To put it simply, there is no easy way to have a perfectly functioning school. Quoting demographic expert, Harold L. Hodgkinson, “Improving a school is like remodeling a house. New plaster and a paint job won’t fix a leaky roof.” By this, Hodgkinson means that schools are every bit as complicated as house; that by fixing the superficial aspects of a school, such as more advanced technology or new books, you won’t erase the deeper, far more important issues, such as a simply lackluster curriculum. A majority of schools in the United States, in attempts to fix the obvious issues, resort to the tracking system. The tracking system is the act of grouping students by ability, or so they claim. Schools see the tracking system as an improvement,
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Of course, since this is happening in elementary schools, particularly in first and second grade classes, no student suspects that these names really signify groups of “smart” and “dumb”. It’s not until later grades, like fourth and fifth grade, where the students are becoming much more aware of their intellectual standing in the class compared to the other students, that they realize these groups aren’t as nice as they thought, though at this stage, this realization doesn’t concern them much. Furthermore, when one examines the effect of ability grouping on adolescents in middle school, the negative impact is even more obvious. Middle school is crucial to the development of a student’s sense of self, it’s crucial to the building of their self worth. Adolescents in middle school are grasping at straws trying to figure out how they measure up to their peers. They struggle to figure out who they are: are they pretty or ugly, cool or uncool? Are they smart or are they “dumb”? (Van Horn) At this point in time, teens are perfectly aware of what it means when someone is in an Honors class and they aren’t. In their search for their identity, the tracking system gives them their answer, on a silver platter, whether it was intentional or otherwise. (I’m not done here but its making me mad so im ignoring
Of course, since this is happening in elementary schools, particularly in first and second grade classes, no student suspects that these names really signify groups of “smart” and “dumb”. It’s not until later grades, like fourth and fifth grade, where the students are becoming much more aware of their intellectual standing in the class compared to the other students, that they realize these groups aren’t as nice as they thought, though at this stage, this realization doesn’t concern them much. Furthermore, when one examines the effect of ability grouping on adolescents in middle school, the negative impact is even more obvious. Middle school is crucial to the development of a student’s sense of self, it’s crucial to the building of their self worth. Adolescents in middle school are grasping at straws trying to figure out how they measure up to their peers. They struggle to figure out who they are: are they pretty or ugly, cool or uncool? Are they smart or are they “dumb”? (Van Horn) At this point in time, teens are perfectly aware of what it means when someone is in an Honors class and they aren’t. In their search for their identity, the tracking system gives them their answer, on a silver platter, whether it was intentional or otherwise. (I’m not done here but its making me mad so im ignoring