The article seems to dance around some carefully crafted statistics. Students are “happier,” or more kids are taking classes which are labeled as advanced. I see very little in the form of college admissions rates, SAT scores, etc.

It’s also possible that tracking does in fact lower the average performance while increasing the high end performance.

One things which would help regardless is for Administrators which permit students to perpetuate bullying and abuse within the student body to be sued out of a job if not charged criminally. The shit we put up with kids doing to kids luckily seems to be changing fairly radically, and that does obviously help you tune down some of the tracking which in the past served as much a behavior as it did a pedagogical purpose.

I will say that my 5th grade daughter basically has stopped being taught new material for the last year (2nd half of 4th and first half of 5th) while the whole the class seems to be stuck in perpetual review mode. She complains that the teacher will rarely offer something new, and she doesn’t understand why everyone else in the class can’t just listen the first time it’s explained, and why the teacher spends the rest of the week basically repeating themselves.

I’m paranoid of teaching her independently and just making her even more bored. Tracking doesn’t start in my district until 6th grade and we are both very much looking forward to it.