Mr Uncle Leroy
All Star
Finally, the US admits it: AP classes are way too white
Taking a classroom-by-classroom approach. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
SHARE
Sonali Kohli@Sonali_Kohli
4 hours ago
A US federal government release last month had a disorientingly retro ring to it: “Black students to be afforded equal access to advanced, higher-level learning opportunities,” the Department of Education proclaimed—six decades after the country’s Supreme Court determined that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in the landmark ruling known as Brown vs. Board of Education.
The acknowledgement by the US government that segregation is alive and well in American public schools came in the announcement of an agreement with a New Jersey school district over the controversial practice known as “tracking”—designating students for separate educational paths based on their academic performance as teens or younger.
The DoE and advocates have said tracking perpetuates a modern system of segregation that favors white students and keeps students of color, many of them black, from long-term equal achievement. Now the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is trying to change the system, one school district at a time.
“You can … look in a classroom and know whether it’s an upper level class or a lower level class based on the racial composition of the classroom”
Proponents of tracking and of ability-grouping (a milder version that separates students within the same classroom based on ability) say that the practices allow students to learn at their own levels and prevent a difficult situation for teachers: large classes where children with a wide range of different needs and skill levels are mixed together. In many districts, the higher-level instruction in “gifted and talented” or advanced placement classes is what keeps wealthier families from entirely abandoning the public school system.
But opponents say the ill effects for the students in the lower-skilled classes negate the advantages that the students in the advanced classes gain. Many education researchers have argued that tracking perpetuates class inequality, and is partially to blame for the stubborn achievement gap in the US educational system—between white and Asian students on one side, and black and Latino students on the other.
Race is the issue, not just class
One New Jersey parent, Walter Fields, describes watching the effect of tracking first hand with his own African-American daughter, when she was denied entry to an advanced freshman math class. She had the middle school grades and standardized test scores to take the higher-level math class, Fields says, but she didn’t get the required recommendation from a teacher to take the class.
That didn’t change until Fields and his wife petitioned the principal to allow their daughter to take the higher-level class. Fields is part of a complaint that the American Civil Liberties Union and the The Civil Rights Project at UCLA filed against the South Orange Maplewood School District, alleging that tracking unfairly holds back African-American and Latino students.
“Now we arrive at the point—in 2014—where you can literally walk down a hallway in Columbia High School and look in a classroom and know whether it’s an upper-level class or a lower-level class based on the racial composition of the classroom,” Fields tells Quartz.
Fields, the editor of the website North Star News, says that tracking is a racial issue, not just one of class—there are plenty of middle-class black students, like his own daughter, who find themselves tracked into lower level classes.
South Orange Maplewood does have a racial disparity issue in its upper-level classes, its board of education president, Beth Daugherty, acknowledged in an interview with Quartz. The diverse district, within commutable distance to New York City, has a well-educated and upper-middle-class white population, largely consisting of professors, lawyers, and journalists, she says, but about a fourth of the high school receives free and reduced lunch, pointing to its socioeconomic diversity.
The district had 6,622 students—38% of them black and 49% white—as of June 2013. But at every level where students are tracked, black students are underrepresented in higher-level classes, from fourth grade through high school.
The district entered a resolution agreement (separate from the ACLU complaint) with the Department of Education last month, the one referenced above, which requires it to hire a consultant to examine the practices that led to the racial disparity, and to come up with a plan to increase equity.
No easy fixes
“We know how to go after this problem,” says Catherine Lhamon, the US Department of Education’s assistant secretary for civil rights. “It’s bad news that the problem persists.”
With tracking deeply established in schools across the country, eliminating it entirely is easier said than done. Every school district has different demographics, infrastructure and problems. So the DoE’s approach is a painstaking one.
“We know how to go after this problem. It’s bad news that the problem persists.”
The US secretary of education, Arne Duncan, wrote a letter (pdf) to the country’s school districts last month reminding them of Brown vs. Board of Education, and calling to their attention the “disparities that persist in access to educational resources.”
Duncan acknowledged the value of accelerated, subject-specific, and “gifted and talented” programs for students who show particular promise or preferences. “But,” he writes, “schools serving more students of color are less likely to offer advanced courses and gifted and talented programs than schools serving mostly white populations, and students of color are less likely than their white peers to be enrolled in those courses and programs within schools that have those offerings.”
In the 2011 to 2012 school year, for example, black and Latino students represented 16 percent and 21 percent, respectively, of high school enrollment nationwide, the DoE says; but they were only 8 percent and 12 percent of the students taking the advanced-level math class calculus.
Duncan also warned the districts that his agency is conducting investigations and compliance reviews to ensure that their tracking policies are not segregating students in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin within federally funded programs.
How tracking came to be
Tracking has been around since the beginning of the 20th century, when schoolchildren were put on different tracks after a certain age, often based on class—vocational for those from working class backgrounds, and general education for wealthier students, Christina Theokas, director of research for the advocacy group Education Trust, tells Quartz.
After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that mandated the desegregation of US public schools, the system became essentially aform of resegregation (pdf, page. 4). Those with money and resources could game the system to ensure that their kids tested into the higher-level classes, and poorer children, many of them black, were left behind in the lower-level classes.
Still protesting inequality, 60 years later.(AP Photo)
In other countries, such as Germany (where the practice is widespread and not particularly controversial), tracking starts young and separates students onto different paths varying from general education to vocational. The system has been shown to increase the achievement gap, says Stanford researcher Eric Hanushek.
He researched educational systems (pdf) that do and don’t track, and found that eight out of the nine countries in his study that track students before the age of 16 see that the difference between highest and lowest test scores is significantly larger than the range in countries that don’t track. (He did not count the US, because it does not have a nationwide policy and tracking is most common in high school.)
The 1980s and 1990′s brought an influx of research in the US suggesting that while students in the upper level, college-focused classes may be served well by the separation, the students in the lower classes were suffering disproportionately—not only did they start behind, but the difference in instruction ensured that they had little opportunity to catch up.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 required schools to focus on struggling students and raise proficiency test scores, which prompted many schools to separate out children who were behind, to provided targeted instruction. This led to an increase in ability grouping in lower grades, Theokas said.
It’s a fact of urban life that parents with means will go to great lengths to get their children into the best possible programs, says Joyce Szuflita, who is a consultant for New York City parents trying to navigate the educational system. New York practices an extreme form of tracking, with students able to test into special “gifted and talented” schools at as young as 4.
Szuflita says that not all the parents who hire her as a consultant want their child in a special school, but speaking generally, she tells Quartz, “all parents think their kids are brilliant.”
Taking a classroom-by-classroom approach. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
SHARE
Sonali Kohli@Sonali_Kohli
4 hours ago
A US federal government release last month had a disorientingly retro ring to it: “Black students to be afforded equal access to advanced, higher-level learning opportunities,” the Department of Education proclaimed—six decades after the country’s Supreme Court determined that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in the landmark ruling known as Brown vs. Board of Education.
The acknowledgement by the US government that segregation is alive and well in American public schools came in the announcement of an agreement with a New Jersey school district over the controversial practice known as “tracking”—designating students for separate educational paths based on their academic performance as teens or younger.
The DoE and advocates have said tracking perpetuates a modern system of segregation that favors white students and keeps students of color, many of them black, from long-term equal achievement. Now the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is trying to change the system, one school district at a time.
“You can … look in a classroom and know whether it’s an upper level class or a lower level class based on the racial composition of the classroom”
Proponents of tracking and of ability-grouping (a milder version that separates students within the same classroom based on ability) say that the practices allow students to learn at their own levels and prevent a difficult situation for teachers: large classes where children with a wide range of different needs and skill levels are mixed together. In many districts, the higher-level instruction in “gifted and talented” or advanced placement classes is what keeps wealthier families from entirely abandoning the public school system.
But opponents say the ill effects for the students in the lower-skilled classes negate the advantages that the students in the advanced classes gain. Many education researchers have argued that tracking perpetuates class inequality, and is partially to blame for the stubborn achievement gap in the US educational system—between white and Asian students on one side, and black and Latino students on the other.
Race is the issue, not just class
One New Jersey parent, Walter Fields, describes watching the effect of tracking first hand with his own African-American daughter, when she was denied entry to an advanced freshman math class. She had the middle school grades and standardized test scores to take the higher-level math class, Fields says, but she didn’t get the required recommendation from a teacher to take the class.
That didn’t change until Fields and his wife petitioned the principal to allow their daughter to take the higher-level class. Fields is part of a complaint that the American Civil Liberties Union and the The Civil Rights Project at UCLA filed against the South Orange Maplewood School District, alleging that tracking unfairly holds back African-American and Latino students.
“Now we arrive at the point—in 2014—where you can literally walk down a hallway in Columbia High School and look in a classroom and know whether it’s an upper-level class or a lower-level class based on the racial composition of the classroom,” Fields tells Quartz.
Fields, the editor of the website North Star News, says that tracking is a racial issue, not just one of class—there are plenty of middle-class black students, like his own daughter, who find themselves tracked into lower level classes.
South Orange Maplewood does have a racial disparity issue in its upper-level classes, its board of education president, Beth Daugherty, acknowledged in an interview with Quartz. The diverse district, within commutable distance to New York City, has a well-educated and upper-middle-class white population, largely consisting of professors, lawyers, and journalists, she says, but about a fourth of the high school receives free and reduced lunch, pointing to its socioeconomic diversity.
The district had 6,622 students—38% of them black and 49% white—as of June 2013. But at every level where students are tracked, black students are underrepresented in higher-level classes, from fourth grade through high school.
The district entered a resolution agreement (separate from the ACLU complaint) with the Department of Education last month, the one referenced above, which requires it to hire a consultant to examine the practices that led to the racial disparity, and to come up with a plan to increase equity.
No easy fixes
“We know how to go after this problem,” says Catherine Lhamon, the US Department of Education’s assistant secretary for civil rights. “It’s bad news that the problem persists.”
With tracking deeply established in schools across the country, eliminating it entirely is easier said than done. Every school district has different demographics, infrastructure and problems. So the DoE’s approach is a painstaking one.
“We know how to go after this problem. It’s bad news that the problem persists.”
The US secretary of education, Arne Duncan, wrote a letter (pdf) to the country’s school districts last month reminding them of Brown vs. Board of Education, and calling to their attention the “disparities that persist in access to educational resources.”
Duncan acknowledged the value of accelerated, subject-specific, and “gifted and talented” programs for students who show particular promise or preferences. “But,” he writes, “schools serving more students of color are less likely to offer advanced courses and gifted and talented programs than schools serving mostly white populations, and students of color are less likely than their white peers to be enrolled in those courses and programs within schools that have those offerings.”
In the 2011 to 2012 school year, for example, black and Latino students represented 16 percent and 21 percent, respectively, of high school enrollment nationwide, the DoE says; but they were only 8 percent and 12 percent of the students taking the advanced-level math class calculus.
Duncan also warned the districts that his agency is conducting investigations and compliance reviews to ensure that their tracking policies are not segregating students in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin within federally funded programs.
How tracking came to be
Tracking has been around since the beginning of the 20th century, when schoolchildren were put on different tracks after a certain age, often based on class—vocational for those from working class backgrounds, and general education for wealthier students, Christina Theokas, director of research for the advocacy group Education Trust, tells Quartz.
After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that mandated the desegregation of US public schools, the system became essentially aform of resegregation (pdf, page. 4). Those with money and resources could game the system to ensure that their kids tested into the higher-level classes, and poorer children, many of them black, were left behind in the lower-level classes.
Still protesting inequality, 60 years later.(AP Photo)
In other countries, such as Germany (where the practice is widespread and not particularly controversial), tracking starts young and separates students onto different paths varying from general education to vocational. The system has been shown to increase the achievement gap, says Stanford researcher Eric Hanushek.
He researched educational systems (pdf) that do and don’t track, and found that eight out of the nine countries in his study that track students before the age of 16 see that the difference between highest and lowest test scores is significantly larger than the range in countries that don’t track. (He did not count the US, because it does not have a nationwide policy and tracking is most common in high school.)
The 1980s and 1990′s brought an influx of research in the US suggesting that while students in the upper level, college-focused classes may be served well by the separation, the students in the lower classes were suffering disproportionately—not only did they start behind, but the difference in instruction ensured that they had little opportunity to catch up.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 required schools to focus on struggling students and raise proficiency test scores, which prompted many schools to separate out children who were behind, to provided targeted instruction. This led to an increase in ability grouping in lower grades, Theokas said.
It’s a fact of urban life that parents with means will go to great lengths to get their children into the best possible programs, says Joyce Szuflita, who is a consultant for New York City parents trying to navigate the educational system. New York practices an extreme form of tracking, with students able to test into special “gifted and talented” schools at as young as 4.
Szuflita says that not all the parents who hire her as a consultant want their child in a special school, but speaking generally, she tells Quartz, “all parents think their kids are brilliant.”
