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Stratification
in the American school system has its roots in the beginning of the twentieth-century.
During
this period in history, the United States was experiencing a surge of European immigrants, an Industrial Revolution, as well
as an increase in the size of the American school system. As workers moved into the cities to find employment,
more children began attending urban schools. Mandatory schooling laws brought students from various social and
economic backgrounds into the same classrooms. The initial implementation of tracking sought to segregate students
on the basis of occupational—and essentially socioeconomic—futures. This system of differentiated
curriculums ensured the continuation of an upper class and lower class, or the labor market.
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| As students flooded schools, educators began to divide students based on their socioeconomic status. |
While tracking segregated students on the basis of social class since the beginning of the twentieth century,
in 1955 tracking also became a means for racial segregation after the Supreme Court case, Brown v. the Board of Education. As the Supreme Court called for racially desegregated in schools across America, “racially
motivated educators discovered a new way of legally segregating schools”—tracking (Mallery & Mallery, 1999,
p. 2).
“The practice of tracking is often used as a means of racially segregating student populations irregardless
of actual ability or test scores" (Mallery & Mallery, 1999). Quote by Jonathan
Kozol.
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| Before Brown v. Board (1955), schools were separate for whites and African Americans. |
The system of overarching tracking has been gradually disintegrating since the 1960s. Research points to the idea that schools shifted from “honors, remedial, essential, and basic”
curriculum labels to course labels. This labeling shift could have been a
result of Hobson v. Hansen, a court case that, in 1967 in the Washington, DC school district, prohibited tracking. The court found that the district had essentially used tracking as a method for segregation. This ruling may have encouraged other school districts to implement changes to the
overarching tracking system.
Also, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, demands that districts verify “the educational
necessity of tracking schemes that have a disproportionate impact on minorities,” prompting schools to reassess the
structure and methods associated with their tracking systems (“Tracking Inequality,” 1989, p. 1334).
While schools moved away from a system of overarching tracking, the education system did not dismiss categorical
programs that homogeneously grouped students according to their academic ability.
During the 1960s, Americans were addressing competitiveness with foreign academics as well as inequalities—racial,
economic, and social—within the education system. As a result, categorical
programs, including “gifted education, special education, compensatory education, bilingual programs,” were implemented
to enhance the success of all students. These programs “institutionalized
the conviction that any standardized education would shortchange [students] with extraordinary needs;” thus, further
embedding stratification into the American school system (Loveless, 2005, p. 196).
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| Many schools developed programs aimed at gearing learning more towards the needs of the individual. |
In 1998, racially segregated tracking was revealed through People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education in
which Rockford Public Schools were charged with “segregation through ability grouping and discrimination against the
district’s nearly 30% African American and Latino students” (Oakes, 2005, p. 204). From her in-depth
research of the Rockford Public Schools tracking system, Oakes (2005) found that “African American or Latino students
were consistently overrepresented, while white and Asian students were consistently underrepresented, in low-ability tracks
in all subjects” (p. 205).
Despite the fact that “most schools in America have dispensed with the overarching programs,” some
curriculums and many courses have remained differentiated, making stratification still a key aspect of schooling (Loveless,
2005, p. 196; Lucas, 1999, p. 7).
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