“Ms. I’m on the D team. I'm not going to college. Only A team kids go to college.”
A student said this to me last winter after we had discussed
college in our advising period. A few weeks earlier a different student asked
me how she could move to the A team, she said she wanted to go to college and
she thought she had to be on the A team to be able to go.
Two years ago when we decided to move to a teaming structure I was
excited. We were a large middle school with over 1,000 students in grades 6-8.
Creating teams so students could share the same teachers and build a community
within their team made sense. Instead of
having to check to see which English teacher (A, B, C, or D) a student had, I
would know that they had English teacher D and math teacher D. It seemed like a
good way to make things simpler and make a big school feel more like a small
one.
When we started this up I, naively, thought that the students
would be distributed randomly, much like teachers at a small school end up whoever
comes to the school. I quickly discovered this was not the case. Instead it was decided that we would have
four teams. One team would have all the kids who received special education services,
to make it easier for the special education teachers to co-teach. Another team
would teach all the advanced classes. A third team would take on the English
Language Learners so they could provide sheltered instruction and work with the
ELL teachers. A fourth team was added for the kids who didn’t fit under those categories.
I understood the reasoning behind this, I didn’t like it, but I understood it.
It was easier. Next the teams were named: A, B, C, and D. The advanced classes
went to the A team. The kids who didn’t necessarily fit into a category became
the B team. The students receiving services from special education became the C
team, and finally the ELL’s became the D team. If you’re thinking that the
names look like the grades the students on those teams were expected to get,
you are not the only one.
If you are thinking that this is blatant tracking, again you’re
not the only one. There are piles and piles of evidence that show that tracking
is not helping our students, in fact it is harming them. Check out Keeping Track, Part 1: The
Policy and Practice Of Curriculum Inequality for detailed information.
The article Modern-Day
Segregation in Public Schools makes the argument that tracking became a way
to segregate schools after direct segregation was outlawed by Brown V. Board of
Education, something that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights
agrees with and is trying to fix. This article also argues that this
segregation is based again on race. I did not see much segregation based
directly on race in my school, primarily because at least 90% of the students
in the school were students of color. However, I did see direct segregation
based on the language spoken at home (which correlates with race) and indirect
segregation based on socio-economic status.
This was done at my school primarily to make things easier for the
teachers. This is the same argument you will generally hear in favor of
tracking. There is some validity to it, tracking can in some ways make some
things easier for teachers. That, however, is not enough to justify doing
something that is causing harm to our students.
Additionally, I don’t believe that making “things easier” for
teachers is the real reason behind tracking. If that was our end goal we would
decrease class sizes, hire more paras to assist, pay teachers more, etc. That’s
not the end goal behind tracking. The end goal behind tracking is to keep the
status quo. To keep our communities segregated and to exclude people from
joining the community in our country who hold the vast majority of the power.
The 1%. People of color, people who didn’t grow up with money, people who have
immigrated here, are not wanted within 1% (or even really the top 20%).
I’m not saying that people in my school were directly trying to
keep people segregated and lesson the opportunities they have because of one or
more of their identities. Many of the people who are pro-tracking are not directly
trying to do this. This does not, however, change the fact that it is happening
regardless of intent.
Educational philosopher Gary Fenstermacher wrote that, "using
individual differences in aptitude, ability, or interest as the basis for
curricular variation denies students equal access to the knowledge and
understanding available to humankind." That is exactly the goal of
tracking. To deny people access to knowledge and to keep the status quo within communities
across the country. It’s time we recognize this and make change so that all students
can have equal access, so that all students can go to college if they want to,
regardless of what “team” they are on.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog post this week. You did such a seamless job connecting the text, with your own personal narrative, and I applaud all the work you've done within your own school and classroom to help students feel successful. I too have had these experiences throughout my career as an educator. For nearly 6 years, I have always worked in classrooms with struggling learners, or students who inherently did not feel as though they were meant for something greater, or college after graduation. They, at some point were placed on a track for less, and they knew it. It was, is and will always be such a struggle to try and change a students mindset once it has been subconsciously ingrained in them that they have somewhere along the way failed at something. I worry about the state of education in this day and age. When DeVos was elected, and her stance was so much for charter schools, it shook me to the core. I have always worked in charter schools, and I have seen first hand how dysfunctional they can be. What people don't realize, is private schools ARE NOT charter schools. In the schools I have worked in, students are shoved along onto the next grade level, and never receive intervention to solve the underlying issue preventing them from being successful. They were being set up to fail, and that was somehow okay...
ReplyDeleteI wonder about teachers who are currently in school, and have not yet entered the realm of educating students yet. They are eager to begin their careers, but what exactly have they been told? Are they falling off this metaphorical wagon of teaching because they're passionate.
Rachel Vickers
Hi Rose,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post and the rich conversation it inspired!
What a heart-breaking post to read, though! I could hardly believe how your teams were created, much less the names they were given (come on, they couldn't name them after continents or animals??!!).
But let's break this down. While I'm philosophically opposed to all forms of tracking ranking humans according to some singular scale of worth (which is what I think happened here), I can see some advantages. For example, many ELL students might need sheltered instruction for a time. So if they can make their own team, then I can see the point. But are they allowed to enter into the high track once they advance in their English? Do we see movement between teams? If not, we have a terrible form of tracking.
Special education students often need pull out time. I used to be full bore for inclusion, in all situations. But I now see that I was being a bit radical in my hopes. True, I think having a really diverse class is important. Students with ASD, or perhaps with a severe intellectual disability, teach us how to care for each other, to look for the best in each other, and to listen. To be patient. These are not life skills we can afford to do away with. Still, I want to acknowledge their are learning goals that I might not be able to provide students in my general ed class, due either to time or my own ignorance (coaching on how to make eye contact, for example). So I can see some advantages for a special education track. But again, what about the ASD student who is a brilliant math person? Or the student with emotional disorder who wants to go to college and study art? What are we doing here?
And those poor B-level students. There is nothing worse than being the "left overs." The last kids picked for a team. Those who are always on the bench and never given a chance to play until the game has already been decided. I am fundamentally opposed to such a B team. It might be ok in club sports, but the public schools can't allow that. Equal participation along a wide range of tasks and supporting a wide range of skills has to be our goal.
Finally, I'll just add that, in my opinion, those A-level kids are getting any favors. They are being taught that they are better than others. This will not help them in the future, I'm pretty sure.
Great post. Thanks for sharing it with such honesty and passion. Have a great rest of the week,
Kyle