NEPC Resources on Tracking and Detracking
NEPC Review: Ohio’s Lost Einsteins: The Inequitable Outcomes of Early High Achievers (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, September 2021)
A report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute examines the achievement growth of Ohio’s “early high achievers,” some of whom are identified as gifted and talented (GT). After tracking their academic performance from fourth grade to enrollment in college, the report finds that Black, Hispanic, and low-income, early high-achieving students tend to perform worse than White, non-disadvantaged peers in various educational outcomes. In addition, Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged early high-achieving students are less likely to be identified as GT than their White, Asian/Pacific Islander, and non-disadvantaged peers. Finally, the report finds that GT identification improves the academic performance of early high achievers, especially for Black students and students in high-minority but low-poverty schools. Based on these findings, the report concludes that closing the “gifted identification gap” can help to close the “excellence gap.” However, given the data limitations and key assumptions in its research design, this study does not support the causal inference on the effectiveness of GT identification.
NEPC Review: Systems for Success: Thinking Beyond Access to AP (The Education Trust, July 2017)
Amid burgeoning participation in AP coursework, a report by the Education Trust uses a case study of two exemplary high schools to address the question of how schools might support access to and success in AP programs by low-income students and students of color. It contends that a variety of interventions help promote access and success, including teacher support and development, analysis of class composition, careful scheduling, and provision of during- and after-school academic support. The report’s qualitative approach is well-suited to describing ways that schools can address the complex and deeply rooted problem of inequitable access to academic opportunity within secondary education. Encouraging underrepresented students to enroll in AP courses and then helping them succeed requires schools to engage in multilevel, holistic interventions that are not easily analyzed or described quantitatively. The report suffers, however, from lack of rigor in its description of methods and analysis. The scant detail on participants and data collection methods and the lack of discussion of how data were analyzed and used in the report weaken links between claims and evidence. The report, which focuses on two schools that enroll primarily Latinx students, would have also benefited from case studies of schools enrolling Black and Native American students—the groups that are most underrepresented in national AP enrollment and success rates.
Overall, while the report provides some inspiring examples, more detailed and rigorous description of methods and analysis would make a stronger case for the highlighted interventions.
NEPC Review: High Stakes for High Achievers:
State Accountability in the Age of ESSA (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, August 2016)
State Accountability in the Age of ESSA
State Accountability in the Age of ESSA
Two recent reports from the Fordham Institute address the question of the impact of state accountability systems on “high achievers,” referred to in the reports as “students who have already crossed the proficiency threshold.” Both reports argue that this group is being neglected educationally, and they advocate for accountability systems to be redesigned to attend to the needs of high-achieving students. Both reports also recommend that states use a “performance index,” as opposed to proficiency rates, to measure school achievement. This review, however, concludes that: 1) the reports’ central assumptions about high-achieving students are problematic; 2) growth measures are not an effective means for directing attention to high-achieving students; 3) narrow, high-stakes forms of assessment may negatively impact the education provided to these students; and, 4) further stratifying educational settings and reallocating resources toward “high-achieving” students has troublesome implications for the democratic goals of education. Implementation of the reports’ recommendations may in fact result in a furthering of the inequitable educational opportunities that ESSA was designed to reduce.
Lessons from NCLB for the Every Student Succeeds Act
Review of 2016 Brown Center Report on American Education Part II: Tracking and Advanced Placement
This report uses state-level data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to describe a positive association between tracking in eighth grade and the proportion of students passing AP exams in high school. The relationship is moderately strong and holds true for White, Black, and Hispanic students. The report suggests that the separate learning environments for high achievers created by tracking are important for providing students (including students of color) with the skills and knowledge to succeed with the most demanding coursework offered in high schools. The findings are based on correlations and cannot establish a causal relationship, nor can they identify what mechanisms might be at work. However, they are consistent with prior research that has frequently (although not always) identified benefits of tracking for high-achieving students. A key weakness is that the report neglects to consider how tracking is likely to affect lower-achieving students. Tracking is often implemented in ways that hinder the learning of students assigned to low tracks. Because disadvantaged and minority students are disproportionally assigned to low tracks, the report’s conclusion that tracking could be “a potential tool for promoting equity” is dubious.
Is American Education on a Bad Track?
Review of Does Sorting Students Improve Test Scores?
This National Bureau of Economic Research working paper purports to examine the extent and effects of sorting students into classrooms by test scores. It then claims to explore the effect of sorting on overall student achievement as well as on low achievers, high achievers, gifted, special education and Limited English Proficient students. The paper uses standardized Texas state test scores as the measure of learning growth. Based on a comparison between third- and fourth-grade scores, the paper concludes that sorting students by scores is associated with significant learning gains for both lower and higher achievers. It does not, however, find similar effects for the sub-groups. The paper is limited by several important methodological issues. First, it simply assumes, based on test score distributions, that the schools tracked students between classes—and this assumption is highly questionable. Second, it provides no criteria by which students were classified as high or low achievers. Finally, it measures only relative standing of students on two proficiency tests given in different years. It does not measure growth. Because of these and other weaknesses, this paper should not be used to inform policy regarding tracking or grouping practices.
Reviews Worth Sharing: Tracking and Detracking: High Achievers in Massachusetts Middle Schools (December 2009)
A new report authored by Tom Loveless and published by the Fordham Institute misleads in an attempt to convince policymakers to maintain tracking policies. The report combines weak data with questionable analyses to manufacture a flawed argument against detracking. This review was written by Kevin Welner independently, not as part of the Think Tank Review Project. It is available to subscribers of the journal "Teachers College Record," at http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15872
Welner’s review describes how the Loveless report combines weak data with questionable analyses to manufacture an argument against detracking. Better treatment of these same data would, in fact, likely show that high-achieving Massachusetts middle school students in heterogeneous, untracked classrooms do as well or better than those in tracked classrooms – certainly in language arts (English) and maybe even in mathematics. He concludes that the report misleads in an attempt to convince policymakers to maintain tracking policies.