Talking Points 6

Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route
Jeanie Oakes

Premise:
-classrooms
-student ability
-opportunities
-separation
-class systems
- teaching methods
-learning experiences

Argument:
Oakes argues that while the system of tracking students may not work, alternatives to the system may provide the same benefits to top students while not disadvantaging the rest of the students, even though the said alternatives may be difficult to acheive.

Evidence:
1. " as policymakers and educators become disenchanted with tracking, they may not need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Alternative strategies, while not simple to implement, promise to help schools reach their goal of providing high-quality, relevant education to all students.
2. "Creating constructive alternatives to tracking presents technical as well as political problems. Despite promising research findings about heterogeneous grouping, little is likely to be accomplished by simply mixing students up. To be effectie, alternatives will probably, require fundamental changes."
3."Obviously, the kinds of changes likely to promote high-quality learning for all students in heterogeneous classrooms go far beyond mere fine tuning of current practice. These changes...teachers' work."

Points to share:
Although I think my argument statement is a little weak, I think the three pieces of evidence somewhat support eachother, so I apologize for lack of total cohesiveness. I think that while Oakes poses a relatively strong argument here, complete with a solution, it would require a complete reconfigure of the current education system. I think that in order to acheive it the current system would have to be somewhat abandoned. Acually I think that it would mean that elementary and secondary classrooms would have to be taught much like our own class. It would have to be less focused on compartmentalized exams, busy work, and other menial assignments and more on wholly conceptualized thought. However, if one were to do this wouldnt we then be minimalizing the importance and specialization of higher education? But then again wouldn't a system that embraced these things early on help foster skills and tools for college in a broader reaching way, therefore providing greater access to higher ed? Wouldn't more students would have the critical thought process and skill sets to be successful in that environment? I find that I more strongly support the second piece of this, that it would reach out to more students, yet I can't help but wonder if that would mean that the system would have to group students not by age but more by ability as a whole so that students would be in mixed aged classrooms that better supported their pace of learning,and would mean that acheivement was based more on personal growth then arbitrary marks of success as Oakes seems to suggest. I think this would better support the type of system Oakes would like to see, then our current one.