Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Tracking and Ability Grouping
In almost all schools at the junior and senior high school level, tracking and ability
grouping were the primary ways that schools dealt with individual differences
among students. Every school that we visited practiced some form of tracking and
ability grouping. Even in schools where tracking was not favored by the adminis-
tration and the local school board and where detracking was the favored policy,
core academic subjects such as math and reading were tracked. This system of
tracking seemed to be the compromise reached between parents who supported
tracking and an administration that did not.
Like all other practices, tracking systems across schools varied in terms of the
numbers of levels offered and the subjects tracked. To gain a complete picture
of tracking and ability grouping in our sample, it would be necessary to describe
the practices at each school, something that is not possible here. Instead, we
present here the practices of two junior high schools in the sample to represent
a school that had only two levels of tracking versus those that have four or more
levels of tracking. The schools selected did illustrate the issues involved but are
not intended to imply a causal relationship between organizational structure and
community characteristics.
Metropolitan School. 
Metropolitan School is located in the inner city of Metro
City. Students at Metropolitan were tracked in math and reading into regular and
accelerated classes. The program was called the accelerated middle school. Stu-
dents were not selected into the accelerated program on the basis of test scores
and past performance, but were admitted to the program if their parents or guard-
ians signed contracts stating that they would comply with a daily homework
requirement. The homework requirement involved students completing home-
work every day and, to ensure family support, parents verifying that the home-
work was being completed.

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Since only a handful of the highest-achieving students at Metropolitan School were
achieving at grade level, the accelerated middle school included many students
achieving below grade level, according to statewide tests. Teachers said that the
goal of the accelerated middle school was to separate students who were willing
to work from those who were not. As one teacher at said, ‘‘This is a program
for those students who are willing to do their work.’’ In other words, the acceler-
ated track at Metropolitan School is not based strictly on merit, but seeks to take
advantage of the strong family support among a small group of students.
Vanderbilt Middle School. 
Vanderbilt Middle School is located in Rolling Hills, an
affluent suburb of Metro City. In contrast to Metropolitan School, there were sev-
eral levels of courses in reading, writing, science, and math. Altogether five levels
of math were offered. Further, there were strict requirements based on perform-
ance for the math program, and only the highest achieving students were admit-
ted to the highest levels. The work habits of students and the wishes of parents
were not given precedence in the decision to place students in the various levels.
In spite of these strict entrance requirements, both parents and the administration
in the Rolling Hills district expressed support for the tracking system in math and
other subjects, basing their support on the idea that high-achieving students need
to be challenged. In fact, one junior high school math teacher indicated that she
found complete support from the administration and parents when she proposed
initiating a new level of math in the curriculum. She added that the unusual recep-
tivity of the district to tracking is one of the appeals of the Rolling Hills district
for a math teacher.
These two examples illustrate how two schools within the same city can have en-
tirely different approaches to tracking. At Metropolitan School, parental interest
was the primary factor in the decision to enroll a child in a high-level math and
science program. In contrast, test scores and other objective measures of achieve-
ment were the primary mechanisms for allocating students to high-level courses
at Vanderbilt Middle School.