I also lived in Germany. The test is given when the kids are ten. It determines their future and is very inflexible. German neighbor here dreaded taking her kids back to Germany because of this test.

20:37 here. I don't know that in, say, Germany that I would have not qualified to go to college, but I certainly wouldn't have been able to get a degree in biochemistry. I wasn't a strong math/science student in high school, and I found that side of me in college where for whatever reason, things clicked. I have spent time in Germany, and they apply to their major out of high school. If someone is a late bloomer, they get lost in the system.

It has its benefits (i.e. not getting into tons of debt for a degree), but also drawbacks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We didn't have tracking when I was a kid - and I think I'm old now

I do think that tracking is harmful for children. They do this in Europe, and it keeps the upper class in the upper class and the lower class immigrants in the lower classes.

European immigrant here. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Classes in Europe are actually kept very heterogeneous on purposenand there is no tracking whatsoever until typically about the end of middle school. At that point, they start splitting the kids up into tracks that run from highly academic to highly vocational based on their school record. That avoids the problem of the kid spending 4 years in college and getting into massive debt to get a useless degree and end up taking a job that didn't require a college degree to begin with.

Well, I lived in Germany and they started tracking the students in elementary in our town. If a student wasn't on the academic track, then they were forced onto the trades track. Friends of ours moved to the US so their daughter could go to a good college. She was all but shut out of any good universities in Germany. Most in the US want their children to have the opportunity to go to college. Germans may be ok with a "trades" track, but that is complete counter to the American ideal of social mobility.

In our town, the Turkish immigrant children were much more likely to be placed in the trades. My best friend (Turkish) was on the academic track, but still had trouble getting a job as an adult due to discrimination. Just my experience from my German town.

Anonymous wrote:We didn't have tracking when I was a kid - and I think I'm old now

I do think that tracking is harmful for children. They do this in Europe, and it keeps the upper class in the upper class and the lower class immigrants in the lower classes.

European immigrant here. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Classes in Europe are actually kept very heterogeneous on purposenand there is no tracking whatsoever until typically about the end of middle school. At that point, they start splitting the kids up into tracks that run from highly academic to highly vocational based on their school record. That avoids the problem of the kid spending 4 years in college and getting into massive debt to get a useless degree and end up taking a job that didn't require a college degree to begin with.

I attended FCPS in the 70's, starting with 4th grade when we moved into the area. Tracking wasn't supposed to happen, but it did. (I remember my mom and aunt, who were both teachers, talking about this.) We were put in ability groups. I didn't much like were I was put and acted up. Then got labeled a trouble maker. In sixth grade we were given a slew of tests and I got placed into GT for middle school. Which then isolated me from my trouble making friends. It happens all kinds of way.

German kids take a test at ten that determines their future: academic high school (gymnasium); commercial track; or trade

Anonymous wrote:

I was tracked in the middle for math. It limited my science options in high school. For the same reasons, I gravitated towards the humanities in college. Calculus would have given me more options in college and grad school.

This happened to me--

PP, I'm the PP you quoted. What a great story of both you and your brother. I've heard the same about European tracking. I wonder how the systems vary from country to country.

Anonymous wrote:Not the OP, but I went to high school in the early to mid 1980s and we had tracking. I lived in the Philadelphia area.

Not the OP either but we had "leveled" classes in Miami in the 70s.

A lot of countries also have technical high schools for kids not on a college track. Kids not on that track get technical skills and can get a job after high school. My Mom (from England) graduated high school with an electrician's certificate and was a very big proponent of technical training. That's tracking I suppose but since not all kids go to college they at least graduate and are employable. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Yes. I was tracked in the 'average' math group so I was only anle to complete pre-calculus by the time I graduated from HS. That limited my options immensely in college, not to mention I struggled with math in college without the calculus base.

I was tracked in the middle for math. It limited my science options in high school. For the same reasons, I gravitated towards the humanities in college. Calculus would have given me more options in college and grad school.

This happened to me--I ended up taking AP stats in high school instead of calculus, because I was tracked for the non-honors precalc and got a C. I gravitated to the humanities as well, and my science courses were also limited in high school. I also had an undiagnosed LD that didn't get diagnosed until college, which explains why I typically scored worse on math exams. However, biology was tracked by reading level, and I took AP biology, which I loved. AP biology lead me to a lab internship the summer before college which made me think I wanted to major in the hard sciences. I ended up taking calculus in college, getting a degree in biochemistry, and a PhD in chemistry--and throughout college and graduate school, people thought I had an exceptionally good intuition for chemistry. I got a B- in high school chemistry, and my teacher thought I wasn't the brightest bulb, which pretty much means nothing. If anything, being a strong writer has served me well in a STEM field.

My brother was tracked for the middle in math as well, and he's now a mechanical engineer. Both of us have always been square peg trying to fit into round hole types throughout school, but somehow we've managed. Being a little out of the norm isn't always bad once you are out of school.

The one thing I love about the united states is that the tracking isn't so intense that you can't take windy paths. If we had been in a European country, neither my brother nor I would be in the career paths we are currently.