Tracking the Meaningless “A”
How Tracking Fails Kids in Gifted and General Classes
So much time is spent on placing kids, tracking them according to the previous year’s test scores, ability tests, and other metrics. Is all this attention to tracking really doing any good?
Having taught honors and general classes, I found that tracking often led to lower expectations for some students and a sense of entitlement for others. It all started with setting a bar.
Setting a high bar is a complicated task. A high bar means that connoisseurs, professionals, and masters have gone out of their way to determine that there is a code, a rule book, a set of standards that a practitioner must follow in order to be deemed worthy of merit.
A high bar in sports, music, dance, or chess, is usually not up for discussion, but setting a bar in a high school honors English classroom is an altogether fluid matter.
During my decades teaching high school English, I taught gifted, honors, Regents classes, and classes where learning was to be modified according to IEP’s. Each assignment came with its own set of challenges, not the least of which was how to assess student progress.
How much mastery could I really expect from a student in an ESL class whose family had just recently immigrated to the U.S.? Is an “A” earned in a lower track class the same as one earned in an honors class?
I wrestled with setting the bar year after year. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that students were not helped by tracking.
“Rather than achieving its purported goal — to tailor instruction to the diverse needs of students — tracking has, over decades of extensive research, been repeatedly found to be harmful to students enrolled in lower tracks and to provide no significant advantages for higher-tracked students.”
Kids in the lower tracks were stigmatized and never really believed in their own work. Many would question the “A” on their paper as not really being an “A”, as if I had awarded it out of pity, a consolation prize. Surely, tracking helped kids in honors classes.
Well, actually, I don’t think it did. Rather it encouraged some students to game the system and become belligerent when an “A” was not readily forthcoming.
It wasn’t really their fault because the tracking system makes some kids believe that they are the cream of the crop. Students in honors classes are continuously challenged and groomed for academic excellence. I
f there is a contest to be entered, an honors kid will rise to the occasion and win it. An honors student is part of a demanding group, moving with like-minded students since early grades and labelled a fast learner and high achiever. This student, once anointed, must succeed at all costs. This is the expectation.
Compare it with the labels for the other groups: passing, improving, developing, making progress-the terminology spells out the inherent bias in lower expectations.
Everyone recognizes that the valedictorian and salutatorian will come from the honors group. Schools in places like Long Island, New York are particularly mindful of rankings as property values are linked to the value of real estate in a community. So, If a school can produce brilliant kids that can walk through portals of ivy league schools and come back years later for alumni recognition, then the system is working. That’s the administrative model we have now. However, let’s take a look at how enforcing a higher bar really plays out.
Setting the bar high for honors kids is easy to do, but hard to enforce. In English, they must read classics like Dickens’ s Great Expectations or Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , but requiring an essay on such is a non-starter if it is due before the spring concert, the play rehearsals, the robotics meet, tennis match, football game, or the holiday break. Due dates for lengthy projects should accommodate the spring concert at least- everyone plays an instrument- the chorale assembly, and of course, the awards assemblies where every student is sure to get something.
While deadlines are accepted by students in lower tracks, kids in honors often believe they are exempt because they contribute so much to the school. This is absolutely true, but should the fact that a student has the lead in the play, entitle them to flexible deadlines on class assignments?
Grading an honors essay is also a futile endeavor as they must all get at least a 90 numerically or an “A “letter grade. Anything less must be explained with copious documentation . Teachers must proceed cautiously, as honors students will not give away their entitled status easily. They fight for it like Olympic athletes vying for gold medals.
Despite the challenges, teaching honors kids was really fun, as much fun as teaching average kids or low-achieving kids. That’s because low-achieving kids, like honors kids, always win us over with their humor and vitality-except on Monday mornings, of course.
However, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone, not just the honors kids, got to read the teacher-assigned classics? How about allowing the professionals: the masters, the teachers, decide on all curriculum matters for their students? Wouldn’t it be great to let all kids know that they spelled words incorrectly, used the wrong tense, or punctuated a sentence incorrectly with a comma splice? Wouldn’t this feedback be useful to all students, regardless of what track they’re in?
Well, in honors classes, points would have to be deducted, corrections made, the student informed, a parent meeting set up if the final grade is unacceptable, and sometimes the guidance office would have to be notified so that the student could have his or her ego stroked.
In lower track classes, students themselves lowered expectations and were thrilled with just a passing grade. Anything more was met with skepticism.
For three decades I held up the bar, but then it started to get heavier and heavier. By the time I retired, I could no longer hold up the bar and so I passed it to the next generation.
From what I see, the bar has been buried in the soft sand of shifting standards. Who knows, it may even disappear once remote learning becomes the new norm. Maybe it will be unearthed or recreated by kids who get tired of getting so many meaningless “A’s.”
Originally published at http://writingforeverydayliving.com on May 12, 2020.
