Free What's Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success by Jo Boaler

low tracks, which seems obvious, but also those who would be placed in high tracks too.
    In neither of my two longitudinal studies of students workingin different mathematics approaches did I intend to research the impact of ability grouping, but it emerged as a powerful factor in both of them. In both studies the two successful schools were those that chose against ability grouping and used a different system of grouping, a result that mirrors the larger-scale international findings. England uses an overt system of ability grouping, one much harsher in its impact on low achievers than any system in the United States. In England, students are placed into “sets” that are ranked by achievement. I studied students in sets across the range from set 1 (the highest) to set 8 (the lowest). It did not surprise many people that students who were put into low sets achieved at low levels, partly because of the low-level work they were given and partly because students gave up when they knew they had been put into a low set and labeled a low achiever. This was true of students from set 2 downward. What was more surprising to people was that many of the students in set 1, the highest group, were also disadvantaged by the grouping. Students in set 1 reported that they felt too much pressure from being in the top set. They felt the classes were too fast, they were unable to admit to not following or understanding, and many of them started to dread and hate math lessons. The students in the highest group should have felt good about their understanding of math, but instead they felt pressured and inadequate. After three years of ability- grouped classes, the students achieved at significantly lower levels than students who had been grouped in mixed-ability classes.
    In the United States the ability grouping that is used is nowhere near as overt as that in England, but it still has a significant impact. At around seventh and eighth grade, students in the United States typically get placed into different levels of classes, which determines their future for many years to come. Despite the importance of the different placements, the names of the classes often sound innocuously similar. Some seventh-grade students may be in something called “math 7” while their peers are in pre-algebra, a higher class. Or eighth graders may be placed in “math 8” or in pre-algebra, while their peers are in algebra. The critical information that schools rarely provide is that in most American high schools, students cannot take calculus unless they have already passed algebra in middle school. If, like in most high schools, classes are a year long, then students who take algebra in ninth grade will take four years of courses without ever reaching calculus (algebra, geometry, advanced algebra, and precalculus). Thus the tracking decisions made by middle school teachers impact the classes reached in high school and, from there, students’ chances of being admitted to colleges of their choice. Middle school students should hear a strange sound when they are placed into lower-level math classes. It is the sound of doors closing.
    As educators become more aware of the disadvantages of tracking, more schools are trying different approaches. Carol Burris, from South Side High School in New York, with Columbia University professors Jay Heubert and Hank Levin, conducted a study of a detracking innovation in mathematics. 5 They compared the performance of students who were in tracked classes with those who were in mixed-ability classes. The researchers compared six annual cohorts of students in a middle school in a district of New York. The students attending the school in the first three years were taught in tracked classes with only high-track students being taught the advanced curriculum. But in the next three years all students in grades six through eight were taught the advanced curriculum in mixed-ability classes and all of the eighth graders were taught an