High School as a PUMP - Everyone into the pool!

Imagine it is your first day of school.  Kindergarten. Your mom has dressed you for the occasion, you have butterflies in your stomach, you are desperate to fit in, to succeed.  It really is a very scary moment.  And then you begin learning.  As you go through your first years at school, you notice that some students do well, others do not. Some are popular, some are not, most just try to fit in.  Once a year, you take strange, important tests and wonder what is their purpose... and what did the other students get on their tests?  Around 7th grade, you are chosen to move to an advanced English class.  You make new friends, all who like reading and writing and seem to do well.  Things are going pretty good.  You never look back.  You never notice what happened to the other students in your class. What was their education like? Were they successful?  Were they challenged?

It is not until you are a parent and it is your child that is going to school that you have a deeper understanding of how schools sort students. Around 2nd grade you wonder if your child is gifted and will be allowed to participate in the special gifted program.  Or maybe, your child is struggling and you want to find a way to help them. You are worried if your son is labeled as having special needs will he receive a challenging curriculum or be cast aside. Around 7th grade you notice that students are being tracked, placed into programs based upon either IQ or grades or even behaviors.  In fact, some students seemed to be placed into specific programs based on how pushy their parents are.

By the time your child enters high school, you are deeply aware of the tracking system (ability grouping) that separates students into tracks with differentiated classes and curriculums.  In Pittsburgh high schools there's a gifted track (CAS), a scholars track (PSP), a regular track, a vocational track and a special needs track. If you ask the students what these tracks are they would say "the brainiacs, the hard working kiss up kids, the slackers, the poor kids and the messed up kids." If you ask teachers what these tracks are they would say "the super bright whiny students, the hard workers, the lazy students, the non-academic students and the hard to reach students."  These distinctions are all preconceived notions about who you are and what your ability is. What track were you in?  What track is your child in?

How Tracking Creates a Poverty of Learning - Mary Hatwood Futrell and Joel Gomez

Ability grouping began in the early 20th century (Hallinan, 2004; Oakes & Guiton, 1995). In response to an influx of immigrant children into U.S. schools, school administrators decided to place students in different groups or tracks primarily on the basis of test results or their past performance in school. By the middle of the 20th century, a majority of U.S. schools used some form of ability grouping or tracking. Today, almost all schools are still implicitly defined by this curriculum paradigm, which often starts in primary school and continues through high school... Tracking historically refers to the practice of grouping high school students by ability into a series of courses with differentiated curriculums; students take high-, middle-, or low-level courses related to the track they have selected or been assigned to (academic, general, or vocational). Most students, if not all, are enrolled in one of these tracks by the time they complete middle school.

My experience as a student, a parent and an educator suggests that whether we filter students by IQ, standardized tests, grades, behaviors or parental pressure, placing students into tracks becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For students, it manages their expectations and ultimately limits their success. For teachers, it narrows the population, thus allowing you to focus your content at a level that is "aligned" with the abilities of the students. You never have to focus on the students needs, just teach the content at the right level and all should go well. As a mathematics teacher this seemed initially to make sense.

However, there were two problems with tracking that I confronted as a teacher and supervisor that were hard to reconcile. The first was that the lower tracked students received a dumbed-down slow-paced curriculum (over and over again.) The second was that in the middle and upper tracked mathematics courses, close to 50% of the students dropped out of academic mathematics courses every year (this meant that only 1/8 of the students who took 9th grade Algebra continued through to a senior level mathematics class such as PreCalculus or Calculus.) The tracking system seemed to do a good job of filtering students out, but it did not seem to provide some form of success for all students.

When we started City Charter High School, we asked a rather complex question: "what would happen if we mixed all students in the same classroom?"  One track, one curriculum, everyone in the same class.  Could everyone benefit from this heterogeneous classroom environment? This was a radical change from how schools in America were currently organized.

The first challenge was to organize classes in a supportive manner conducive to heterogenous grouping. At City High, there are approximately 165 students per grade. Students are broken into three groups of 55 balanced by race and gender.  Each group of 55 students stays together for the entire year.  And the group of 165 students and their faculty stay together for four years (looping).  This provides consistency and develops collaborative/supportive relationships between students and teachers.

The second challenge was to change the pedagogical orientation of the teachers.  There is an old adage that states "In elementary schools teachers teach students, in high schools teachers teach mathematics."  We had to get the teachers to focus on student learning rather than presenting content.  To do this we had to provide staff development on learning styles. Recent research into learning styles and multiple intelligences suggests that each of us has a preferred style of learning.

The Seven Learning Styles are: 

• Visual (spatial): You prefer using pictures, images, and spatial understanding.

• Aural (auditory-musical): You prefer using sound and music.

• Verbal (linguistic): You prefer using words, both in speech and writing.

• Physical (kinesthetic): You prefer using your body, hands and sense of touch.

• Logical (mathematical): You prefer using logic, reasoning and systems.

• Social (interpersonal): You prefer to learn in groups or with other people.

• Solitary (intrapersonal): You prefer to work alone and use self-study.

A teacher who is student focused will quickly learn about his/her students learning predilections and teach accordingly.  With a four year loop, teachers can have a huge impact on student achievement once they incorporate knowledge of individual learning styles.

A third challenge was to get teachers to develop lessons and units that differentiate instruction.  This means to develop lessons that provide multi-level options for problem sets, readings and deliverables such as essays, projects and presentations. It also means that you have to offer multimodal ways to measure achievement and demonstrate understanding.

The fourth challenge was how do you provide services and support for special needs students in a heterogeneous classroom?  The name for this concept is full inclusion (or the least restrictive learning environment.)  To read a detailed analysis of how this is done at City High read a white paper on the topic at http://cityhigh.org/publications/special-education-2/. Classroom staffing must guarantee that appropriate support and accommodations are made for special needs students.

The fifth challenge was how to provide academic rigor for the highest "ability" students.  This was accomplished by creating an honors program within an academic course. Students self-select to be in honors (you do not have to test into it.) It simply means you want to do more challenging work. Students in honors remain in the heterogeneous classroom and study the same themes and complete the same projects. Differentiation occurs through reading more challenging books on the current topic being studied, working on more challenging problem sets and completing more demanding assignments.

To get a full understanding of how a differentiated, student-centered, project-based classroom works, you can read a white paper on the Cultural Literacy classes at City High (http://cityhigh.org/publications/cultural-literacy-october-2011/).

So what did we learn were the benefits of grouping all students together?  We learned that:

1. All students can achieve in a heterogeneous classroom.  
2. The positive change in attitudes and motivation for special needs students and students who are behind in their education is significant.  
3. The vast majority of special needs students can succeed in "the least restrictive learning environment."  
4. Bright students who are high achievers can be accommodated in this diverse setting through appropriate differentiation. 
5. Teachers can learn to differentiate and individualize instruction when they are committed to working with the same students for a four year period.  
6. Achievement gaps with respect to race and socio-economics are greatly reduced when high expectations and support mechanisms are there for every student.  
7. All students become adept at collaboration, project management, time management and supporting each other.  
8. Students grow to understand and appreciate diversity, rather than to fear or demean it. 

If we ever decided to go back to tracking at City High, the students would lead an insurrection.  Once a student has experienced a learning environment that assumes everyone can excel at high levels of achievement, he/she is no longer willing to be marginalized.  

Our top students have gone on to Carnegie-Mellon, University of Rochester, University of Chicago, Penn State and any number of top level schools and have excelled.  Our graduates complete college at a rate that is 20% higher than the national average. Those graduates who go into the workplace have skills that are far above their fellow workers. This allows them to move up quickly in terms of wages and responsibility. And most importantly, our students who start high school with deficits, special needs students, and less fortunate students (socio-economically), are succeeding far beyond their expectations. 

I am not aware of any other high schools that have eliminated tracking.  This brings us back to the fundamental question: Should high school act as a Filter or a Pump?