“My Skin Color Stops Me from Leading”: Tracking, Identity, and Student Dynamics in a Racially Mixed School

Abstract

The practice of separating students according to ability level, also known as academic tracking, allows racially mixed schools to maintain segregated classrooms. This article examines the effects of academic tracking on the racial identity and educational opportunities of students at a mixed-race suburban charter school. Through five months of participant observation research, I found that the long-term practice of academic tracking created racial boundaries among students, silenced students of color in honors classes, and limited educational opportunity for all students. However, subsequent efforts to detrack, although superficial, resulted in positive outcomes for all students.

To educate engineers or to engineer educators?: Exploring access to engineering careers

“…Scholars further argue that tracking is but one way schools determine the levels of social reproduction within the U.S. school system of today (Anyon, ; Riegle‐Crumb, King, Grodsky, & Muller, ). Of great concern to us is that these differences generally fall along racial, economic, and cultural lines (Delpit, ; Modica, ; Ogbu, ), and as such tracking serves as a highly efficient mechanism to deliver students into their so‐called proper places within society (Gamoran, ; Rosenbaum, ). STEM instruction in public schools has played no small part in the creation of unequal educational opportunities for tracked students setting up educational trajectories leading to different levels of educational and occupational attainment with lifelong consequences.…”

Eliciting Student Voice to Explore the Need for Culturally Responsive Teaching in Secondary Schools

“…Students can even develop self-efficacy vicariously: if a student sees a person with whom they identify modeling success, that student can experience an increased sense of selfefficacy based on that model. Without having to experience the initial success themselves, viewing others who look or act like them achieve their goals boosts a student's perception that they may also achieve those goals (Booth, et al, 2017;Fordham, 1985;Modica, 2015;Schunk, 2003). The implication of this research is that as minorities in a dominant White culture, minority students will have fewer opportunities to identify with adults or peers, and thus fewer opportunities to develop self-efficacy through exposure to modeling.…”

“…One facet of maintaining control is that the dominant culture portrays individual people of color as representatives of their entire race, often described as "ambassadors to their race." This means that inherent strengths-and weaknesses-are attributed to the entire race, as an undifferentiated mass (Fordham, 1985;Modica, 2015). As a result of this behavior of the dominant-culture, people of color forge what is called a "fictive kinship."…”

Repairing Wounds and Promoting Belonging and Resiliency in a Tracked English Classroom

“…Some schools believe that the most equitable road toward closing the opportunity gap is to segregate its students (Modica, 2015). For decades, proponents of academic tracking have argued that separating students based on academic skill makes it more feasible for students to receive greater attention and tailored curriculum (Oakes, 1986).…”

“…In practice, many argue that academic tracking perpetuates segregation and accompanying racist ideologies by primarily grouping white students into high-track classes, and students of color in low-track classes (Blaisdell, 2016;Modica, 2015;Oakes, 1986). They posit that this de facto segregation has serious impacts on student performance and experience at school.…”