Tracking in Schools: Good or Bad?

There are many positive effects of tracking in schools. Teachers are better able to target individual needs and students will learn more. Advanced students will have the opportunities to becomes leaders in their career fields. Homogeneous groups are easier to teach, and it improves the instructional setting for selected students. Unless everyone is going to be taught the same thing at the same time, grouping is necessary, and tracking is not difficult since the students will need to be grouped anyway. Schools don't create differences between students; they must accommodate the natural differences between students, to help each student reach their maximum potential. Schools that treat naturally unique students all the same make learning unequal for everything. Also, the effects of tracking on below average students is not negative. Students like to study more when they are working with other students of similar ability.

Tracking is only harmful when it limits the educational opportunities of certain students on the premise that they are not capable of any more.

Students in the incubation room at the Woodbine Ag...

Group of Woodbine Agricultural School students, Wo...

Auburn University students at ASAP conference

As long as this is not the case, lower tracked students should be able to get an education that will lead to high status knowledge. Many people feel that quality instruction can not be given at a lower track. However, this is not the case. Students attitudes and behaviors make lower track classes more difficult to teach. By blending all students together, these problems do not go away, they simply become easier to ignore. In this case, schools without tracking are the ones where lower ability students fall through the cracks.

However, there are many negative effects to tracking as well. Many children are steryotyped as less able if they are in lower tracks. This label is carried with them throughout highschool, making it very difficult for them to catch up, let...