An Interpretive Investigation of In-Classroom Detracking Across a Variety of Diverse School Contexts

Beth Rubin

"Tracking," the sorting and grouping of students by perceived ability and the corresponding curriculum differentiation that results, is a widespread practice in the United States. Many educational researchers link tracking to the reinforcement and perpetuation of inequalities in educational attainment along race and class lines (e.g. Oakes, 1985). Recognizing tracking as a potential barrier to educational equity, a number of schools have attempted to "detrack," consciously organizing students into academically heterogeneous classrooms. It seems simple. Tracking creates inequity; therefore detrack to reverse this inequity. Preliminary research in racially and socioeconomically diverse schools suggests that the matter is not quite so simple. In the researcher’s dissertation study of a detracked English-Social Studies program for ninth grade students in a large, diverse urban high school, she found that constructions of ability, patterns of friendship, and configurations of academic achievement that prevailed in the broader school setting re-emerged within the detracked classrooms under study (Rubin, 2003). Research indicates that instituting detracking in racially and socioeconomically diverse school contexts is a process fraught with difficulty (Yonezawa, Wells and Serna, 2002; Wells et al, 1996). It is less clear how aspects of the school context frame and shape what takes place within the detracked classroom itself. The purpose of this study is to extend the researcher’s initial investigation into the detracked classrooms of three distinct schools. The result will be a comparative case study yielding useful insights both for teachers working in detracked classrooms and researchers attempting to understand how to better serve students from educationally underrepresented segments of society. The central question of the study is “How do students and teachers enact detracking in distinct high school contexts?” To answer this broad question, the study will examine: 1) the nature of teachers’ detracking practices in three different schools; 2) students’ constructions of race, patterns of friendship, and understandings of ability within the detracked classrooms these schools; 3) the social and academic dimensions of the larger school environment framing detracking in these school settings; 4) students’ patterns of achievement in the detracked classes of these schools, in comparison both with such patterns in the larger school setting and with individual students’ performance in their tracked classes. This study aims to deepen researchers’ and educators’ understandings of detracking reform in particular, and of the complex relationship between policy, practice, and results in reforming schools in general. It will generate grounded theoretical understandings of 1) students’ construction of notions of ability across and within school contexts, 2) the interplay between race, friendship, and academic achievement in diverse settings, and 3) diverse students’ experiences with school reform, adding to an emerging body of research which attends to the perspectives of students in order to better understand educational policy and practice. Finally, the researcher hopes that by creating a more nuanced and socioculturally situated depiction of detracking this study can potentially lead to an improvement in detracking practices and assist educational reformers and activists in creating reform initiatives that are more finely tuned to student needs.

About Beth Rubin

Beth C. Rubin is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where she is a member of the Department of Educational Theory, Policy and Administration. In Dr. Rubin’s research she uses a sociocultural lens to examine issues relating to educational equity in U.S. high schools. Her recent research explores detracking in the classrooms of racially and socioeconomically diverse schools, and students' constructions of civic identity. She received her Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Studies in Education from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001. Prior to her graduate studies she was a social studies teacher in California public high schools.