User:Mwilk1024

Ability Tracking Facts
Tracking as defined by Dictionary.com - Any of several courses of study to which students are assigned according to ability, achievement, or needs: academic, vocational, and general tracks.

Below is some of the interesting facts I gathered from the sources I used for this project but did not include within the paper. Hopefully this information will make tracking easier to understand as this is taken from studies done concerning tracking.

The first source is one that I found on the Stanford University website on the News Service page and it is about a study done on Ability Tracking in 1994. The study that was done, "involved analysing all school records since the fifth grade for approximately 1,200 students in six diverse San Fransisco Bay Area high schools." For more information on the study go to the link located below the information.

School Tracking Harm Millions, Sociologist Finds

-A new study on tracking in high schools show the system of placing some students in college preparatory ccourses and others in easier math and science course is "harming millions of students in American society," says Sanford Dornbusch, the Reed-Hodgson Professor of Human Biology, who holds joint appointments in the Department of Sociology and the School of Education at Stanford University.

-Tracking does not limit opportunities for the top tenth or so of students but is particularly disastrous for students who fall in the middle range, Dornbusch said.

-Jeannis Oakes, of the University of California-Los Angeles, concluded that "the tracking system is more a product of inertia in a school system than of the abilities of students" in the schools she studied, Dornbusch said.

-The researchers found that the proportion of high-ability African American and Latino American students not taking college prep courses in math and science was more than twice that of white and Asian American students of the same ability level.

-In the new study, the factor that most determined a student's first high school tracking placement was his or her eigth grade test score. Other factors that were significantly related were elementary school grades, attendance and negative comments about a student's behavior in his or her files.

-Student grades also indicated that "being at the bottom of the high track appears to bring better educational returns than being at the top of the low track," he (Dornbsuch) said. "High-ability students in the lower tracks learn little and get lower grades than those of equal ability in the higher track."

-The Stanford researchers also checked to see if students expressing a desire to go to college were possibly overestimating their own abilities. They did another analysis just of those students whose eight grade math scores put them in the top half. All such students, in their view, should have been assigned to college preparatory math.

-High school placements made in the eigth grade have profound occupational and educational outcomes," Dornbusch concluded. "For studenst in the middle, the decisions are more arbitrary and less likely to be based on ability."

All information taken from the Stanford News Service website at