Tracking, by Accident and by Design

MOST American educators are aware that Japanese don't track students until high school and that German track children from birth (just kidding, it's actually fourth grade). Readers of this column also know that German educators have blamed tracking for Germany's poor performance in the of 15-year-olds in 32 nations that was conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Research, November 2002). Beyond that, though, most U.S. educators probably haven't looked deeply at tracking abroad. Gerald LeTendre of Pennsylvania State University, Barbara Hofer of Middlebury College, and Hidetada Shimizu of Northern Illinois University have. Their analysis of the case databases of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) appears in the Spring 2003 issue of the American Educational Research Journal. Unlike the test scores, videotapes of teachers teaching, and curriculum analyses, the case databases have been little used. Perhaps one reason is that they are huge. The case data are made up of interviews with educators, parents, and students in Germany, and the U.S. These interviews focus on four policy areas: teachers' lives, adolescents' lives, national standards, and individual differences. To obtain the data, TIMSS established research sites in each of the three nations. Within each country, three primary sites were established in large urban areas. Around each primary site, two secondary sites were established that reflected regional diversity. Twelve participated at each of the primary sites. Three participated at each secondary site. More than one thousand hours of interviewing took place, and the transcripts and researcher observations and reflections fill more than 3,000 single- spaced pages. The researchers, whose backgrounds combine psychology, sociology, anthropology, and comparative education, studied the data, wrote, restudied the data, wrote, consulted, and finally emerged with a set of dominant themes surrounding issues in curriculum differentiation. They identified five of differentiation that fit under a general rubric of tracking: 1) type of school, 2) course of study, 3) streaming, 4) ability grouping, and 5) geographical location. All five can affect a student's trajectory through school, and have the potential to create serious inequities in educational opportunity. Creating different types of schools is the norm in Germany and Japan but is not often seen in the U.S. An example of differentiation by school type would be the existence of both vocational high and academic high schools. Course of study tracking involves groups of students studying different topics, with the differences common across the nation. This also seldom happens in the U.S. Indeed, streaming is more likely to be seen here and involves choosing between, say, a college-preparatory program and a vocationally oriented one. Ability is common in the U.S., despite numerous attempts to detrack schools. It is not practiced at all in Japan before 10th grade, and, according to the researchers, the U.S. version of ability grouping would be anathema to Japanese educators and parents alike. They have quite different beliefs about how individuals differ in ability and at what age it is reasonable to offer different curricula. Geographic location tracking appears to some degree in Germany and but it is most pronounced in the U.S. The researchers found differences in all three nations in curriculum offerings, instructional quality, and opportunity to learn based on where were located, how solid the school's or district's funding base was, and whether the school was perceived as desirable. In the United States, with its highly localized system of school funding, this link between locale and opportunity to learn appears more strongly than in Germany or Japan, write the researchers. …