This fall, ICSD is beginning the process of detracking middle school math, meaning that in 2020, all students in sixth and seventh grade will be taught the same content and be grouped in heterogeneous classes. The process has drawn some uproar from parents who believe that doing so will decrease opportunities for their children. ICSD cited concerns over class, race, and gender disparities between accelerated and non-accelerated math as justification for the move. Sure, detracking could be a great solution to these disparities, if the ability gaps between students began in sixth grade. In order for detracking to be effective and not seriously harm students’ education, ICSD needs to bolster the math curricula starting in first or second grade as well as provide improved teacher training. Attempting to detrack without making substantial changes to the way math is taught will ultimately harm students of all abilities and demographics because it ignores the root causes of the ability gaps between students.
The need for a change in the district’s math system is apparent. Since Common Core standards were implemented in 2013, students have been struggling. Accelerated math has traditionally consisted of cramming two years of content into one. With Common Core increasing the amount of content required for a class, students simply aren’t being taught all the knowledge that they need. While mathematics test scores for grades 3-8 don’t show much of a decrease, students have increasingly begun to opt out of those tests. Many students who take accelerated math in middle school become disheartened when they enter high school and drop down to non-advanced levels. ICSD’s solution to this problem was to abolish tracking, claiming that it will actually funnel more students into advanced-level math in high school. The detracked classes will supposedly teach more content and prepare more students for the rigor of advanced high school courses. But students struggling with content isn’t a failure of tracking; it’s a failure of foundation. If students can’t absorb two years worth of new math material in a year, it’s because all the math being taught is new. Theoretically, the detracked system would teach those math fundamentals to all students indiscriminately. But in practice, this could hardly work.
It would be a fallacy to ignore the disparate abilities in a sixth-grade classroom. Many will know much of the content already, while many will still struggle with basic concepts. The teacher, now faced with a colossal range of abilities, has to cater to each and every single one of them: a herculean task. Inevitably, lower-ability students will be left behind, higher-ability students will be bored to tears, and those in the middle will receive a middling education. In effect, those who started at the bottom will only plummet further behind and those with gifts will be dragged down by a lead balloon. These differing abilities start much, much sooner, and to mitigate the harm, teachers need to offer support for struggling students in the earliest grades. And in turn, the district needs to offer support to teachers who are tasked to educate struggling pupils. One can’t expect students to miraculously catch up five years of difference.
The ICSD has brought in teachers from within the state to teach educators “co-teaching with differentiation and advanced math content.” Differentiation is a method that is meant to allow teachers to teach kids of varying abilities. Two teachers are placed in a classroom and instructed to work in tandem. The actual methods are vague. Another method that could feasibly work in a heterogeneous grouping is a discourse method, one not dissimilar to the structure of a college class. But in class sizes of twenty to twenty-five students, differentiation and discourse is difficult. Even two teachers working in tandem would find it difficult to manage a classroom of that size. And while it gives more flexibility for the teacher and some elasticity on the amount of content being taught, it most certainly does not wholly solve the issue of vast ability ranges.
ICSD makes this move much too early and without the proper foundations. Students are struggling: their math skills show a deficit in education, but they need to be taught more and better math in the earlier grades. Sixth grade is not a magical year where students automatically become better or worse at math. Tracking does not impose ability differences, it overlays them, and then, it intensifies them. It can’t happen without a serious restructuring of how math is taught in earlier grades. Therefore, to make this move now is going to do more harm than good to students.