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Academic Tracking Reform Essay

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Academic tracking reform originated with the Cold War in the 1950s as the United States and Russia competed for scientific and technological supremacy, limiting the focus of schools more toward academic and scientific excellence (Kulik, 1992) and away from encouraging students to pursue vocational careers after graduation. This shift resulted in an increase in the practice of ability grouping within middle and high schools, as new reports portrayed higher academic gains for students placed in special enriched and accelerated programs with no apparent social and emotional detriment (Kulik, 1992).

The civil rights movement of the 1960s prompted teachers and school administrators to once again reconsider how school curricula and structure affected student equity, leading to a revival in research on the effects of curricular structure (Kulik, 1992), now focusing on how …show more content…

Moore and Davenport (1988) found that traditional tracking program labels such as “honors,” “basic,” and “remedial,” were being applied to vertically differentiated courses in different subjects. These tracking systems vary between schools on several dimensions including electivity, selectivity, inclusiveness, and scope (Kelly, 2011). Although school administrators have dismantled the overarching institution of academic tracking within these schools, critics of academic tracking argue that the foundational element of tracking—the differentiated curriculum—remains and perpetuates inequality among students (Lucas, 1999). The inconsistent language and undefined terms involved in this current debate, however, serves to obscure the distinction between curriculum differentiation and academic tracking (Lucas, 1999; Lucas & Berends,

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