Race, Class, and Tournament Track Mobility

Early research on track mobility suggested that students follow a tournament mobility process, but more recent research has failed to support the tournament mobility metaphor. These analyses attempted to discern the overall pattern of mobility. This study used data from High School and Beyond to investigate track mobility for four different disaggregated racial-class groups. By disaggregating the data, the authors were able to determine whether all groups follow the same pattern of mobility or whether groups experience different mobility regimes. They found little evidence of tournament mobility, regardless of the group studied; a predominance of downward mobility; and important opportunities for upward mobility as well. But the larger implication of the results is that blacks and Latinos-Latinas experience a different mobility regime than do whites. This finding has important ramifications both for researching the relationship between race and tracking and for theorizing the way in which tracking works in schools