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Keeping Track or Getting Offtrack: Issues in the Tracking Of Students

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International Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE,volume 21))

Tracking is a generic term that covers ways that most educators keep track of students' academic progress by matriculating them into curricula of varying difficulty. Contests over tracking's practical and theoretical viability — getting offtrack — concern what Oakes (1985) asks about whether tracking makes most children smart or only some smart children smarter? In other words, does the school fairly advance students on the basis of their merits or does it reproduce the inequalities they bring with them at the starting gate (Argys, Rees, & Brewer, 1996; Cohen & Lotan, 1997; Oakes, 1985, 1994; Oakes, Gamoran, & Page, 1992; Slavin, 1987, 1990a, 1990b; Wheelock, 1992)?

While clearly tracking may be a well-intended practice for organizing instruction, international and cross-cultural research fails to support the belief that it improves academic achievement and the debate remains unresolved (Ansalone, 2003; Resh, 1998). In a study of thirty countries the official rationale for tracking is largely based on student ability and not to ascriptive characteristics (Marks, 2005). Other evidence from Palestinian Arab High Schools points to an ongoing disagreement over social stratification within the school remaining largely obscure and requiring further research attention to unravel the tangled threads of the issue (Mazawi, 1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Carolina, Beaufort, SC

    Lynn M. Mulkey & Melanie Hanes-Ramos

  2. City University of New York, Queens College and Graduate Center, NY, 10075

    Sophia Catsambis

  3. Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208

    Lala Carr Steelman

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  1. Lynn M. Mulkey
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Lawrence J. Saha

  2. University of Houston, Houston, USA

    A. Gary Dworkin

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Mulkey, L.M., Catsambis, S., Steelman, L.C., Hanes-Ramos, M. (2009). Keeping Track or Getting Offtrack: Issues in the Tracking Of Students. In: Saha, L.J., Dworkin, A.G. (eds) International Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 21. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73317-3_71

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