Tracking, Ability Grouping & Segregation

Title of Readings and Authors: "Jumping Tracks": How Language-Minority Students Negotiate Evaluations of Ability" by L. Harklau; "Grouping and Categorical Programs: Can Schools Teach All Children Well?" by J. Oakes and M. Lipton; and "Deepening Segregation in American Public Schools: A Special Report from the Harvard Project on School Desegregation" by G. Orfield, M. D. Bachmeier, D. R. James, and T. Eitle.

This group of readings highlighted the unfairness of the education system in which students from minority and poor socioeconomic backgrounds are overrepresented in low-ability classrooms. As a result of entrenched policies such as trackingùthe categorization of students with similar abilities in homogeneous groups and segregation, impoverished minority students are not given the same educational opportunities as white, middle- or upper-class students.

In her article, Harklau (1994) discussed the plight of bilingual immigrant children. In spite of their excellent academic performance in their native countries, these students are still placed in low-ability classrooms due to their linguistic difficulties. The chapter written by Oakes and Lipton (1999) offered a broad overview of the education system's use of grouping and categorization to separate students into homogeneous groups. The inequities and the underlying flaws of this approach were illuminated. Finally, Orfield et al. (1997) discussed the recen

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Approximate Word count = 857
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)

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