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-Tracking is when students are divided by skill level and/or test scores into low, middle, or high groups, then sent along a different educational track.
- Students naturally learn at different rates.
- Some students need more time and attention than others. - - To accommodate different needs, schools started tracking.
- Tracking is the concept of separating students by academic ability into different groups.
- This article describes the pros and cons of tracking.
- If done correctly, tracking also referred to as ability grouping in schools can be very successful.
- Tracking can easily be an inaccurate and unsuccessful if done wrong.

Pros
- Educators may find tracking useful for making teaching easier because students are at the “same” level.
- If done correctly, tracking also referred to as ability grouping in schools can be very successful.

Cons
- It is difficult to create homogenous classrooms since students learn at different rates.
- Studies have found the groups are more often based on race than student’s abilities.
- Students in low-ability tracks have fewer learning opportunities and difficulty moving into higher tracks.
- Expectation theory and believing some children do poorly because their teachers do not expect much of kids from certain racial and ethnic groups.

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The fact of the matter is that some students learn more quickly than others and some students need more individualized attention. In order to accommodate the differing needs of their students, many schools started to adopt a tracking system, separating students by academic ability into different groups for certain subjects or for all subjects. This type of program is sometimes called ability grouping (though these are technically two different things) and it is a hotly debated issue in public schools. Before you decide whether tracking might be a good option for your child, take a moment to learn what it is as well as the pros and cons of this type of system.
What is Tracking or Ability Grouping?
Also referred to as phasing or streaming, tracking is a system in which students are divided into classes based on their overall achievement. Students are ranked as being average, normal, or below average and they are divided into classes with students of the same achievement level. Tracking has been used in American public schools for nearly a century and it has changed and developed a great deal during that time. In the early years, tracking was a response to growing numbers of immigrant children coming into the public school system. The goal was to provide those children with an education that was catered to their limited understanding of the English language and their limited preparation, as compared to native students. What ended up happening, however, was a form of internal segregation within the American public school system.

Today, tracking in American public schools is less strict, in most cases, and it is often used just for certain subjects or classes, not for the entire educational system. Many secondary schools use the concept of tracking to provide different levels of difficulty for certain courses, dividing students into basic, honors, and college-preparation groups. Some schools use a variation on tracking called ability grouping which is less formal and less permanent than tracking. Ability groups are formed within individual classrooms and they never last longer than a year. They are also assigned by the teacher, not by the school system, according to the particular subject or for individual lessons. For example, during a math lesson, the teacher might divide the students into ability groups based on those who need to review basic facts before addressing the assignment and those who are ready for a more challenging assignment.

This TEDTalk makes the case for ending tracking.
The Advantages of Tracking
The fact that tracking comes in so many shapes and forms makes it difficult to determine whether it is a good or a bad thing. While tracking has been losing strength in the United States, it is an integral part of modern education in other countries such as the Netherlands. When used correctly, tracking enables the teacher to cater his lessons toward the specific ability level of the students in his class. In low and normal achievement level students, this can help to ensure that the students learn the material at their own pace without falling behind. In terms of scholastic achievement for these individuals, tracking has not been found to make a significant difference. For above-average achievers, however, tracking has been shown to produce substantial gains - students who learn more quickly are allowed to do so and they are challenged according to their ability level.

When tracking is divided by subject, it enables students to receive instruction targeted to their ability level for each subject. For example, a student who is highly gifted in math skills can attend math classes with the more advanced math students but if he has lower-level English skills, he can attend an English class that caters to that ability level. Not only does this help to ensure that students continue to learn at their own ability level, but it may also help to address the self-esteem issues that sometimes come with placing low achieving students in classrooms with high achievers. Many studies have shown that self-esteem is correlated with academic achievement so, in theory, tracking should be a system that promotes academic success. There is, however, the possibility that placing a student in a lower track could lower his self-esteem - each case is different.

This video "explores the history, practice, perils, and alternatives to grouping students for classroom instruction according to their perceived abilities".
The Disadvantages of Tracking
Though tracking systems have many potential benefits, there are also some drawbacks to consider. For example, it is not uncommon for tracking systems to encourage a sort of segregation within the school system. It has been found that many low-track classes are comprised of minority and low-income students while the upper tracks tend to be dominated by students who come from higher socioeconomic standing. During the 1980s, Jeannie Oaks brought to light a theory that many low-income and minority students were placed in lower tracks even when it wasn't a reflection of their academic abilities. She addressed the issue of "industrial schooling", suggesting that upper-class students received more educational opportunities while lower-income students were funneled into vocational programs and given limited educational opportunities.

Another potential disadvantage of the tracking system is that by dividing students into a group by their academic ability, the educational system may cause those students to self-label themselves as inferior to upper track students. This leads to a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy as the students experience lower self-esteem due to this separation which, in turn, can lead to reduced academic performance. There is also the fact that many students who enter ability groups or tracking systems end up staying there throughout the course of their academic career - their abilities are not always reevaluated between grades to determine whether a change needs to be made. Some detractors from the tracking system also suggest that teachers of low achieving students have lower expectations of their students and they do not provide the challenge and the drive needed to push those students to improve themselves.

This video offers an overview of educational tracking.
Additional Factors to Consider
When used properly, tracking or ability grouping in schools can be very successful but it is important to understand the limitations of this type of system. The actual composition of the tracks is very important and it is difficult to create homogenous classrooms since students inherently tend to learn at different rates, regardless of their achievement level or ability. In order to keep a tracking system working as it should, it needs to be reassessed occasionally so students can be regrouped if needed. Another factor that affects the success of a tracking program is the degree to which the curriculum is modified for each group. It is important for all students to be challenged and to be encouraged to improve, though improvement looks different for different students. It is up to the teacher to determine the proper degree to which individual students can and should be challenged to produce growth.

When it comes to the issue of tracking in schools, there is no clear right or wrong. In cases where tracking is successful, students and teachers benefit from having a more homogenous group of students - this can lead to increased educational effectiveness and higher test scores. In other cases, however, tracking may cause lower-achieving students to miss out on the opportunity to learn with (and from) higher achieving students - this can lead to increased inequality. When choosing a school for your child, it is important to consider the issue of tracking on a case-by-case basis to determine whether it is being used effectively and, if so, whether it might be a good option for your child.

Questions? Contact us on Facebook @publicschoolreview.

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The Pros and Cons of Tracking in Schools - PublicSchoolReview.com

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Tracking was once the standard of public education in the United States but today there is a great deal of controversy regarding its relevance. Consider the pros and cons of tracking to decide whether it might be a good option for your child.

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Students know when they are being tracked. It can influence the way they feel about themselves, peers, and teachers.

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The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, despite their reputation for quality education, have one of the widest achievement gaps in the Triangle. Minority students tend to score well below white students on end-of-grade tests. Duke postdoctoral fellow Kamilah Legette '15 (PhD) wanted to find out what was going on.

Earlier studies she had conducted in Greensboro schools pointed to several factors that warranted further exploration, including how racial and ethnic identity relates to academic identity; messages students absorb from parents and teachers; and the impact of tracking and sorting students into gifted, regular, or remedial classes.

"Tracking is endemic in all schools and can perpetuate disparity," said Legette, a postdoc fellow in the Social Science Research Institute. "Students are aware that they are tracked. That impacts how they view themselves and how teachers view them. And that affects how they'll perform in the classroom."

Students who do well in school tend to consider academics an important part of their identity. The more connected they feel to the school, the harder they'll try in class and the better they'll do. Other influences might come from whether teachers think a child is smart and capable of learning the material, and whether parents emphasize a child's innate ability ("You're so good at math!") as opposed to effort ("Your hard work paid off on that test.").

Tracking is endemic in all schools and can perpetuate disparity. Students are aware that they are tracked. That impacts how they view themselves and how teachers view them. And that affects how they'll perform in the classroom.

Taking a multifaceted approach to understanding the problem made Legette's research a good fit for Bass Connections funding. The Bass Connections program encourages interdisciplinary study that brings together researchers of different levels and fields to apply their unique perspectives to the study questions and to learn from one another in the process.

Legette contacted Jennifer Lansford '95 (BA), a professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy who is affiliated with the Center for Child and Family Policy. Lansford's research focuses on parenting as she looks at students' academic achievement in diverse cultural contexts and the development of aggression and behavior problems. She and Legette found enough points where their research interests intersected that they decided to partner in a Bass Connections course they titled Schooling and Parenting: Implications for Students' Academic Identity.

Bass Connections projects are structured to have a faculty adviser, in this case Lansford, who mentors a graduate student or postdoc, Legette, who designed and is implementing the study, and a group of undergraduates or grad students who collect and analyze the data. Legette and Lansford selected five undergraduates: senior Jennifer Acosta, junior Victoria Prince and sophomores Celia Garrett, Nia Moore and Trey Walk. Their majors range from psychology and public policy to education and global cultural studies.

From her prior research, Legette observed that tracking could have a negative impact on students shunted into the low-level track, whereas students in the high-level track might have possessed the ability and drive to succeed without extra enrichment. The issue of tracking becomes more salient because of a racial and ethnic divide: Minority students are over-represented in the lower tracks, while the higher tracks have more white students.

Compacted students learn critical thinking; they break into small groups and discuss the question of the day. Non-compacted students are given worksheets that the teacher reviews in class.

Tracking begins in the sixth grade, when students begin middle school. Changing tracks is virtually impossible, Legette said, because students are taught different material, depending on the track. In math, for instance, the non-compacted classes learn sixth-grade material, while the compacted classes move through sixth- and seventh-grade work.

"Compacted students learn critical thinking; they break into small groups and discuss the question of the day," Legette said. "Non-compacted students are given worksheets that the teacher reviews in class."

Legette designed a yearlong study that collected both quantitative and qualitative data. During the fall semester, her team of undergraduates administered surveys to middle-schoolers, their parents and teachers in Chapel Hill public middle schools. (At least one of the undergraduate researchers is bilingual and can proctor the survey in Spanish.) The Duke students will do a follow-up survey toward the end of the spring semester to catch any changes over time. In the interim, the Duke undergrads have conducted open-ended interviews to hear in the child's own words how race and academics factored into the child's identity.

Those responses have been eye-opening to sophomore Nia Moore, who grew up in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg public schools and benefited from tracking.

"It's interesting seeing complex issues like race and tracking from the perspective of sixth-grade students, and seeing the difference between the answers of kids of different races" she said. "And seeing how everything connects: the things I've read about and studied and how they play out in the real world."

Senior Jennifer Acosta came to the U.S. at a young age as an immigrant. She went to underfunded Title I schools and watched many of her peers drop out. Collecting data for Legette's study got her thinking about how her life might have been different had she not been placed in the gifted-and-talented track in the fourth grade.

I saw a difference in the way students in AP classes thought about themselves compared to students in regular or remedial classes. I saw differences in how one is treated in the educational system.

"A teacher saw something in me and inspired me to do better," Acosta said. "She changed my life. I saw a difference in the way students in AP classes thought about themselves compared to students in regular or remedial classes. I saw differences in how one is treated in the educational system."

Acosta has worked on many research projects at Duke-at the Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke Immerse, a prior Bass Connections study, and she recently received the Jerome S. Bruner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research-but interviewing participants was new to her.

"I learned how difficult it can be to talk with some of the participants or communicate effectively when scheduling changes come up," she said.

The Duke students transcribe one another's interviews, giving them a chance to hear how their colleagues asked questions and handled follow-up.

As the study is Nia Moore's first research project ever, she appreciated that an entire class session was devoted to practicing interviewing skills, what to pay attention to and how to make sure they weren't guiding participants' answers. The entire team helps one another.

"We're learning together," Moore said.

After enrolling in the Bass Connections project "with zero research experience," she said, she now is designing a spin-off study to conduct in Cuba over the summer to compare students in the Communist versus capitalist society.

The Duke students are in the process of cleaning the survey data and coding the interview findings, learning to use NVivo software and looking for themes and patterns. The undergrads hope to get their work published or perhaps present their findings at a professional conference.

The researchers have offered to share their findings with parents at the schools, "to get the word out to parents," Lansford said, "that there are things they could be doing at home that may not be obvious, like praising effort rather than ability."

If we can think of ways to help students learn the same material, there could be a way to reduce some of the disparities.

Legette has secured funding to continue the study next year, in another district that has a higher number of African American students and students of a lower socioeconomic status than the Chapel Hill middle-schoolers. Ultimately, Legette would like to be able to offer suggestions for changing the current practice of tracking, making it easier for students to move to a higher track or do away with tracking altogether. She hopes to test out her ideas in a pilot program, perhaps in a rural county that has fewer parents apprehensive that their child might miss out on any potential benefits of high-level tracking.

"If we can think of ways to help students learn the same material, there could be a way to reduce some of the disparities," she said.
Originally published in the Spring 2017 issue of GIST by the Duke Social Science Research Institute (SSRI)
Learn More

View this project team's research poster.

Watch a video of Jennifer Acosta, Celia Garrett, Nia Moore and Victoria Prince giving a presentation at the EHDx Talks.

Find out how to get involved in Bass Connections.

Photo: Kamilah Legette, Celia Garrett, Victoria Prince, Nia Moore and Jennifer Acosta outside McDougle Middle School in Carrboro, NC

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How Does School Tracking Affect Students' Academic Identity?

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"Tracking is endemic in all schools and can perpetuate disparity," says Kamilah Legette, a leader of a Bass Connections project team that explored tracking and perceptions of academic identity. "Students are aware that they are tracked. That impacts how they view themselves and how teachers view them.

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A Different Perspective - What's So Bad About Tracking?

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A Different Perspective - What's So Bad About Tracking?

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- With equity at the forefront of education it is important to ask if tracking benefits everyone, regardless of ability.
- Tracking is believed to not be beneficial to low-level students, especially those from African American and Latinx backgrounds.
-Tracking can also limit a high achieving student, even those of diverse backgrounds from more opportunity and advancing.

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If there's one word that is guaranteed to get the attention of Americans, it's equity. I don't know anyone who is against it when it comes to education. Yet for some reason, we forget that equity applies not only to low-achieving students but to high-achieving students as well. Consider the practice of tracking (" Study Suggesting Benefits of High-Track Classes Doesn't Support Conclusion that Tracking Promotes Equity," National Education Policy Center, Apr. 26).

According to a report from the Brown Center, tracking is important in providing high achievers, including students of color, with the knowledge and skills necessary for success in the most demanding courses in high school. At first, that sounds like great news. After all, tracking benefits high-achieving students of all races. The alleged trouble is that the report does not consider how tracking affects students who are placed in lower-track classes.

In other words, unless tracking can be shown to equally benefit everyone regardless of ability, it is at best problematic. I say it's time to get real. Only in this country are we fixated on engineering equal outcomes for all students. Our competitors abroad have no problem whatsoever in tracking. For example, Singapore begins the practice of differentiation with its Primary School Leaving Exam and continues doing so throughout the educational process. I think that's far too early. But even if differentiation begins in high school, most Americans oppose it.

I don't understand why we persist in treating our academically gifted students as stepchildren. They can be our future leaders. But we feel guilty if we provide them with the environment in which they can flourish. Perhaps we think it is elitist. When classes are mixed, teachers have to design lessons that they hope will not bore the brightest nor discourage the slowest. Most often, they fail despite their best efforts.

Unless we disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that college is for everyone, we will continue to squander the academic abilities of high-achieving students of all races. Yet we can't seem to get comfortable with the notion that students are not being shortchanged by tracking. I had countless students who were in my low-ability classes and yet went on to gratifying, well paying, steady careers. What is inequitable about that?

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If there's one word that is guaranteed to get the attention of Americans, it's equity. I don't know anyone who is against it when it comes to education. Yet for some reason, we forget that equity applies not only to low-achieving students but to high-achieving students as well.

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Ted Talk - Student Tracking Needs to End

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Ted Talk - Student Tracking Needs to End

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- Tracking was created after WWII when people were skilled to learn how to work in specific industries such as farming, or  in factories.
- The U.S. is evolving, but our education system has stayed the same.

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Student Tracking Needs to End | Allen Chen | TEDxYouth@Conejo

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Getting on the Right Track: How One School Stopped Tracking Students

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Getting on the Right Track: How One School Stopped Tracking Students

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- Studies have found that tracking may not be the best method for teaching.
- Tracking can limit a student's development and growth.
- Grouping students into different tracks can widen the opportunity gap.

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It only takes eight minutes to understand how a system that groups students by their predetermined "ability" can limit their potential. In 2002, WNYC's Radio Rookies project featured New York City student Jaimita Haskell's story " Tracking." In it, Haskell described how it made her feel to be placed in mainstream classes while her peers were fast-tracked into advanced courses.

"I figured, this is where I was put," she said. "This is where I should be. I'll just graduate at the top of the bottom."

But when a history teacher vouched for her potential, she got a taste of advanced coursework. She saw the newer books. She participated in more vigorous discussion and work. She kept up and believed she could continue to do so.

It wasn't long, however, before Haskell was kicked out due to "overcrowding."

"I was mentally sick from the roller coaster," she said. "It brought me to the top, where I could see myself going to a good college. Then ... it dropped me to the bottom, where I could see myself going nowhere."

It's been 17 years since Haskell told her story on the radio, but her experience remains common across the United States (and worldwide), where schools continue to track students based on measures of ability like past grades, test scores and whether or not they were placed in gifted programs at a young age.

After decades of research indicating that tracking contributes to widened opportunity gaps and more segregated classrooms, your school or district may not call what they do "tracking." The term is taboo. But many schools and districts still engage in tracking-they just use a different name. Students are sorted into gifted and talented programs, selected to join honors classes or guided onto AP tracks-extended opportunities that their classmates may never see.

As a social studies teacher at Walla Walla High School in Washington state, I was part of an interdisciplinary professional learning community (PLC) focused on increasing our students' reading and writing scores. We looked at data to inform our methods and, in the process, discovered that our school's "tiered pathways"-tracking by another name-weren't working.

Students who struggled academically or behaviorally in middle school had been funneled into our "foundations" classes. Yet, the freshman failure rates showed that these classes didn't help them catch up. And they often separated Latinx English language learners and special education students from their peers, placing them on different paths.

As educators committed to social justice, we didn't want this to be a story of a bad system. We wanted this to be a story of success. We were enthusiastic about implementing better practices.

So we did. And I hope our methods-and the results-can serve as inspiration for educators who see tracking in any form in their schools and want to end it to ensure more equitable education for all students.

What Is Tracking?

Tracking refers to the practice of ability grouping. Schools sort students into different classes or sets of classes, often with differentiated, usually sequential, curriculum. Tracked students, for example, may follow a path from honors algebra to pre-calculus to AP calculus, or they may take what we might call foundational or mainstream courses instead. Decisions about which students end up on which track may be based on progress reports, tests or even anecdotal evidence.

These practices sometimes begin as early as kindergarten, where pre-first-day screenings sort students into different classes. By the time they're juniors or seniors in high school, students' access to college-preparation courses may be determined by whether they have taken honors classes and maintained a certain grade average.

In theory, tracking allows educators to challenge high-achieving students and devote more attention and resources to students who need help. Proponents argue that students have better access to learning when they are tracked into classes best suited to their abilities.

In practice, students in lower-track courses often have the fewest resources, the least-experienced teachers and the knowledge of their teachers' lowered expectations. A student like Jaimita Haskell isn't alone in feeling their fate sealed by tracking.

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Getting on the Right Track: How One School Stopped Tracking Students

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It only takes eight minutes to understand how a system that groups students by their predetermined "ability" can limit their potential. In 2002, WNYC's Radio Rookies project featured New York City student Jaimita Haskell's story " Tracking." In it, Haskell described how it made her feel to be placed in mainstream classes while her peers were fast-tracked into advanced courses.

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- Tracking can be damaging to students in lower-track classes especially low-income, often Black and Latino students are at a greater disadvantage.
- Studies show there is not a lot of benefits to higher-tracked students.
- Some schools are moving to detrack their school and have all students do high-level coursework.
- Detracking math has been shown to help close the achievement gaps.
- Supporters of detracking believe eliminating tracking would provide more equal opportunities for all.

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For decades, educators and policymakers have debated the merits of tracking, the practice of enrolling students in classes - usually in middle or high school - based on their perceived ability or achievement levels.

Research has shown that tracking can be harmful to students in lower-track classes, who are disproportionately low-income and Black and Latino, and provides no significant benefits to higher-tracked students. Starting in the 1980s, some schools moved to detracked systems, where all students are exposed to high-level classwork.

But California's proposals have fueled heated debate, with opponents arguing that detracking is unfair to students who are more advanced learners.

So how do tracking and detracking show up in classrooms? And what do parents need to know as they consider what classes their children should be enrolled in?

The History of Tracking

Tracking in U.S. schools can be traced to the 1900s, after the arrival of poor immigrants from Italy and Ireland, according to Kevin Welner, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies education policy.

Children who immigrated from those countries, or the children of immigrants who did, were considered "less capable" by school administrators, Welner says. Those students were provided a less rigorous curriculum because they were expected to work in factories, rather than attend college.

Over the next several decades, Welner says, other student groups were similarly denied access to more challenging coursework, including Black students during desegregation followed by immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

"Each time this new wave of newcomers came into mainstream schools, they were denied the high-track curriculum, the rich opportunities to learn and were instead tracked into watered down, lower-track classes," says Welner, who also directs the National Education Policy Center, an organization that conducts education research.

Most schools have since moved away from the strict practice of funneling students into either "college-prep" or "vocational" tracks in high school, and have increased academic standards across the board, with the expectation that all students should graduate prepared for college.

But tracking in its modern form - where students who are advanced in a particular subject take honors or Advanced Placement classes, and those who need extra help take remedial courses - does not look all that different, Welner says.

"It's still very much, 'this student is college material, this student isn't college material, so we need to have them in different classes,'" he says.

Pros and Cons of Detracking

In most high schools, guidance counselors and teachers decide students' course placements based on tests and other academic measures.

Detracking means placing students with mixed abilities and academic achievement in the same classes, with the intention of exposing all students to high-quality curriculum.

Proponents of heterogeneous classrooms say tracking stigmatizes children and exacerbates racial and economic achievement gaps. Black, Latino and low-income students, as well as English-language learners, are disproportionately represented in low-track classes. Students in lower-track classes tend to receive less rigorous instruction focused on rote skills. And studies have shown that low-achieving students do better academically in detracked classrooms with a more challenging curriculum.

"Providing an excellent education for all students is not easy. But tracking is a cop out," Welner says. "To default to a tracked system pretty much ensures that you are denying a high quality of education to the students who are not in the high-track classes."

But Tom Loveless, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues that having students with a wide range of abilities in the same class can make it difficult to teach. That can hold back students who are high achievers and are ready for more advanced work, Loveless says.

For a school that is detracking, "I would urge that school to provide a lot of opportunities for their high achievers to accelerate," says Loveless, who describes himself as neither pro or anti-tracking. "And they may in the end have to group them separately so that can be accomplished."

Schools cannot be expected to "take kids who are three, four years behind and have them perform far above grade level," he says.

Welner says detracking should also be coupled with extra classroom support for teachers, and for students who enter class with less preparation. Schools can also provide reading and math interventions to students in elementary school, so they do not fall behind in the first place.

What Detracking Looks Like

Twenty-five years ago, when Dale Leibforth started working at Evanston Township High School in Illinois, it felt as if there were "two high schools."

"You saw an honors-level track and a regular-level track," he says, adding that students enrolled in honors seemed to be more prepared for AP courses.

Racial differences were also apparent. White students were overwhelmingly enrolled in honors-level courses, while Black and Latino students were funneled into regular-level classes.

"It didn't seem right," recalls Leibforth, the math department chair and Advanced Placement success manager at Evanston.

So during the 2011-2012 year, the high school implemented a detracking system called "pathway to honors."

Under that system, ninth grade students are automatically enrolled in pathway to honors classes in several subjects. To receive honors credit for those classes, students must receive an 80 percent or higher on assessments that are generally administered three times each semester, Leibforth says.

"You'll have students who earn honors credit and students who will earn regular credit," he says. "But both groups will have been exposed to the honors-level work throughout."

While the school did not fully detrack its math classes - students are still tested for accelerated math classes beginning in fifth grade - it found a way to expose all students to higher-level coursework, and provide extra support.

In most districts a typical high school student takes algebra followed by geometry, algebra II and then either precalculus or no math class at all senior year. But advanced students may take algebra or geometry before starting high school, which allows them to take calculus or other higher-level math classes senior year.

In Evanston, students who start algebra in ninth grade are enrolled in small classes, where they are given more targeted instruction. The school then offers a summer geometry class, which allows those students to make up ground so they can eventually reach calculus.

During the academic year, the school also provides support classes in geometry and algebra II, where students who require extra help take a second class to reinforce math concepts.

Leibforth says the efforts have boosted enrollment in Calculus AB and Statistics, which are AP classes.

And through the pathway to honors program, more Black and Hispanic students are earning honors credit, while white students are performing "the same and oftentimes better" than they were previously.

Plus, there are other advantages, he says.

"If you walk into a class now, it matches the diversity of the school," he said. "There's a great benefit from having these multiple perspectives in the classroom."

What to Do if Your Child Is in a Low Track

Parents who believe their children have been placed in the wrong track in a particular subject should advocate with school administrators, Loveless says.

But he cautions that accelerating students who are not prepared for higher-level work could create challenges for schools and may not serve the students well.

Welner argues that lower-track classes are "harmful for every child," and suggests parents look for detracked schools or advocate for detracking efforts.

In his research at South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York, which moved from a tracked system to an International Baccalaureate curriculum for all students, Welner says students who were previously considered high or low track both performed better academically under the new system.

"Generally if your child is in a tracked school, you do not want your child to be in a low-tracked class," Welner says. "Low-track classes tend to be warehousing students, not educating them."

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What parents need to know about how schools sort students into classes.