Off Track documentary about detracking World Lit class

Off Track

“Tracking” in schools, or the practice of segregating students by “ability”, has long been an issue of debate among educators and researchers alike. As shown in Off-Track, the practice of tracking raises fundamental educational questions about how we define intelligence and who we deem to be intelligent. The setting of the video is an untracked World Literature course in suburban Montclair High School in New Jersey. Michelle Fine, professor of psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, points out, “We don’t need public education to reproduce social, class and race discrepancies. We’ve got a larger society that’s more than happy to do that. The task of public education is to interrupt those discrepancies and create a broader set of opportunities for everybody.”

Resources for The Problem We All Live With

Discussion of School Vouchers: Alfie Kohn, Only for My Kid

Response to the parents of Francis Howell Opposing Integration:  11 Ways...

Elite schools and the College Application process -- Boston Globe

How Integration Helps Everyone

Nikole Hannah-jones

I think it's important to point out that it is not that something magical happens when black kids sit in a classroom next to white kids. It's not that suddenly a switch turns on and they get intelligence, or wanting the desire to learn when they're with white kids. What integration does is it gets black kids in the same facilities as white kids. And therefore, it gets them access to the same things that those kids get-- quality teachers and quality instruction.

Ira Glass

The US Department of Education put out data last year showing that black and Latino kids in segregated schools have the least qualified teachers, the least experienced teachers. They also get the worst course offerings, the least access to AP and upper level courses, the worst facilities. The other thing about most segregated black schools, Nikole says, is that they have high concentrations of children who grew up in poverty.

Those kids have greater educational needs. They're more stressed out. They have a bunch of disadvantages. And when you put a lot of kids like that together in one classroom, studies show, it doesn't go well.

Nikole Hannah-jones

If you're surrounded by a bunch of kids who are all behind, you stay behind. But if you're in a classroom that has some kids behind and some kids advance, the kids who are behind tend to catch up. These kids in these classes in schools with concentrated poverty don't have that.

They don't have that effect of kids who can help boost them. Everyone's behind.

Media to go with our conversation last week...

There is a short film (4 min) at the top of this article that speaks to many of the issues we talked about in class last week.  Thought you might like to watch it and read the controversy that ensued after a school used it as a teaching tool.

Stay warm over the weekend!!

Class Today

I sent out a text earlier, but in case you didn't get it and are searching for us...

We are meeting in Craig Lee room 102.

See you at 4:00!

LB :)