The Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate
July 1, 1998
Contents
- Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr.
- Executive Summary
- Section One: What is Tracking?
- Section Two: The History of Tracking
- Section Three: The Research
- Section Four: Principles for Future Policy
- Appendix
- Notes
Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Tracking and ability grouping remain among the most hotly debated topics in American education today, as they have been for nearly a century. After all this time and attention, what have we actually learned about these issues? That was the assignment we gave to Tom Loveless.
Studies of tracking undertaken during the 1980s, such as Jeannie Oakes's Keeping Track, left no doubt about their conclusions: Schools that track are bad. Schools that do not track are good. It is that simple. Or so we were told. As a result of this harsh yet popular criticism, many schools and school districts have turned to detracking or heterogeneous grouping, often to the discomfiture of many parents and teachers. Sometimes it is claimed that the policy change will boost overall achievement, sometimes that it will foster equity, sometimes both.
Could the answer actually be this simple? Or have schools jumped too quickly onto a detracked train?
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation seeks to help serious education reformers sort through the muddle of evidence and pseudo-evidence in such debates and to equip them with the clearest and most trustworthy information. When it comes to tracking and ability grouping, Professor Loveless was the obvious choice for this mission. From 1990 until last year, he conducted three extensive surveys of tracking practices, visited 29 schools, and interviewed some 250 teachers and principals. This wide-ranging research has informed his forthcoming book, The Tracking Wars: State Reform Meets School Policy. If anybody knows how tracking really works and what the research really shows, Loveless is the one.
As you will see from the lucid paper that follows, tracking and ability grouping strategies differ widely from school to school. They diverge even more widely from their portrayal in the popular criticisms of the 1980s. Armed with that information, Professor Loveless digs into the sensitive matter of whether those criticisms are valid today. His answer tells a more complicated and more honest story than we have heard before on this topic.
Loveless is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of
Government, specializing in the politics and policies of educational reform. He is the author of recent articles in American Journal of Education, Educational Policy, Educational Administration Quarterly, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. His forthcoming book, examining tracking reform in two states' middle schools, will be published by the Brookings Institution Press in 1999. Readers wishing to contact Dr. Loveless directly may write him at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 or send e-mail to: Tom_Loveless@harvard.edu.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is a private foundation that supports research, publications, and action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level and in the vicinity of Dayton, Ohio. Further information can be obtained from our web site (http://www.edexcellence.net) or by writing us at 1015 18th Street, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20036. (We can also be e-mailed through our web site.) This report is available in full on the Foundations web site, and hard copies can be obtained by calling 1-888-TBF-7474 (single copies are free).
Chester E. Finn, Jr., President
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Washington, D.C.
July 1998
