above. Use objective data from a standardized test as your measure of prior student achievement, and then record which track students were placed in both initially and later in their schooling. When our district analyzed middle-school track placement data, we used scores on an elementary standardized assessment, the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. If you are analyzing high school data, 10th grade PSAT scores are a good source of objective achievement data that correlate strongly with measures of general intelligence (Frey & Detterman, 2004). You will be surprised by how heterogeneous each of your courses already is. To capture the effect, be sure to look at the range of scores (see Welner, 2001), not just mean scores.

This hidden heterogeneity can become a powerful argument in favor of the elimination or reduction of tracking. If some lower achievers are already doing well in high-track classes, why can't more students have the same access? And if some higher achievers are assigned to low-track classes, what does that say about the efficacy and equity of the system?

Now go one step further by disaggregating data by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and special education designation. This process will reveal how your school's achievement gaps correlate with tracks. Once you combine the data you've compiled with the answers to the questions in the previous section, you are prepared to engage in serious discussions about how to improve your school or district.

Using administrative fiat to completely remove all tracks in one fell swoop will fail to adequately prepare students, faculty, or parents for this complex reform. On the other hand, it is easy to fall into the trap of "getting ready to get ready to get ready," thereby delaying implementation until far into the future. Steps must be taken to move the process along. The next three strategies are the ones that we used simultaneously over the course of several years to implement and expand the reform in our district.

Begin Where Tracking Starts

Detracking should begin where tracking begins. If your elementary school tracks, that is the place to start. If tracking is delayed until the middle school years, begin there.

In our district, we encountered some resistant teachers who wanted to start by changing the curriculum in the elementary schools, even though there was no grouping for instruction at the elementary level. However, Superintendent Johnson wisely recognized that the true agenda of delay was overall resistance to the reform. He identified the critical beginning of mathematics tracking in grade 6 and determined that was the place to begin detracking. Therefore, we implemented accelerated math in heterogeneous classes in 6th grade, and then followed that with the next year's 7th and then 8th grade programs, moving with the student cohort.

We carefully collected, analyzed, and communicated data each step of the way in order to provide continued impetus to move forward. Comparing the passing rates and grades of the students in the detracked cohorts with students in tracked cohorts made it clear that the students were doing better in the heterogeneously grouped classes than tracked students had done in past years. These data provided an objective counterbalance to those teachers who felt that the acceleration of all students was not working.

Begin with Teachers Who Are Interested

It is not an accident that our detracking began in both the district's middle and high school with the English and social studies departments. In both cases, these departments were the most open to the idea of heterogeneous grouping and the most able to envision all students learning the high-track curriculum. When we began special education inclusion in the middle and high school, we began with volunteers. This is not to say that all teachers in these departments were wholeheartedly on board, or that this reform would have come spontaneously from these departments. In both cases, however, there was a core group of teachers who were willing to embrace the reform and had a natural understanding of the disadvantages of tracking. For those teachers who taught both high and low tracks, the disadvantages of tracking were easier to see.

Similarly, interested teachers led a detracking reform at East High School in Denver, Colorado. The school began detracking using a voluntary system created by two English teachers who were appalled by the nonacademic culture of their low-track classes (Yettick, 2006). They were supported in their efforts by their principal and University of Colorado at Boulder professors Kevin Welner and Ed Wiley. Grade 9 students at East High were placed in either a heterogeneously grouped English class, which studied an accelerated (high-track) curriculum, or a traditional tracked class. Parents were allowed to remove their child from the detracked class if they wished. Despite initial worries, none chose to do so. The experiment was a success, both academically and socially, for the students in the heterogeneous, accelerated classes. East High expanded the program the following year and added support classes for struggling students in the detracked sections. The efforts of just a handful of thoughtful, innovative teachers can jumpstart detracking in your school.

Finally, the impetus for detracking can emanate from national policy. Such was the case in Finland. The decision to detrack, and its beneficial effects on student achievement, are described in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1. Nationwide Detracking: The Schools of Finland Close the Gap

All students are entitled to the same high-quality education regardless of their prior achievement, gender, ethnicity, or social class (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004).

"Ability grouping" in grades 1-9 was abolished in 1985 so that all could be eligible for higher education (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004).

Special education students are included in regular classrooms (Linnakyla & Valijarvi, 2005).

The Finnish system of basic education has a philosophy of teaching that "school is for every child, and that the school must adjust to the needs of every child, not the other way around" (Linnakyla & Valijarvi, 2005, p. 35).

There is a national curriculum with school and teacher flexibility. Instruction is student-centered, and there is ample support for struggling students (Linnakyla & Valijarvi, 2005).

Eliminate the Lowest Track First

There is little doubt that tracking does the most harm to students who are consigned to the lowest track. According to the National Research Council (NRC), low-track classes have an especially deleterious effect on learning, since such classes are "typically characterized by an exclusive focus on basic skills, low expectations, and the least qualified teachers" (Heubert & Hauser, 1999, p. 282). Placement in a low-track class is often used as a solution for student misbehavior or inattentiveness. The preponderance of research regarding low-track classes was so overwhelmingly negative that the NRC concluded that students should not be educated in low-track classes as they are currently designed (Heubert & Hauser, 1999). It makes sense, therefore, to begin by eliminating the classes that do the most harm to students. When our high school began the first phase of detracking, the low-track classes were the first to go.

You should be prepared for opposition to phasing out low-track classes. Many have argued that these classes should not be eliminated but reformed instead: provided with better curriculum, better strategies, and additional time. In our opinion, successful reform of low-track classes is highly unlikely. By way of illustration, we share the following anecdote.

During our first year of middle school math acceleration, it was discovered that some of the special education inclusion students had not been adequately prepared for the Regents exam in the middle school because their teacher felt that the course was "too difficult" for them. These students would need to take the course over again in high school. Rather than fold them into heterogeneously grouped classes with new entrants to the school system who had not taken accelerated mathematics, as 9th graders, the special education inclusion students were assigned to a class of their own: a double-period class with extra resources. The class was small (fewer than 15 students), and three excellent, committed educators-a math teacher, a special education teacher, and a teaching assistant-were assigned to teach it. The class followed the New York State Regents curriculum. Other students, identified by counselors as "low achievers," were assigned to this class as well.

The idea was a serious mistake. The class culture was not academic, the students behaved disruptively, and the double-period schedule proved to be torture for both them and the teachers. In an effort to save the class, the most disruptive students were taken out and placed in the heterogeneously grouped class. This led to better behavior and academic performance from the previously disruptive students, but back in the special low-track class, another student would invariably take on the role as the lead disruptor. Needless to say, we never pursued a tracked solution again. Today, all special education students fully participate in the accelerated course, and teachers do not make their own decisions regarding students' capabilities.

Mary T. Fletcher, one of South Side Middle School's special education teachers, has taught in both self-contained and inclusion settings in elementary and middle school, and she has seen the positive changes heterogeneous classes bring to all students. She believes that providing differentiated instruction in a heterogeneous class enhances each student's academic, social, and emotional learning experience. She shares the story of how one student benefited from a heterogeneous classroom:

Cathy was an 8th grade transfer student who worked diligently at earning and maintaining her "big bad bully" persona. She was so effective that peers and staff alike were frightened of her. Fortunately, Cathy joined a heterogeneous English classroom that implemented differentiated instruction.

During a unit on nonfiction, Cathy chose to create a visual of the destructive power of a forest fire in response to the literary image of a dragon's tongue of devouring flames. This became Cathy's hook. She painstakingly created a beautiful and haunting depiction of a dragon blotting out the sky and reducing a mighty forest to a collection of spindly sticks. The class and teacher were awed by her work. For the first time, Cathy was absorbed in completing an assignment. She worked on it after school, at home, and during free periods. Her peers and teachers saw a new side of Cathy, and she received positive attention for her newly revealed talents. In addition, her poster deepened the class's conversation about the piece, benefiting the high-achieving students in the class. The metaphor was closely examined, and Cathy's work became a conversation with the text, reflecting and contributing to the class's understanding of the essay.

Cathy's story provides some examples of how a heterogeneous classroom can improve the quality of education for all students. According to Mary Fletcher, there are many benefits to expect when instructional staff are conversant with and dedicated to differentiated instruction and detracking:

Teachers get to know their students better. As teachers work to differentiate the curriculum, they develop an awareness and understanding of their students as learners.

Students feel respected and cared for by teachers who make the effort to reach them by developing careful, differentiated lesson plans. Such students become assured that their classroom is a safe learning environment.

Differentiation allows more students to feel invested in the lesson, thereby decreasing behavioral problems. Students who previously opted to be viewed as "bad" rather than "stupid" will have their learning needs met and other talents explored, allowing them to drop the "bad" act and become instead a valuable member of the class.

Students who might have been considered less intelligent because they learn in a nontraditional way become invaluable contributors to the heterogeneous classroom. For example, an aural learner who struggles with textbook assignments can add in-depth perspective in a social studies class discussion by contributing what he or she has learned through documentaries or tapes.

Struggling students who are part of heterogeneous groups and classrooms observe and learn the techniques of less-inhibited learners. They begin to see that "smart kids" don't always know the answers, have to pause to think, and use questions to orient themselves. Students in low-track classes are cut off from exposure to the habits of successful learners.

Differentiated instruction encourages flexibility. Teachers thus become adept at adapting lessons to fulfill each student's individual needs.

Detracking removes the limits that come with rigid thinking about how learning should and does occur. Fair does not always mean "the same." For example, allowing a student who struggles with the physical act of writing to type his notes can benefit that student and the rest of the class. Not only does the student get access to the material, but the entire class has a reliable set of notes that can be used for those who were absent. This student now becomes an expert-and essential-note-taker who takes pride in his responsibility and sees himself as a member of the class.

Opening the Gates Through Choice

During the first phase of detracking in our school district, we reduced the number of high school tracks from three to two, phasing out the lowest track. At the same time, the district opened enrollment in honors courses, the higher of the two tracks. Students were allowed to enroll in honors courses in grades 9 and 10, and IB and AP courses (the honors courses) in grades 11 and 12. Teachers and counselors still made placement recommendations, but parents and students made the decision. A similar process was followed in the middle school prior to the mathematics acceleration of all students.

There were several advantages to this approach. First, it allowed parents who were worried about the influx of the former "low-track" students into the middle track to move their children up to the honors track. Although this is a less-than-noble reason for opening access to the high track, it did quell some parent opposition and allowed the reform to proceed politically. More important, this approach demonstrated that far more students could study the school's most challenging curriculum with great success. Students felt more in charge of their educational destiny. Counselors no longer needed to defend teacher recommendations that excluded students from taking the high-track classes in which they were interested. And most important of all, teachers adjusted to greater heterogeneity in honors, IB, and AP classes. Teaching strategies changed so that less time was spent on lecture and more time was spent on activities that engaged students in learning. Alternative ways to present concepts became the norm. Extra help became more important. The academic climate of the school "leveled up." All of the above helped smooth the way for the heterogeneous grouping to come, as the two tracks became a single enriched course for all students.

It is important, however, to stress that this type of two-track open enrollment should never be the final outcome, especially at the middle school and beginning high school levels. Our open enrollment process resulted in some stratification associated with the choice, counteracting the intent of the detracking process. We recommend that if you have a choice system, make the high track the default track and allow parents and students to opt out if they so desire. This approach should alleviate some of the problems we encountered. For a fuller discussion of the limitations of choice, we recommend an excellent research study on the topic: "Choosing Tracks: 'Freedom of Choice' in Detracking Schools" (Yonezawa, Wells, & Serena, 2002).

No matter how and where you begin, however, you cannot achieve long-term success without making a commitment to the development of a strong curriculum that preserves high standards for student learning. Placing all students in the same class and then allowing teachers to "teach to the middle" will result in a short-lived reform that is not in the best interest of all students. Chapter 3 will discuss what we have learned about developing an enriched curriculum that challenges and supports all learners.

Endnote

A recent study of curriculum based on TIMSS found six levels of study: the four found in SIMS plus enriched math and pre-algebra (Cogan, Schmidt, & Wiley, 2001).

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What Tracking Is and How to Start Dismantling It

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by Carol Corbett Burris and Delia T. Garrity By the time the Rockville Centre School District began to examine its levels of courses, rigid educational systems-ones that formally assigned students to college prep, general, or vocational curricular paths or schools-had been largely dismantled in the United States and replaced with somewhat less rigid tracking systems characterized by curriculum differentiation.

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Two years ago, Julie Ward, the math curriculum coordinator for Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts, took a look at test scores for the district's eighth graders from the previous school year: 70 percent of white students had passed the state math tests while only 10 percent of black students had. Digging deeper into the data, she found that the numbers were part of a pattern that was consistent year to year.

Cambridge staff began trying to understand why there were such racial disparities in math performance, remembers Manuel Fernandez, the principal at Cambridge Street Upper School, who says that he and his staff noticed a strong correlation with the ways students were placed in math courses.

"Over time you end up with lower-level math courses filled with black and Latino children, and high-level math classes with white and Asian children," he said. "Students internalize it-they believe the smart kids are the white kids. Our staff said we cannot continue to divide our students this way."

Tracking-the practice of separating students by perceived ability into different classes-has been particularly pervasive and contentious in math. In eighth-grade math classes alone, 75 percent of American schoolchildren are placed in ability-based classes, making math the most tracked course in schools, according to the Brookings Institution. Decisions about tracking vary school to school but are typically based on test scores and grades, along with teacher recommendations, which some research suggests can be biased.

Students internalize it-they believe the smart kids are the white kids. Our staff said we cannot continue to divide our students this way.

In the past several years, schools and districts around the country, including ones in Cambridge, San Francisco, and Escondido, California, have eliminated math tracking, recognizing that the practice can create inequities between students, with significant ramifications as they progress through school. Lower track students receive a less rigorous and rich math curriculum, which can impact their math proficiency over time. Tracking can also stymie long-term student achievement: Algebra I is a gateway course that students must take to enroll in upper-level high school and college math classes-and in many cases, to continue in college studies at all, particularly at community colleges.

Research suggests that math tracking is not an effective practice for improving student performance, either. A 2016 meta-analysis of nearly 100 years of research found that between-class grouping, or tracking, did not benefit students at either the high or low ends of achievement, although fully jumping a grade can lead already high-achieving students to academically outperform same-age peers. Additionally, children are acutely aware of where they stand in tracked classes and identify as "smart" or "not smart" based on their placement-beliefs that can stick with them for life, according to multiple studies.

In contrast, classes where students are placed in mixed-ability groups and teachers foster a growth mindset can have the opposite effect. Research shows that students in districts that have detracked-and set high expectations for all students-scored higher on state assessments. These districts also helped staff and students internalize a growth mindset and the idea that all students can learn and improve.

Giving All Students Access

Until five years ago, eighth-grade students in the 56,000-student San Francisco district were typically placed in Algebra I or general eighth-grade math, based on grades and teacher recommendations. From 2008 to 2010, nearly 80 percent of black and Latino students were placed in General Math, while 55 percent of Asian and white eighth graders were placed in Algebra I, a higher level course. Of the black and Latino students in Algebra I, more than half had to repeat the class.

By high school, the numbers had not improved: Among the graduating high school class of 2014, less than 25 percent of all students were proficient in Algebra II, but the results were even worse for black and Latino students, just 5 percent of whom were proficient.

Math tracking systems like San Francisco's old system are ineffective in part because only some of the students are exposed to the content they need to grow as math learners while others are not, according to a statement from the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. The NCTM points to flat national math scores over decades, the need for remedial math in college for 50 percent of students, and the poor performance of U.S. students on international tests in mathematical literacy as evidence that current practices undermine student access to learning.

With support from teachers and school leaders, the San Francisco district eliminated tracking in eighth-grade math in the 2014-15 school year, and instead required all students take Algebra I in ninth grade. Results have been striking: The repeat rate for Algebra I has plunged for all racial and ethnic groups, from an average of 40 percent to 10 percent, including for English language learners and low-income students. For black students, the repeat rate dropped from 52 percent to 19 percent, and for Latino students, from 57 down to 14 percent. At the same time, black and Latino students are enrolling in advanced high school math courses at higher rates.

"San Francisco had a strong team of math coaches and leaders who knew what research was telling them and decided to take it on," said Jo Boaler, a Stanford University mathematics education professor and researcher who has worked with the district. "What has changed is the messages kids are getting-they are no longer being told that they have a fixed brain."

Similarly, at Cambridge Street, which detracked eighth-grade math last year, twice as many students passed the math common assessment, and 95 percent said they wanted to pursue honors math in high school. Next year all eighth-grade classes in the district will detrack math. "It was about giving all students access to accelerated curriculum," says Cambridge Street eighth-grade math teacher Kendal Schwarz.

Promoting a Growth Mindset-for Teachers

A tracking system impacts much more than student placements, though, and can reinforce established-and flawed-perceptions about students' math competence.

More so than other subjects, math can be a sticking point for parents and educators, many of whom believe a student either gets the material (is "a math person") or doesn't. Yet in traditional classrooms, where speed of completion of rote problems is emphasized, students who "get it" are often those with more practice or who are simply good at memorizing.

Educators can often reinforce these assumptions. Studies have found that white teachers tend to have lower expectations for black students than white ones, and that black students are less likely to be recommended for gifted or advanced math classes than white students, even by black teachers, which can influence placements in a tracking-based system.

These decisions about math placements can have a considerable impact on how students see themselves and perform in math. Children, especially in middle school, internalize their placement in tracked math classes, and those who perceive themselves as low performers tend to disengage and succumb to the perceived image, or stereotype, of their group.

"Math is one of the places where we reinforce you are good at it or you aren't," says Lizzy Hull Barnes, math supervisor for the San Francisco district. "Status in the classroom is so significant in how it plays out in math."

But math mindsets don't have to stay fixed for either educators or students. In one study by Stanford researcher Dave Paunesku, students given a growth mindset message-that one's intelligence can grow with practice-mastered new math concepts more readily than students given generic encouragement. While the shift to a growth mindset can sound nebulous, concrete strategies like having students work in heterogeneous groups and visually represent their thinking, and emphasizing that "no one is good at all ways of working, but everyone is good at some of them," can help.

In Cambridge's newly detracked classes, for example, focusing on problem-solving and group work around complex tasks has helped build confidence among students of differing ability levels, says seventh-grade math teacher Stephen Abreu. "We have less of students waiting for the 'smart kid' to answer the question and more different types of learners sharing what they notice," said Abreu.

Getting Buy-in

Districts and schools can't simply detrack and assume great results will follow. Districts that have successfully detracked have had to work with both educators and parents to adapt to the new system-especially addressing the status and perceived advantage of tracking with families and students.

Districts and schools that detrack woo skeptics by explaining the benefits to all students-and proving it with results, according to Abi Leaf, the mathematics content specialist for the Escondido Union High School District in Southern California, which switched to mixed, non-tracked math classes for ninth and 10th graders in 2013. Escondido detracked when the Common Core State Standards arrived, so it was part of larger conversations about how to meet the standards, said Leaf, who added that teachers emphasize "that all children are brilliant, all people in a classroom have something to offer, and doing it fastest is not always best."

It gives adults a different experience of math, and they build a vision of what's possible.

Her district also provided significant professional development for educators-including support from outside consultants-and encourages teachers to collaborate in small teams to help change educators' mindsets about math. Since the district detracked, enrollment in higher-level math classes has increased. In addition, "teachers say they are much happier with their work," Leaf said.

Similarly, in both Cambridge and San Francisco, teachers were brought together for intensive professional learning time and worked together to rewrite the curriculum to focus on deeper rather than faster learning. Cambridge teachers worked with coaches to focus on "math talks," or ways to get more students sharing what they know (and don't) in class. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, teachers throughout the district now work collaboratively on math problems and contribute to a shared set of rich "low floor, high ceiling" math tasks and curriculum ideas that are collected at an open district website.

"It's a shift in mindsets and beliefs," Barnes says about the change. "It gives adults a different experience of math, and they build a vision of what's possible."

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Two years ago, Julie Ward, the math curriculum coordinator for Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts, took a look at test scores for the district's eighth graders from the previous school year: 70 percent of white students had passed the state math tests while only 10 percent of black students had.

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Opinion: Separating "gifted" children hasn't led to better achievement

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Opinion: Separating "gifted" children hasn't led to better achievement

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The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

When New York City's mayor began a move to revamp the program of selective schools last year, a public outcry ensued, and the issue has yet to be resolved.

Objections echoed those in the San Francisco Unified School District, which six years ago began in earnest the elimination of advanced mathematics classes until after 10th grade. Parents created Facebook groups to oppose the changes.
Related: Ending racial inequality in gifted education
Many believe that children learn more effectively in schools or classes with similar learners, but are they right? It is a question that has long intrigued and divided people. When learners show different achievement levels, should we teach them separately or together? I have spent my career studying this question and, although the logic of separate classes seems strong, evidence leads us in a different direction.

For instance, after San Francisco Unified de-tracked math, the proportion of students failing algebra fell from 40 percent to 8 percent and the proportion of students taking advanced classes rose to a third, the highest percentage in district history. Until 10th grade, students take the same mathematics classes. From 11th grade on, students can choose different pathways.

Eight Bay Area school districts found similar results when they de-tracked middle-school mathematics and provided professional development to teachers. In 2014, 63 percent of students were in advanced classes, whereas in 2015 only 12 percent were in advanced classes and everyone else was taking Math 8. The overall achievement of the students significantly increased after de-tracking. The cohort of students in eighth-grade mathematics in 2015 were 15 months ahead of the previous cohort of students who were mainly in advanced classes.

Recent national data show the same downsides to ability grouping: In the National Assessment of Educational Progress study for 2017, elementary schools that reported using reading groups "almost always" scored lower on average than those that used them "hardly ever."

Why do these results arise? It seems to make sense that learners who are ready for different content are grouped together, and students who are high-achieving push ahead and take advanced classes, but there's a problem with such an approach.

International studies show that the United States is one of the most tracked education systems in the world, but tracking hasn't led to high achievement for the country.

We are at a point where the negative impacts of fixed-ability thinking are undeniable. And when we separate students into different classes, the message we send them is that their ability is fixed. When students, instead, embrace the knowledge that there are no limits to their learning, outcomes improve. When students develop a "limitless perspective" positive changes go through their lives, but when they get the opposite message - you're smart, or you're not smart - they constantly evaluate themselves against these fixed ideas. When young people believe their ability is more or less fixed, any struggle they encounter is devastating and can cause them to turn away from subjects.
Related: OPINION: From one white parent to another: Don't pick schools because they're selective and mostly white
In a film shared on youcubed.org that invited Stanford students to share the effects of the "gifted" labels they'd received, students talked about how the fixed labels had changed them in some unexpected ways. Some said they decided not to pursue engineering because they were not the best students in their chemistry classes (and presumed that could never change), while others shared that they'd learned they shouldn't ask questions, as "gifted people are meant to know everything." These are not ideas we want students to hold. They set students on unproductive learning pathways and cause them to shy away from difficult subjects.

The other reason that students do well in mixed groups is that teachers know they need to "differentiate" work, providing opportunities for students to take work to different levels. When work is open and students can extend their ideas to any level, high achievement is a possibility for any student. Tracked groups are often more limiting for students, as they allow teachers to presume they know what students need, and provide narrow questions that do not allow students to achieve highly and do not encourage students to engage in complex, interesting thinking.

This difference between tracked and untracked math experiences was illuminated recently in a survey we gave to San Francisco ninth-graders and ninth-graders across another large district, where all students are in tracked groups. The San Francisco students were significantly more positive about both mathematics and their own potential. Importantly, the San Francisco students were also significantly more likely than students in tracked groups to say that they enjoyed solving complex math problems, and that work was at the right level for them - neither too easy nor too hard.
This story about separating gifted children was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up here for our newsletter. Jo Boaler is the Nomellini-Olivier professor of education at Stanford, co-founder of youcubed.org and author of the new book Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers Join us today. by HarperOne.
International studies show that the United States is one of the most tracked education systems in the world, but tracking hasn't led to high achievement for the country. Instead, it has brought about stark racial divisions in opportunity and achievement. We know that students need to know that they can learn anything and be provided with the opportunities to do so. Now is the time to invest in the teacher professional development that allows this to happen. For when we tell students they can reach the sky, and provide them with opportunities to do so, amazing things happen.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
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OPINION: Separating 'gifted' children hasn't led to better achievement

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Advertisement The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox. When New York City's mayor began a move to revamp the program of selective schools last year, a public outcry ensued, and the issue has yet to be resolved.

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Pursuing Equity and Excellence in MathematicsCourse Sequencing and Placement in San Francisco

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Pursuing Equity and Excellence in MathematicsCourse Sequencing and Placement in San Francisco

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Just Equations' report The Mathematics of Opportunity describes how traditional approaches to mathematics education can contribute to inequity and highlights emerging approaches to change that equation. The goal is to ensure that math instruction is more equity-oriented and that math requirements are more valid and aligned across educational systems.
Quantitative reasoning skills are an important underpinning for achievement in school, at work, and in life. But, perhaps because it plays such a primary role in fostering such skills, mathematics can be wielded in ways that arbitrarily close doors to educational advancement.

Even as math expectations can serve as a foundation for academic success, they can also operate as arbitrary filters that needlessly stop many students in their educational tracks, especially students of color and others who are traditionally marginalized in the education system. In fact, surveys have shown that a majority of the U.S. population dislikes and fears mathematics.

The architecture of math opportunity for too long has been shaped by misconceptions about math ability that magnify existing inequities. These, in turn, are reinforced by math's use as a marker or pedigree that confers access to opportunities. Designing a new mathematics of opportunity entails re-thinking the way content requirements, instructional approaches, and assessment practices combine to form policies that can determine students' future educational opportunities.

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The Mathematics of Opportunity: Rethinking the Role of Math in Educational Equity - Just Equations

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Just Equations' report The Mathematics of Opportunity describes the limitations of traditional practices and highlights emerging approaches. The goal is to ensure that mathematics education is more equity-oriented, and that math requirements are more valid and aligned across educational systems.

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Equity Literacy Institute, Paul Gorski

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Equity Literacy Institute, Paul Gorski

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Opening the Gates: Detracking and the International Baccalaureate

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Opening the Gates: Detracking and the International Baccalaureate

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Background/Context: There is broad agreement about the benefits of taking AP and/or IB courses in high school. Nonetheless, student access to such courses remains uneven and inequitable, due largely to the practice of tracking students by perceived "ability." These tracking practices are often defended based on the contention that detracking and mixed-ability classes are impractical or unworkable. This study's conclusions inform the policy debate on the efficacy of detracking as an instructional strategy and add to the emerging literature concerning the potential of providing a school's most challenging, highest quality curriculum to all students. Research Questions: We study a reform that combines two basic elements: detracking in Grades 6 through 10 plus open IB enrollment in Grades 11 and 12. We answer four questions: (a) Did greater numbers (and proportions) of students enroll in IB courses as the district progressively detracked its math and ELA courses? (b) As detracking took place over time, did IB courses become accessible to a broader range of students with respect to prior achievement? (c) How did students who enrolled in IB courses after detracking perform on their end-of-course IB assessments, conditional on prior achievement? Here we particularly focus on whether high-performing students appeared to perform worse on the IB assessments as the IB classes were composed of higher numbers of students with lower prior achievement. (d) Conditional on taking a math IB course, did students become less likely to take the more challenging Math SL IB course (relative to the less challenging Math Studies IB course)? Intervention/Program/Practice: Policy to detrack access to high school IB courses. Research Design: We use an interrupted time series approach to examine whether the onset of detracking coincided with (a) increased IB participation or (b) decreased IB scores. We also document whether low-, middle-, or high-prior skill groups of students perform less well during detracking. Finally, we explore whether racial achievement gaps on statewide assessments were exacerbated by detracking. Recommendations: The results associated with this detracking reform challenged two widespread beliefs. First, the school's highest achievers continued to succeed in the more heterogeneous IB classes. Second, the average IB scores for the school's lower achievers were the same or higher after detracking began, even though many more such students enrolled in those courses. In short, this case study documents the potential for not rationing the enriched, world-class curriculum of the International Baccalaureate.

Descriptors: Track System (Education), Advanced Placement, Honors Curriculum, High School Students, Equal Education, Access to Education, Educational Policy, Educational Change, Grade 6, Grade 7, Grade 8, Grade 9, Grade 10, Grade 11, Grade 12, Enrollment Trends, Academic Achievement, Mathematics Instruction, Student Participation, Racial Differences, Achievement Gap

Teachers College, Columbia University. P.O. Box 103, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027. Tel: 212-678-3774; Fax: 212-678-6619; e-mail: tcr@tc.edu; Web site: http://www.tcrecord.org

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ERIC - EJ1225419 - Opening the Gates: Detracking and the International Baccalaureate, Teachers College Record, 2019

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Background/Context: There is broad agreement about the benefits of taking AP and/or IB courses in high school. Nonetheless, student access to such courses remains uneven and inequitable, due largely to the practice of tracking students by perceived "ability." These tracking practices are often defended based on the contention that detracking and mixed-ability classes are impractical or unworkable.

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Black Parents Force District to End Academic Tracking

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Black Parents Force District to End Academic Tracking

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Education Week March 4, 2020

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Fed up with district's unmet pledges to stop steering African American students into low-level classes, parents take action

For years, black parents in the Upper Dublin school district in suburban Philadelphia complained that their children were steered into less-rigorous classes and faced harsher discipline than their white peers for similar offenses.

The parents repeatedly met with district administrators and got assurances that the district would take steps to end tracking. But nothing significantly changed.

The final straw came on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in 2015, when district officials told members of the group, Concerned African American Parents, or CAAP, that they would not proceed with a plan to remove the lowest-level academic courses that year because teachers wouldn't be on board and the district needed more time to make it work, said Tina Lawson, a lawyer who is the group's president.

"Parents were crying. They were in tears. People were upset," Lawson said.

"[M]y first instinct was, 'OK, well, let's just sue them. They can't get away with this. What they're doing is illegal, and we're not going to go for it.'"

Just two years prior, Lawson, whose three children attended private schools before she enrolled them in Upper Dublin in 2012, had no idea what tracking was. But the practice was the lived reality for decades for many black parents in a district where African Americans make up about 7 percent of the 4,000-student enrollment, she said.

Generations of Tracking

Some of the children of the families who had been pushing to eliminate tracking were already in their 30s and had found that the less academically-rigorous classes they took in Upper Dublin had not prepared them for college. Once they got funneled into those classes-as early as middle school-they were unlikely to ever get out and participate in Advanced Placement or honors classes, Lawson said.

"[C]oming from a private school [background] where everyone pays and basically everyone gets the same education, I just found it so hard to believe," Lawson said. "That was my naive perspective, thinking, 'Oh, everyone is getting the same thing here.'"

The parents filed complaints, first with the state Human Relations Commission and later with the federal education department in 2015, alleging a long-standing pattern of discrimination that steered African American students into low-level classes. Black students, they alleged, were underrepresented in upper-track courses and were less likely to be identified for gifted education classes.

They also argued that overly-harsh disciplinary practices led to African American students being suspended at higher rates than their white peers who committed similar offenses. The pattern was the same when it came to involving law enforcement. When white and black students committed similar offenses, police were called more often when they involved African American students. Those calls were often left to the discretion of school personnel.

For example, in the 2014-15 school year, black students comprised 8.5 percent of the enrollment of Upper Dublin High School, but made up 45 percent of the out-of-school suspensions, according to the complaint.

R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy, an associate professor in the sociology of education program at New York University, said predominantly white suburban school systems with small numbers of students of color often have the largest disparities in suspensions.

Families of color, especially if they may live in apartment buildings, are often not seen as full members of the communities. And when they seek redress from the school systems, "rather than being fought for, they are fought with, and their issues are sidelined or eschewed."

"If we are serious about doing the work about reducing disparity, the first step in the process is listening to those who are more likely to be impacted," said Lewis-McCoy, whose research explores the experiences of black families in suburban school systems. "So a district that's high performing, a district that by many measures is diverse, can still have a racial problem, can still have a class problem, and until people are forced to look at that, they often avoid it."

Menu of Correction Actions

Nearly four years after the parents filed the federal complaint, the two sides reached an agreement through mediation. Under the settlement, the district will reduce the number of tracks in math classes from three to two in 6th grade, beginning in the current school year, and do the same in 7th and 8th grades over the next two years. It must also develop a math course for 8th grade students who are not ready to take Algebra 1.

By the 2022-23 school year, the district should have no other tracks besides "academic" and "honors" at the high school, and student enrollment in AP and honors courses should not depend on whether the student previously took AP or honors classes. The district must drop a form known as "against educational advice," which parents had to sign if they disagreed with a counselor or teacher's recommendation for their child's placement in a class.

Parents saw this as an additional hurdle that often required them to visit the school, and was a sign that district officials did not trust their judgment of their children's academic abilities, Lawson said.

The district also had to update its policies for when police can be called to schools. Before the new policy was adopted last year, police were often called at the discretion of school personnel. Now only the principal can do that, and the document lists cases in which police must be called, like weapons possession and assault, and cases where principals have some discretion in calling the police. All staff must undergo implicit-bias training, while administrative and instructional staff at the high school have to undergo training in restorative disciplinary practices.

The Upper Dublin settlement could be a model for parents in other districts who are in a similar situation, said Benjamin Geffen, a staff attorney at the Public Interest Law Center, a Philadelphia-based public interest firm that represented the Upper Dublin parents.

"Obviously every district has a different factual situation, but nonetheless, I am hopeful that other families in similar districts around the country can use this settlement agreement as a starting point for solving related problems that they may see in their own districts," Geffen said.

New Leadership Brings Optimism

One reason the Upper Dublin district and parents reached an accord was the arrival in 2018 of Superintendent Steven Yanni, who came from a nearby district and had been following the case.

He believes tracking is bad and inequitable. In his previous districts, Yanni said he had an equity focus that included many of the remedies the Upper Dublin parents were seeking, such as reducing out-of-school suspensions and holding anti-bias training for the staff.

"I truly believe that we can only move kids as far as we are willing to increase our expectations, and in low-level classes, I just don't believe-I've never believed-that kids have access to high teacher expectations and also access to rigorous coursework," he said.

Even before the agreement was hammered out, Yanni told the African American parents he planned to remove the lowest-level math class in 6th grade.

Some of his efforts go beyond what the agreement requires. He set up a math pilot program to help all students reach a level of proficiency, and the leadership staff is working with teachers to unpack standards so they know what students need to know and be able to do at every grade level. He's also committed to increasing diversity of the staff-a difficult task in a state struggling to bring new people, including people of color, into the profession. Currently, the district leadership team is nearly 12 percent African American, but the teaching and professional staff is only about 3.5 percent black, he said.

Yanni can't explain why previous administrations were so slow to respond to parents' concerns. But he thinks the delay made it harder for the district to eventually do so.

"I truly believe that our teachers want this, that our teachers want the de-tracking to happen," Yanni said. "We want to have high expectations for kids. They just need some support to help them make those changes and that's what we're doing now."

Yanni's commitment to making changes and his openness to meeting and keeping them apprised of progress have made the CAAP parents optimistic. He has created an equity committee to address concerns of not just African American students, but also Hispanic students, Asian students, students whose first language is not English, and students from low-income families.

While they are "somewhat" satisfied with the resolution, Lawson said parents had to leave some concerns on the table while they were hammering out the agreement last summer.

Still, Lawson thinks that because the parents now have a working relationship with the superintendent, whom she called "proactive," they can explore those issues without having to go to court.

A lingering concern is the superintendent's responsibility to balance the needs of all students in the district along with those who've not received the attention they deserved, Lawson said.

"We get as a superintendent you have to make sure all children are treated equally and that all children receive the same education," she said, "but we have a particular interest in this small group of children who haven't been treated well by the district all of these years."

While the agreement requires the district's school board to adopt official policies enshrining the steps into district practices, in order to make it harder for a future school board or superintendent to disregard them, it's largely up to the parents to monitor the agreement and ensure that it sticks, Geffen said.

"It's really important for parent groups like this to be constantly on the lookout for families with younger children who are willing to get engaged with the group's work so the group doesn't just age out of the school district just as it is nearing success," Geffen said.

There is concern that a new superintendent and board could upend it all-though they would have to do so after public hearings and bypassing new policies.

Lewis-McCoy, who wrote "Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling," said it will all come down to implementation, particularly in ensuring that black students are not suspended at disproportionate rates. That requires everyone in the system to radically rethink how they engage with students, he said. Parents will also have to watch for whether the district is switching from out-of-school suspensions to in-school suspensions.

"If that is the case, you're still going to have a disparity in schooling experience," he said.

A key is ensuring the process is not top-down. If those charged with putting changes into effect are not on board, they could derail them. And there could be intense pressure from parents with means, he said. They can view detracking and expanding access to honors and AP as a zero-sum game or dumbing down of content that reduces their childrens' chances of getting into elite colleges, and that, he said, could lead them to threaten to leave the district.

That could push the superintendent or school board to pass policies that may appear equitable but serve to further the interests of those with the loudest voices.

"Implementation is going to be where this plan lives or dies, and then what needs to be done if implementation is actually not working out," he said.

Staying the Course

That's something Yanni is working hard to avoid, he said.

He said he has hired a new leadership team committed to equitable outcomes for students.

The district is rolling out training in small groups for all staff to help them understand their biases and adopt practices that would mitigate their impacts, reviewing curricula to ensure that materials reflect the students sitting in the classrooms, and using non-verbal screenings to ensure students who are not proficient in English have an equal shot of getting into gifted and talented classes.

The district is relying heavily on data to track performance to see where gaps exist, where students are doing well and where they aren't. It's using nationally-normed tests to compare student performance in Upper Dublin with peers across the country to give officials a broader picture of how their students are doing.

"There has been so much talk and energy around it that the ability to not be on the same page, particularly right now, isn't really even an option," Yanni said. "But we will be continuing to monitor it because as we move on, I don't want the district to slide backwards."

But he also said trust is essential to making this work, and that will take time, given the black parents' experiences with previous administrations.

It's too early to tell what's going to happen in Upper Dublin. District data show that African American students make up fewer than 4 percent of students enrolled in upper-level math courses at the high school this year, and about 3 percent of those taking upper-level science classes.

Yanni said he expects those numbers to improve as the district increases access to those courses.

He's determined that the steps outlined in the agreement and other work he's leading will bring lasting change.

"One of the things that I felt really passionate about is to not just do this and check the box that we did this, but to make sure that we constantly evolve and constantly grow, and don't slide back into any patterns that may have existed in the past."

Published in Print: March 4, 2020, as Black Parents Force the End of Academic Tracking

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Black Parents Force District to End Academic Tracking

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For years, black parents in the Upper Dublin school district in suburban Philadelphia complained that their children were steered into less-rigorous classes and faced harsher discipline than their white peers for similar offenses. The parents repeatedly met with district administrators and got assurances that the district would take steps to end tracking.

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What students can show us about how school is letting them down - and how to fix it

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To do this, we collected nearly 30,000 in-the-moment student surveys. Using a technology that prompted students in grades six through 12 to answer a few questions at random times during class, we captured a snapshot of their real-time reactions to school. We also surveyed third through fifth graders during the last five minutes of class, and found that elementary students were just as capable as their older schoolmates of providing rich and telling insight into their lives at school.

Across our five partner school systems, we also observed nearly a thousand full-length lessons at all grade levels from K-12, and reviewed almost 5,000 assignments and more than 20,000 individual student work samples. We visited each participating school daily for a week straight at three points in the year, which gave us the chance to see the same teachers and students at the beginning, middle, and end of their time together (and offered a much more comprehensive lens on the learning environment than a single day's lesson could have). These classrooms were not substantially different than the others in their districts, and they represented a wide range: those with new teachers and veterans; those at all age levels; a diverse range of subjects; mixed-ability classes and tracked ones. Four of these school systems were located in states that use standards aligned to the Common Core State Standards; one was not.

To assess the quality of content students worked on, we looked at four elements of every assignment: (1) whether the content in the assignments was aligned to relevant grade-level academic standards; (2) whether the assignments gave students the chance to engage in important content-specific practices, like citing evidence from rigorous texts in literacy, or discussing mathematical ideas using precise mathematical language; (3) whether the assignments gave students a chance to learn relevant content that built their knowledge of the world or helped them see how what they were learning could be applied in the real world; and (4) student performance on both the assignments themselves and against the bar for their grade-level standards.

To study instruction, we observed full-length class periods and assessed (1) whether students were doing what they were asked; (2) whether they were being asked to work on grade-level content; and (3) whether teachers were using instructional practices that gave students the chance to do most of the thinking in the lesson.

We surveyed teachers to capture their knowledge of grade-level standards, their opinions on those standards, and their beliefs about their classroom practices and their students' abilities. We conducted focus groups with nearly 100 teachers and interviewed 24 school leaders at multiple times throughout the year. And we assessed a large set of extant data provided to us by our partner districts on course access, enrollment policies, and district policies on curriculum adoption, among others.

We hypothesized that students' experiences of school were influenced by a confluence of factors-among them, the quality of the work they were doing, the instruction they received, and the expectations of their teachers-and that those factors would interact to have an impact on their academic growth. Taken together with students' in-the-moment survey responses, we were able to triangulate students' perspectives with the classes they were in, the work they were doing and instruction they were receiving, and their academic outcomes.

In addition to amassing this rich data set, we also sat down with a smaller subset of students (more than 50 over two school years), and got to know them. We observed them in class and spoke to them about their experiences, their likes and dislikes, their families, their goals. Just a few of those students are profiled here. While their names and identifying characteristics have been changed throughout this report, their stories help us understand what the data means in the real lives of individual young people.

They also help us understand what real, tangible changes school systems can make-starting tomorrow and over the long haul-to provide more students with school experiences that are meaningful, that honor their aspirations for themselves and their families, and that give them a fighting chance to meet those goals.
For our complete methodology, including further explanation of our analytical approaches and full analysis results, see the Technical Appendix.

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What can 4,000 students teach us about school? Read The Opportunity Myth.