User:Charlottetim/sandbox

located as paragraph underneath 'equity vs equality'

Tracking and Equity
Tracking systems, are selective measures to locate students in different educational levels. They are created to increase the efficiency of education. It allows to make more or less homogeneous groups of students to perceive education that suits their educational skills. However, tracking can affect educational equity if the selection process is biased and children with a certain background are structurally located to lower tracks. The effects of tracking are that students are both viewed and treated differently depending on which track they take. It can generate unequal achievement levels between individual students and it can restrict access to higher tracks and higher education. The quality of teaching and curricula vary between tracks and as a result, those of the lower track are disadvantaged with inferior resources, teachers, etc. In many cases, tracking stunts students who may develop the ability to excel past their original placement.

Tracking systems
The type of tracking has impact on the level of educational equity, which is especially determined by the degree in which the system is differentiated. Less differentiated systems, such as standardized comprehensive schools, reach higher levels of equity in comparison to more differentiated, or tracked, systems.

Within the tracked systems, the kind of differentiation matters as well for educational equity. Differentiation of schools could be organized externally or internally. External differentiation means that tracks are separated in different schools. Certain schools follow a certain track, which prepares students for academic or professional education, or for career or vocational education. This form is less beneficial for educational equity than internal differentiation or course-by-course tracking. Internal tracking means that, within a single school, courses are instructed at different levels, which is a less rigid kind of tracking that allows for more mobility.

The organization of the tracking systems themselves is also important for its effect on educational equity. For both differentiation systems, a higher amount of tracks and a smaller amount of students per track is granting more educational equity. In addition, the effects of tracking are less rigid and have a smaller impact on equity if the students are located in tracks when they are older. The earlier the students undergo educational selection, the less mobile they are to develop their abilities and the less they can benefit from peer effects. Category:Educational administration