21st Century Tracking and De Facto School Segregation: Excluding and Hoarding Access to College Prep

• In Event: Schools and Social Policy: Segregation, Housing, and Transportation

Abstract

Some districts’ curricular disparity occurs by excluding students using a first-generation design that puts students on a track headed to a school with no AP or IB offerings (“no-CP” schools) or on a track that piles-on resources to students headed to the school specializing in college prep (CP). Intra-district resource factors explain many of the racialized patterns endemic to tracked school enrollments. Certain racial groups of students are disadvantaged to opportunities more than their peers. This between-school tracking may be “cropping” some students to these no-CP schools to keep the “cream of the crop” at other schools. The population of White, non-Hispanic students largely explains the impetus of districts to hyper-focus resources in a single high school specializing in CP.

Author

• Heather E. Price, Loyola University Chicago