Mixing high-achieving, average and low-achieving students in the same class was a noble experiment, writes Ryan Normandin, a high school math and physics teacher in Newton, Massachusetts. But it's not working in math, science and foreign language classes. Everyone learns less, he writes. The students who need the most support are doing the worst.
Tracking isn't perfect, he writes. It can be hard for students to move up a level. Students tend to segregate by achievement and by race and ethnicity: Black, Hispanic and low-income students disproportionately take lower-level classes.
Multilevel classes in English and history had some success, writes Normandin. Students opted in. Teachers got support. Then administrators expanded the model to math, science and world languages, subjects that build on previous learning.
After three years, nearly all teachers at Newton South High, where he chairs the Faculty Council, say the model is failing students and exhausting teachers, he writes.
One world language teacher compared the challenge of meeting the varied needs of students to teaching a class where half the students are learning colors for the first time and the other half are analyzing a Salvador Dali painting. . . . Without adequate training or support, many teachers are forced to teach to the middle (let’s list all the colors in the Dali painting), leaving the highest-needs students lost and struggling and the highest-performing students bored and disengaged.
In a survey of 31 STEM teachers, only one said the multilevel model is "beneficial," he writes. Several teachers who teach both tracked and multilevel classes, said their students in single-level classes outperformed their multilevel students.
"Administrators feel good" when they can point to white, Asian, black and Hispanic students in the same classroom, Normandin writes. But neglecting students' learning needs isn't "anti-racism." Newton Public Schools' motto is “Equity and Excellence,” he points out. Sadly, "these classes are not equitable, and they are not excellent."
In Shaker Heights, Ohio, another highly regarded school district, detracking was supposed to improve equity, reports Laura Meckler. Amid pandemic chaos, the district placed all students in what had been honors classes for high achievers. For example, all students now take algebra in eighth grade.
Middle-school math teachers said training sessions "dealt more with the underlying philosophy and moral urgency of detracking and less with the nuts and bolts of teaching a diverse classroom," she writes.
More black students are testing as competent in algebra. But some teachers say they've been forced to lower expectations.