more from Valli's study of tracking in Catholic high schools

My interest in tracking was re-kindled during a field study of Catholic high schools. Acquaintance with the labeling and stratification literature (Page 1983; Rist 1970) made me highly skeptical of the capacity of a tracking system to serve any students except the most privileged. My own research in a basically untracked comprehensive public high school reinforced my conviction that only such an environmnt could provide maximum opportunity for students (Valli, 1986). I was totally unprepared for students' invariably positive evaluations of their schools' tracking systems.

I first attributed St. Catherine's students' comments to the hidden, individualized nature of the school's sorting process. Classes, not students, were given level numbers; the word track was never used. I presumed that the private way in which course selection occurred muted students' criticisms and possibly tracking's negative consequences. Students, I thought, were simply not conscious of its detrimental effects.

But the next research site immediately destroyed that theory. At Central catholic a student's track was as public as his name. Every student could immediately give his track number, with Track 3 students specifying levels a, b, c, or d as well. Yet student interviews elicited the same positive comments about ability grouping heard at St. Catherine. Having explored and rejected the possibilities that students were giving us a sanitized view of their school experience or that only certain types of students were being sent for interviews, I was forced to begin to reassess my prior conclusion that tracking was nothing more than an insidious sorting mechanism for a class society. This paper is a product of that re-consideration.
Tracking: Can It Benefit Low Achieving Children?
Linda R. Valli
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association
(70th, San Francisco, CA, April 16-20, 1986)
p. 2-3

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Tracking: Can It Benefit Low Achieving Children?
Linda Valli on tracking in 5 Catholic high schools, 1
Linda Valli on tracking in 5 Catholic high schools, 2
"school commitment" in Valli's study of tracking in Catholic high schools
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