"Clearly It Was Going to Dumb the Class Down": Detracking Resistance as Opportunity Hoarding

• In Event: (Re)Producing or Disrupting Inequality: Exploring the Utility of Opportunity Hoarding in Educational Research

Abstract

This conceptual article explores student sorting systems known as tracking (Kelly & Price, 2011) and detracking (Burris, 2014) through the lens of opportunity hoarding (Tilly, 1999) and offers a paradigm for thinking about how privileged families might engage in such opportunity hoarding at diverse schools attempting to detrack and organize students in more equitable ways. Tracking, rooted in a desire for efficiency and immigrant assimilation in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries (Tyack, 1974), often functions as a way to sort students by race and class when measures of academic achievement are held constant (Oakes, 2005). Detracking emerged as a reform to this system in the 1980s and offers a path toward more equitable student sorting, often through leveling up courses and opening access to more difficult classes (Diamond & Lewis, 2022). Tilly (1998) conceptualized opportunity hoarding as the tendency of families with privilege to work to access additional educational support for their children and then act to prevent other, usually lesser privileged families from accessing those same supports.

Exploring data from several detracking schools through Tilly’s lens, the authors argue that much of the resistance to detracking from privileged families is rooted in opportunity hoarding behaviors. In this analysis, school leaders described opportunity hoarding behaviors that were best understood through four categories: academic bias, labeling desires, scarcity mindsets, and racial bias. Academic bias encompassed leaders expressions of parental beliefs that only certain students would be able to meet academic expectations within a class and that including others would “dumb down” the curriculum. Labeling desires referred to the attachment some leaders heard families express to their children having labels that were not available to everyone. Leaders also shared that many families seemed to hold scarcity mindsets that led them to believe there were not enough resources in the school for all children and that their children were entitled to those scarce resources. Some leaders also shared family discourse that expressed outright racial bias when the resulting detracking classrooms would contain more students of color, particularly Black and Latinx students. School leaders also discussed marginalized families’ concerns that their students would not have the necessary supports to succeed in higher-level classes. School leaders noted these concerns may have provided fuel for more privileged families embracing opportunity hoarding.

The authors then examine implications for school leaders attempting to detrack their schools. The authors also note concerns from marginalized families that became apparent during detracking attempts, often in response to opportunity hoarding, and offer ways school leaders might address these concerns with families from oppressed groups. By working to educate families from all backgrounds about the potential negative outcomes of tracking (Legette & Kurtz-Costes, 2020; Terrin & Traventi, 2022) and potential positive outcomes of detracking (Atteberry, et al., 2019; Burris & Murphy, 2014), school leaders may be able to mitigate some of the opportunity hoarding behaviors of privileged families while supporting families who face more structural barriers to high-quality education.

Authors

• Shannon Holder, Central Connecticut State University
  Presenting Author

• Margaret Thornton, Rowan University
  Presenting Author