The Role Of Tracking In Schools

Tracking I include tracking as a component that serves to promote hierarchies within schools, for the simple reason that tracking creates groups based on ranking of “intelligence,” but most importantly, its generated by teachers and schools. Jeannie Oakes, identifies tracking as a process in which students are divided into categories based on performance. Teachers observe students and then assign them to specific classes, for example honors courses or the class for “the bad kids.” Tracking can begin as early as kindergarten and continues throughout a child’s education (1985). This process, like the previous components, creates a division or distinction within students in which those that are superior or in this case “smarter,” are the ones …show more content…
Most importantly, teachers pay more attention to those who are in a higher tracking system while they steer their attention from the students who are outside of this group. All, if not most of the majority, of schools track. Tracking simulates the idea of hierarchies since it creates a clear distinction between groups based on rankings. Oaks states that many schools have a justification as to why the track (1985), but they don’t seem to understand how such system influences the lives of the students who then go on and enforce these hierarchies within society and continue to create groups based on superiority since these are the examples they saw in school.

Role of Teachers The job of an educator is complicated. You are the role model that will shape, educate and impact the life of a student based on what you teach. To teach, that tends to be the perceived role of a teacher, to stand in front of a class and lecture about geography or teach a student how to write cursive, but being a teacher is far more complicated than that. While the purpose of education is to be able to think for yourself and consciously examine the world in which you live, its the instructors …show more content…
Upon understanding all of the different components that simulate a hierarchy we can conclude that the entire curriculum needs to be analyzed. First of all, the changes begin with the top of the hierarchy, that is, the department of education and the laws that are implemented within the system. These laws affect the way that the curriculum is made, rather than avoiding to talk about race, class and gender, the K-12 curriculum needs to implement these aspects to include every single individual who is present in a classroom. Aside form restructuring the curriculum, we need to educate teachers to be inclusive and the challenge the system to teach like lives depended on it, this can include trainings or discussion within classrooms in order to shape the perspective of an educator to suit the lives of the children. Teachers have to be aware of their surroundings and the impacts that they are creating by labeling, such as tracking, and the distinctions they are making and creating and having different groups that exclude and give more power to one over