In Response to “Should Humanities Be Tracked?”

Dear Editors,

I read with great disappointment the recent editorial entitled “Should Humanities be Tracked?”. While I understand the origins of such a piece and the arguments it contained, I feel that the piece advocates for a solution that not only undermines our Progressive mission, but also runs contrary to the evidence and research regarding student success. As a school, we need to understand that when we make the choice to track students, we undermine progressive education and fall victim to what Alfie Kohn refers to as “creeping traditionalism.”

 

To first address the issue of improving student learning, it is important to note that there is virtually no evidence whatsoever that tracking classes presents quantifiable educational benefits to students.  To paraphrase Valerie Strauss in The Washington Post, to argue otherwise is akin to climate change denial. In “Visible Learning,” John Hattie collected over 800 meta-analyses, finding that tracking provides little academic benefits to students and does profound damage to schools seeking equity. The National Research Council found that tracking does profound damage to students not placed in the “highest track.” And that same group, working with the Institute of Medicine, called for the elimination of tracking back in 2004, citing its lack of benefits and promotion of what they referred to as “discrimination.” Even the Department of Education, never a bastion of forward thinking leaders, labeled tracking a “modern form of segregation.”

 

Furthermore, tracking actually stands in opposition to growing trends both in schools and in technology. Trends in schools today are towards “micro-schools,” small independent schools in which students of all ages are grouped together to learn as a team, focusing on their interests in a Montessori fashion. The explosion of new independent and charter schools have used small class sizes, mixed-age grouping, and personalized systems to reach all students without the need for tracking. These schools have leveraged technology in a manner that allows for students to learn at their own pace, never shutting doors on that student because they couldn’t move “fast enough.” Moving towards a tracked system ignores the massive influence that communications technology and media have, and will continue to have, on education. We would not only move further away from progressive education, we’d be moving in the opposite direction of the most innovative schools in the country.

 

Regardless of the evidence, tracking stands in direct opposition to the essential elements of Progressive Education, and when we choose to track students, we move further and further away from our progressive ideals. The choice to track students provides little data-supported benefits for students while doing damage to the school as a whole.

 

As a progressive educator and someone who wants to see success for all students, instead of tracking more classes, I would advocate for a de-tracked approach to everything we teach and learn at FWP, from humanities to the STEM fields, centering our school on the needs of our students, not the needs of subjects. If we truly believe in progressive education, this is our path.

-Martin Moran, Upper School History Teacher