Linda Valli on tracking in 5 Catholic high schools

DISCUSSION

The portrait of the five tracking dimensions of these three Catholic schools is not too different from that found in a national sample of public schools. The Catholic schools had just as many subject areas and courses ability-grouped. Catholic schools students were just as constrained in placement decisions and in their chances for higher track mobility. Nor do Catholic schools seem to avoid the racial differentiation endemic in tracking. Where the organizational differences emerge is in the curriculum and instructional quality. Because students in the lower tracks in the Catholic schools received about the same type and quality of instruction as their higher track counterparts, the negative consequences were mitigated.

Because teachers were committed to improving life’s possibilities for their students, a challenging learning environment was prevalent at all track levels. Teachers, students kept stressing, expected them to do their personal best. A St Catherine student commented that teachers wouldn’t just let them sit there “and don’t do anything. They know what you can do; they know your abilities…they say, ‘We expect much more from you.’ And they help and encourage you.” At Murphy, one student reported getting a C grade from a science teacher for the same quality work for which he had previously received an A. The student did not complain: “She realized how much better I could do if I applied myself.”

A Central Catholic parent reported a similar incident with his son, who was a good athlete. A teacher refused to turn a borderline grade into a pass even though the failure prevented the student from participating in sports the rest of that year. Though the parent complained at the time, the teacher would not be dissuaded, claiming that Raymond had been “getting by” for too long. At the time of our interview, a year later, raymond was an honors student.

Teachers cared that their students learned and believed they could learn. “For the first time I think these kids are on a level of their own, they can compete among themselves and I think the goal we are asking for is attainable all of a sudden.”

Many of the students we interviewed needed that extra dose of attention and belief. In their heterogeneously grouped grade school classrooms they had apparently been easy to overlook. When many students grasp the material, it is natural for teachers to move on to the next concept or unit—leaving behind those who are still baffled. But when an entire class is still floundering, teachers are much more apt to repeat the lesson, attempting to find alternate ways of facilitating student understanding.

Perhaps the reason why lower track classes in public schools appear to be so different from the ones we observed in Catholic schools is that in public schools low achieving but school-oriented students tend to be grouped with school-alienated students. This suggests it is not the tracking system in and of itself which lowers instructional quality, but the types of groupings which lower the quality. Until now, those factors have been confounded in criticisms of lower track classes.

This means that the seemingly similar track structures in Catholic and public schools had quite different effects on students because the different “meaning systems” they conveyed affected the student-teacher relationships which occurred within them (Cohen 1969). In many comprehensive public schools, the lower track is regarded as a dumping ground for society’s losers. In these Catholic schools, teachers believed in their students’ desire to learn, to be academically successful. Students knew their teachers were committed to helping even the slowest among them, and that they did not equate rank-in-class with moral worth. This shared meaning system created trusting social relations which facilitated classroom learning (McDermott 1977). Though the philosophy and selection mechanisms of Catholic schools might facilitate this meaning system, there is no reason to believe it is restricted to any one system of schooling.

Tracking: Can It Benefit Low Achieving Students?
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association
(70th, San Francisco, CA, April 16-20, 1986)
p. 29-32

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