Academic Tracking in K-12 Schools: Improving Achievement or Widening Gaps?

This nonpartisan policy brief, written by an ACE fellow, is republished by The Fulcrum as part of our partnership with the Alliance for Civic Engagement and our NextGen initiative — elevating student voices, strengthening civic education, and helping readers better understand democracy and public policy.

Key Takeaways

• Tracking is widespread and begins early. Currently, 75 percent of eighth graders nationwide are affected by tracking and the process begins in first and second grade.
• Successful detracking requires adequate support. Districts that detrack with enough support and resources for both teachers and students can narrow achievement gaps without lowering performance.Successful examples often come from communities with extensive resources.
• Research on the impact of tracking on achievement is mixed. Some studies show tracking benefits advanced students at no cost to others, but other studies have shown the opposite; minimum educational gains with significant costs in equity.

What is Academic Tracking?

Academic tracking is the practice of assigning students to different classrooms based on earlier academic achievement or perceived ability. It affects approximately 75 percent of eighth graders nationwide and begins as early as first and second grade. Unlike temporary ability grouping, where a teacher might divide students into small groups for a single lesson on fractions, tracking sorts students into specific pathways such as remedial math, regular Algebra I, or honors Algebra I, with math being the most heavily tracked subject in American schools.

Originating in the early 1900s following the arrival of immigrants from Italy and Ireland, tracking emerged as a way to separate immigrant and working-class students from their more affluent peers. This strategy was primarily based on students’ perceived futures in society. Students who had immigrated were provided a less rigorous curriculum because they were expected to work in factories instead of pursuing higher education. Today, tracking aims to enable teachers to target instruction to students’ current skill levels without simultaneously teaching multiple ability levels in one classroom. However, significant demographic disparities that exist within track placement have raised questions about whether tracking effectively targets instruction or instead exacerbates educational inequities.

How Can Tracking Bolster Student Achievement?

Those in favor of tracking argue that ability grouping improves outcomes for high-achieving students without harming their peers. Research from Cornell University demonstrates that sorting students by ability can raise achievement for higher-performing students while leaving lower-performing peers unaffected, showing that tracking is not necessarily a zero-sum system where one group’s gains come at the expense of another’s.

When implemented with flexibility and high-quality instruction across all levels of tracking, both advanced and struggling students can benefit from instruction targeted towards their readiness. A key factor of success is ensuring that students have the ability to move between tracks based on growth, rather than creating permanent, inflexible sorting. Studies have shown that arranging students in the same or separate classrooms results in positive outcomes for advanced students without negative effects on their peers.

Beyond benefitting individual students, tracking creates pathways to advanced coursework that prepares students for competitive colleges and careers. Students who take Algebra I in eighth grade can progress through the traditional sequence to reach Calculus by senior year, a course that is usually required or strongly preferred for admission to selective colleges and competitive STEM programs.

The Brookings Institution observes that entry to advanced coursework is usually organized through earlier course taking sequences that function as informal tracks, highlighting how tracking serves as a pipeline to Advanced Placement (AP) and honors courses. Without early acceleration through tracked pathways, students can’t complete this timeline, potentially limiting their post-secondary options.

How Can Tracking Hurt Student Achievement?

On the other side of the debate, those against tracking argue that tracking fails to improve overall student performance. A comprehensive meta-analysis of over 300 studies found that tracking produces minimal effects on learning outcomes alongside many negative equity effects. This research indicates that while tracking may benefit some advanced students, it doesn’t raise overall achievement across all students and comes with significant costs to educational equity.

Critics also point to international evidence supporting their position. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), made up of 38 countries, including the U.S., found that early tracking correlates with wider disparities in educational outcomes without corresponding gains in overall performance, which indicates that education systems in other developed nations that track students later or less aggressively achieve similar outcomes to the U.S while maintaining fewer achievement gaps.

Additionally, while proponents of the pro tracking argument believe that teachers can’t effectively teach a classroom with multiple skill levels, a 2024 study found that student needs in terms of instructional adaptation and individualized feedback are met equally well in tracked and untracked classrooms, suggesting that teachers don’t necessarily struggle more with groups of different ability levels. With appropriate professional development and resources, teachers can successfully meet a mix of student needs within a multiple-ability level classroom.

How Can Tracking Improve Educational Equity?

Advocates for maintaining tracking emphasize that eliminating advanced programs disproportionately harms the very students equitable policies aim to help: low-income gifted students. As one analysis explains, when schools eliminate gifted courses or higher level tracks completely, low-income gifted students will suffer most because wealthy families can afford to pay for private schools and tutoring, while students without these resources become stuck in schools offering only lower-level courses. This argument frames de-tracking as creating a two-tier system where affluent families access advanced education through private alternatives while low-income gifted students lose their only pathway to challenging coursework in public schools.

In San Francisco specifically, when tracked math courses were eliminated it ended up creating new inequities because private schools and wealthy parent organizations could fund additional course offerings. The community ended up overwhelmingly rejecting the policy because of these inequalities. However, detracking advocates counter this, arguing that San Francisco’s problems stemmed from poor implementation rather than the concept itself, noting that the district provided inadequate teacher training and support.

The Fordham Institute notes that while white students are overrepresented in advanced programs relative to their share of the student population, the solution should be expanding access to these programs for underrepresented students rather than eliminating them entirely. They argue that advanced students from disadvantaged and marginalized backgrounds need these programs most but have the least access to them.

How Can Tracking Hurt Educational Equity?

Those against tracking argue that tracking reproduces and amplifies existing social inequalities through biased placement processes and unequal resource allocation. The Brookings Institution observes that tracking often perpetuates racial and socioeconomic inequalities even when initial placements seem like they are solely merit-based. Track placements are influenced by teacher expectations, assessment bias, parental advocacy capacity, and access to test preparation which are all factors that strongly correlate with race and class rather than purely reflecting student ability. Even when schools use criteria that seem objective like test scores, systemic bias shapes which students are identified as advanced which perpetuates rather than addresses educational inequality.

The fundamental problem according to those who advocate for this belief is that achievement gaps exist before tracking begins, largely due to socioeconomic factors beyond students’ control. Studies show that substantial performance gaps exist between children from the lowest and highest socioeconomic quintiles from kindergarten onward, and these gaps emerge in the earliest years of children’s lives and persist throughout their education. Schools must therefore decide whether to address or amplify these existing disparities.

Tracking takes students who arrive with different levels of preparation due to family income, parental education, and early childhood opportunities, then sorts them into educational opportunities that widen rather than narrow those pre-existing gaps. Evidence indicates that districts implementing detracking with additional supports see narrower achievement gaps without declines in overall performance. However, analysts acknowledge that many successful detracking examples come from affluent districts with substantial funding, which raises questions about whether similar outcomes would occur in less-resourced schools serving high-needs student populations.

Conclusion

Overall, the debate over academic tracking centers on two main questions: whether it improves student achievement and whether it improves academic equity. Supporters argue that tracking benefits advanced college students without harming others and creates pathways to advanced colleges, while critics say that tracking minimizes overall learning gains and perpetuates a variety of inequalities through biased placement and unequal resource allocation.

FAQ

• What’s the difference between tracking and ability grouping? Tracking sorts students into separate classes or course sequences based on achievement and is usually long-term or permanent. Ability grouping is temporary and more flexible, usually occurring within a single classroom for specific lessons or units.
• Can students move between tracks? This varies by district. Advocates for tracking emphasize that flexible systems that allow movement based on student growth are more effective, but critics note that in practice, students rarely move from lower to higher once initially placed.
• How does tracking affect college access? Students who take Algebra I in eighth grade can reach calculus by senior year, which usually improves a student’s ability to get into competitive colleges and STEM majors. Students placed in lower tracks may then have a more difficult time with admissions processes.