I saw Waiting for Superman last night. For those of you who don't know, it's a documentary about the state of public education in our country. It's very well done, but I think there are some areas that could have been more developed and some simplification of the problems and solutions. For example, there is a short segment on a man who overtook a failing school in LA. In this school's 40 year history it produced 60,000 drop outs, I might be getting the numbers wrong here, but it was an alarming statistic. The film didn't go into how the new principal changed things or if he changed the school at all. If things improved the film didn't tell how it was done or what the success rate is now.
I have known the term "tracking" for a while, and when I was in school I certainly knew there were kids in remedial classes, average classes and advanced classes, but I never realized that it was a conscious decision by adults in charge to place each kid on a track based on their test scores and sometimes their classroom behavior. I am not a good standardized test taker, but I was a very good student -- all the way through. I was on the average track in high school, and I now suspect that it was because I didn't score well on (a) standardized tests I took.
My high school had AP English, History and Math classes, but I never knew about them until my friends and acquaintances and I discussed our schedules. Most of my friends were in the average classes too. And most of the kids who took AP classes were friends with each other. I should have been taking advanced classes in high school. My school, in this respect, did a disservice to me, and others like me.
I only remember meeting my guidance counselor one time in the four years I was in high school and it was while applying to colleges. She didn't serve me well either. She offered no advice as to what colleges I should be looking at. She only told me to make sure I got my applications in on time.
Mr. D went to a Catholic high school. The guidance and process of applying to college was far superior than at my school. All of the teacher recommendation letters were vetted by the guidance office before sending them off to the universities, there were meetings with each student about what schools they might be interested in and which ones they should apply to, there were college fairs that the students were encouraged to attend. I, on the other hand, was alone in deciding where to apply. I missed the deadline for Duke, was accepted at UConn and UNC Charlotte, and denied by UNC Chapel Hill. My only priority was that the school be in a warm climate. So UNC Charlotte was where I went, until I transferred at the end of my sophomore year. At 17, my priorities should have been different and I should have had more guidance from my school and my parents, neither of whom went to college. I don't blame my parents because they didn't have first hand experience with the process and were ignorant themselves, about what schools' reputations were etc. . . But my high school should have been more helpful.
I don't regret going to UNCC, I met some great friends there and I had a good time, but the south was not for me. I ended up right back where I started, in Vermont. I graduated from UVM, which was a better school academically and a better fit for me personally. It's hard to know how things may have ended up if I had chosen to go to UConn instead of UNCC, but I think I would not have transferred schools after two years and would have had a better connection to my alma mater. Needless to say, if I had gone to a different school it would have changed the whole trajectory of my life, and I'm quite happy with how my life is, and so don't regret the decisions I've made.
I've gone off on a tangent. What I wanted to say is that tracking is doing a disservice to our kids, and now that I have my own, I don't want them to be set on an educational path that might not push them to their highest potential. Children should not have to hope their number gets called in a random lottery to know that they're going to get a good education. All public schools should hold students to the highest levels they can achieve, and some do this already, but not enough.
