Why We Don’t Talk About Tracking in Higher Education and Why We Should

• In Event: Racialized Tracking: Interrogating the Structures, Culture, and Policies That Produce Inequality

Abstract

In this paper, we highlight findings from a systematic literature review of four decades of tracking research across all levels of education to show that tracking and its effects do not end upon the completion of high school. Despite decades of research on tracking within and between schools, few have considered whether and how these patterns persist into the postsecondary sector, along with their negative consequences. Our purpose in this paper is: 1) to provide evidence of the bridge that extends tracking and its consequences into higher education and 2) to show how tracking persists within postsecondary institutions through similar mechanisms that reproduce the same unequal patterns observed in the P-12 sector.

Authors

• Amy Elizabeth Stich, University of Georgia

• Sean Baser, University of Georgia & State Higher Education Executive Officers Association

• Collin Case, University of Georgia

• Hunter V.J. Jones, University of Georgia

• Ananya Malik, University of Georgia