Close to Home: Tracking of students is no solution either

Whether the Santa Rosa City Schools district should adopt the A-G college-prep curriculum for all students has recently become the topic of heated public debate.

While the district is nowhere near making such a change, it is, however, working to eliminate decades-old “tracking” policies that funnel students into two basic courses of study even before students enter high school. Kids considered college material are placed in “college-prep” classes. Kids not considered college material are placed in less academic “regular”courses.

Students graduating from the “regular” (“Reg”) track are not eligible to apply for admission to the California State University or University of California systems. Nor are they eligible to enroll in college-level classes at junior colleges - including most two-year technical programs - until they first complete remedial coursework.

The merits of tracking have gone under the microscope at two of our high schools, Elsie Allen and Piner. Both schools recently integrated their Reg students into academic A-G English and math classes and added specific support systems for the Reg students. The Elsie English department carefully monitored the process. Anecdotally, the teachers reported that after just one quarter, they had forgotten who the Reg kids were. The data showed that all of the students - Reg and academic - performed better. And even though the classes were more difficult, the fail rate was lower.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Education research overwhelmingly supports the common-sense conclusion that kids rise - or sink - to meet expectations.

No one in our district administration or on our school board believes all students will or should go to college. No one believes we should do away with career-focused or technical training courses. But tracking policies decide whether or not kids will graduate eligible to apply to a state university or enter junior college at college level.

Tracking decisions are made at the end of eighth grade, when ninth-grade course schedules are set. We should not be making these decisions for our students. Our students should not be held to the school district’s perception of who they are and who they will become based on the first 13 years of their lives.

The district’s tracking policies and high numbers of Reg courses have not served our students. In 2013, 39 percent of California’s high school graduates completed their A-G courses compared to only 29 percent of our students.

What is most troubling though is how tracking has disproportionally affected students of color. Statewide, 27 percent of 2013 Latino graduates completed their A-G courses compared to just 17 percent of our Latino graduates. At Roseland University Prep, which only has a college-prep track, 64.4 percent of its 2013 graduates satisfied the A-G requirements.

Up until 2012, course offerings at three of our high schools reflected a low expectation for Latinos. For example, Maria Carrillo High, which is predominately white, has traditionally offered college-prep courses and very few Reg courses. But at Elsie Allen and Piner, most classes available to the predominantly Latino student body were non-college prep Reg courses. Consequently, most Elsie and Piner kids graduated not “college ready.” This is de facto institutional racism.

In the 1967 Hobson v. Hansen school desegregation case, the circuit court in Washington, D.C. held that the District of Columbia’s tracking system denied students equal education opportunity. The court ordered an end to the unconstitutional system, stating, “Even in concept the track system is undemocratic and discriminatory. Its creator admits it is designed to prepare some children for white-collar, and other children for blue-collar, jobs … (T)he danger of children completing their education wearing the wrong collar is far too great for this democracy to tolerate.”

Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision held that separate is not equal, and a year later the court held that some changes are too important to be delayed.

Montgomery High School is now following Elsie and Piner’s lead and moving away from tracking policies.

The district must continue in this direction. We cannot continue to practice the racism of low expectations through tracking.

Jenni Klose is a member of the Santa Rosa school board.