In the interest of equity, SPSD is now going through a district wide push to end the Advanced Learner/Spectrum program altogether, starting in elementary schools. One middle school is already moving ahead with the detracking starting in middle school:
Seattle Schools End Tracking.
From the cited article:
Some Seattle schools end ‘tracking’ in push for equity and success
By Claudia Rowe
Seattle Times staff reporter
Dismal school results have persisted so long for many black and Latino students that some observers believe the problem is virtually unchangeable, due to a mountain of social, economic and historical forces no teacher can reverse.
But a longtime educator in New York state says those theories are wrong, and her research is influencing teachers in Seattle. Specifically, at Garfield High School, where honors classes traditionally are filled with white and Asian students, while general-education classes are mostly black and Latino.
“We reached a point where we can no longer just say, ‘Oh, well.’ The racial segregating that has happened, that’s very uncomfortable for us,” said social-studies teacher Jerry Neufeld-Kaiser, explaining a new plan to combine ninth-graders of varied academic records into what the school is calling honors-for-all English and social-studies classes this fall.
The move, known as de-tracking, has startled many parents, who learned of it through a recent Seattle Times story on race and education. But teachers at Garfield had been discussing it all year, Neufeld-Kaiser said.
Many were inspired by the work of Carol Burris, a principal at South Side High School in Rockville Centre, N.Y., who found that slower classes — and their reduced expectations — perpetuate low achievement.
Burris is the author of the book "On the Same Track: How Schools Can Join the Twenty-First-Century Struggle against Resegregation" (2015).
