Reply to Was your education hampered because of tracking?

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[quote=Anonymous]Tracking definitely hurt me....we moved around a lot.  Some schools tracked based on their own tests (similar to CogAT), some tracked based reports from old schools.

What happened to me was we moved from the deep south to California.  In the deep south school, I had problems -- I am Jewish and that was not acceptable by the panhandle school in 1975.

When I arrived in California, the old school reported me as below average and a trouble maker (I was suspended in the 6th grade for getting beaten up/fighting because I was a N***** Loving Polock Jew.   Placement was in the remedial group.  I had never been more bored in my life.  I did not pay attention, did not work, and lost the second half of the sixth grade.

That summer, while my father was deployed, we moved back to NY area, and I did the first quarter of 7 in the same school district as 4 & 5.  I was placed in the advanced group, and excelled.  We moved back to California at the end of the first grading period, where I had straight A's....and I was placed in the remedial group.  When from straight A's to 4 D's and and F.

After that, my father was reassigned to the philly area.  There, they took my past performance coupled with there own IQ test and placed me in an average to slightly below average track.  However, the teachers were good, and challenged me.  I did better, and my grades improved.  I took Algebra between 8 & 9, but my guidance counselor did not want me in Geometry in 9 -- did not think I was smart enough.  The teachers disagreed, a private test was given (first we knew that a test was given to determine placement), and I was placed in Geometry along with the advanced group.

In the end, I would say that tracking hurt me because of bad evaluation of my ability.  Because of the catching up I had to do to make up for the lost middle school years, I graduated HS in the bottom half of my class (in FCPS), but scored about 1300 on the SAT's (back when there were only math and verbal).

I could not get into a top college, but did find a decent school for 1.5 years where I excelled, then transferred to a excellent state school.  Intellectually, I could have handled anything.

This is a long way of saying that I ended up okay, but tracking made the journey more difficult.  I enjoy my work, do important stuff, and am paid well...as a research scientist supporting the Gov't.[/quote]

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