Both readings for this week I found interesting. The first was about tracking in schools. My own opinion about this matter is that is should NOT be allowed in public schools. I think that many negative effects are an outcome of tracking. If you are a "gifted" student that always exceeded the standards you may think that the idea of tracking is great, yet average students and slower learners would disagree. Students who are placed in high ability classes are rewarded with challenging problems that encourage analytical thinking and connecting it to real world issues. A low ability class has a drastic difference that teach less topics, and go less into depth. This problem occurs in all classes including math, English and science. A great point that caught my attention was on pg. 179, "Students who need more time to learn appear to get less; those who have the most difficulty learning seem to have fewer of the best teachers." My initial question after reading this statement was, shouldn't this be the exact opposite? If students need more time and more assistance learning they should have the resources to assist them, and should have more well qualified teachers in my opinion. Tracking is not a way to improve schools, instead I think it segregates students, and the belief behind that is not true. Students may be separated into different learning groups based on their learning abilities in 1st or 2nd grade, but that is not really accurate and should not determine the rest of someone's education. "Perhaps the most important and difficult task for those who would change tracking is to confront deeply held beliefs, such as the belief that accademic ability is fixed very early and is largely unchangeable for that achievement differences can be largely accounted for by differences in ability." I think Oakes sums up this point of dividing children by learning abilities is not accurate. In my opinion I don't think students should be separated based on test scores and learning abilities. They should all be in one classrooms working with one another. Instead of "improving" school systems by separating children, they should step back and go to the root of the problem- the curriculum. The curriculum and quality of teaching needs to change. "When curriculum is organized around the central themes of a subject area rather than around disconnected topics and skills, all students stand the great chnace of enhancing their intellectual development." Students should not be focused solely on the right answer, but why something is correct and how they developed that answer. We live in a country where everyone is supposed to be equal and have equal opportunity. The idea of tracking blantantly contradicts this idea of an equal education for every student.
Oakes brings up a great point at the beginning for her article. "Some link tracking to our national security and economic well-being, contending that the top students need special grooming to be leaders in science, government, and business." I believe this was a great connection to the other article I read about social class and the connection to school's curriculum. Jean Anyon did a study of schools across America that were located in different economic districts of the country. She noticed that schools located in the working class districts were very much different than "executive elite schools". I was very surprised reading through this article and how Anyon points out differences between different economic standing schools. Students of low income areas have parents that work blue collar jobs and have a family income of less than $12,000. These schools did not have numerous resources and instead of working on a more independent level, they were always told step by step instructions. No creativeness was involved and students were strictly told to follow the procedure to get the answer. The teacher did not explain why a method worked the way it did, but school work was more just copy, learn and repeat. On the complete opposite of the spectrum students of excutive elite schools had classrooms where teachers taught differently. These students are constantly being asked to analyze problems and explain their reasoning. Anyon explains their idea is, "Schoolwork helps one to achieve, to excel, to prepare for life." I noticed while reading that these students recieved much more independence during the school day to work on problems and read on their own.
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