Heterogenius Classrooms

While researchers have documented the promise of detracking reform, many teachers still find it difficult to teach students with a wide range of academic skills in one classroom. Through engaging classroom footage and powerful interviews with teachers, students, and administrators, this book that includes an 80-minute DVD, showcases best practices from successful detracked math and science secondary classrooms. It features lesson plans, student handouts, rubrics, and reflections written by featured teachers in order of their appearance in the film. Chapters include: supports for struggling students, professional development opportunities for teachers, frequently asked questions about the film, and additional resources on detracking reform. In this current high-stakes testing climate, educators must make a decision about how to address the needs of students who are not meeting grade-level expectations. Do they place these students in separate, remedial classes, or do they detrack? This resource shows that detracking-more rigor with multiple entry points and support-is the socially just and effective alternative to remediation through tracking.

Maika Watanabe is an associate professor in the Department of Secondary Education at San Francisco State University. She is founder and former chair of the American Education Research Association's (AERA) Special Interest Group on Tracking and Detracking.