Beth's+Outside+Article+and+Summary

__**Tracking and College Prep Courses **__ [|Dropout Nation article - RiShawn Biddle]

[|Joanne Jacobs' response]

These are two articles that discuss the problem of tracking and of college prep courses in our high schools. The Dropout Nation article by RiShawn Biddle does bring up some really good points, and I like that it focuses on the low expectations and poor education that minority students so often recieve. I don't believe that it's fair that they are so frequently put on the 'easier track' and therefore never given the chance to enter a four year college or university. However, Biddle fails to discuss something that Joanne Jacobs brings up in her response. What about the high-achieving kids that need the more challenging classes? How can you put someone who is prepared for calculus and someone who has yet to master algebra skills together in the same classroom? There is bound to be a problem. Either the one will be not be challenged as he or she rightfully deserves or the other will be completely lost and frustrated or both.

So what is the answer to the problem? I believe that the problem does not lie in the practice of tracking so much as it does in that

a. The students put on the 'easier track' are much more likely to be minority students or of low socioeconomic status, etc. and b. Usually more effort and resources go into the 'higher track'

If we could succeed in better preparing minority students in elementary and middle schools, then they would be ready for higher track classes in high school. I do not agree with the practice of tracking in the sense of teachers or counselors deciding at 9th grade whether students should be on the college prep. track or the vocational track. However, I do believe that a certain level of preparation is necessary to take an AP course. I think that critical pedagogy supporters would be against tracking and college prep courses for a lot of reasons. They would find the way that courses are set up ineffective because it requires students to take classes (such as college prep/AP courses) that are most likely not very applicable to the students' lives. Also, tracking goes against the social justice that CP strives for in everything.