Talking Points #6

Jeannie Oakes "Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route"

Premise

• education
• curriculm
• speed
• privelege
• class
• speed
• tracking
• labelling
• ability
• strategies
• scoring

Argument

Oakes argues that students are labelled early on in their learning career and because of said labelling some students are given better opportunities then others. She believes that schools curriculm's must be altered to give all students equal opportunity and learning, not just higher learning students.

Evidence

1. "Students who are placed in high-ability groups have access to far richer schooling experiences than other students." (pg.178) Students that are put in higher learning classrooms are given better instructions and teaching but those that are put in lower learning are not given the same type of instructions and teaching. Consequently the students in the higher classrooms will get into better colleges and are given more opportunities to succeed in life. The students that are in the lower classrooms will not have as many opportunities to get into the good colleges.
2. "Heterogeneous groups of students will probably do best in classrooms where the curriculm content is challenging, complex, related to real life and- most of all- rich with meaning." (pg. 180) Students put in high ability classrooms are able to be taught in a different environment with different teachers. But those put in lower ability classrooms are not given the same amount of teaching because of the other distractions in the room. If students are the same age and divided into different groups of learning then they will not recieve the same education because they are taught in different environments with different teaching strategies.
3. "Obviously, the kinds of changes likely to promote high quality learning for all students in heterogenous classrooms go far beyond mere fine tuning of current practice. These changes also require fundamental changes in the structure of schooling and teachers work." (pg.180) Oakes is saying that schools cannot just simply change the way they operate. Teachers must change the way they teach students of different learning abilities, spliting them up is not the solution.

Comments

I really liked this article because it showed a important point that needs to be taken into consideration. Students are not given the same education if they are divided. Students should be in the same classroom as their peers, but at the same time given a designated time to attend to certain childrens needs. In my service learning classroom this situation takes place. Jose is a slower learner then most of the second graders in the class, he goes to a certain classroom one hour a day to work with a different teacher. This works! He gets to feel like he is part of a classroom while going to another classroom to attend his needs. Schools need to stop leaving kids with slower learning abilties behind, they are excluding them by putting them in a different classroom , not helping them.