Reply to S/O High SES students will perform well no matter their peer group

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Reply to "S/O High SES students will perform well no matter their peer group"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
My parents immigrated here when I was 4 with nothing and we were sponsored by a church. I knew no English when I started K and went to ESL classes in school for 2-3 years.  Thanks to tracking I did well in school and have a post graduate degree.  You can’t make all poor kids do better or well without tracking, but you can give the kids who are smarter or higher performing a better chance to succeed like myself with tracking.[/quote]

That's great that the system worked well for you.  Are you by any chance white or Asian?

I ask because in the South, where I grew up in the 70s, tracking was often used as a tool for enforcing segregation in theoretically desegregated schools.  There were no tests, but white kids were almost all "high achieving", whereas Black kids were on-level or special ed.  It felt to me like the system was working (I'm reasonably bright, and I was in gifted classes), but I think the system always feels like it's working to the people who it's designed to work for.  I think the bright black kids in my area had a different opinion.  In fact, one of those kids went on to write a book about how as a child he was placed in special ed classes without ever having been administered any testing whatsoever.  That was before he grew up, earned a PhD, and became tenured faculty at an Ivy.[/quote]

We'd have the same result today in DC, not because of discrimination or bigotry, but because so few black kids in DCPS are on grade level according to PARCC. Heck, there are 50 point gaps in many cases, even at so-called HRCS.

Why would a kid one or more grade levels behind be put on an advanced track?

But the kids who are capable should absolutely get advanced tracking. Maybe the racial discrepancy will light a fire under some butts to *improve* the dysfunction that results in such failure.[/quote]

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