Let’s Get Back on Track

What at first glance might seem to be an innocent sounding goal--to give all students equal access to educational opportunity--has become a divisive controversy within the San Diego Unified School District.

The way the school board resolves the issue will speak volumes about its commitment to all of the district’s students and will significantly affect the education thousands of youngsters receive.

At the heart of the controversy is the concept of “equity in student placement,” which, loosely defined, would modify the system of “tracking” that puts students of perceived equal ability into the same classes in the belief that such grouping facilitates learning.

School Supt. Thomas Payzant inadvertently started the controversy by starting to formulate an equity placement plan without discussing it with the board. From a public relations standpoint, as well as that of his relationship with the board, it was one of the superintendent’s few serious mistakes.

For most of this school year, debate over equity placement has raged among board members, administrators, the teachers union, parents and the Urban League, the plan’s biggest supporter.

So far the debate has been marked by distrust and lack of communication all around. In some of the ugliest argument, white parents accused Payzant of wanting to “water down” the education of students in the upper tracks by throwing all students together in a totally unfiltered mix; black leaders and parents responded with charges of racism.

The school board will hear final public testimony on the subject at its next two meetings.

In an attempt to narrow the discussion, Payzant recently prepared a proposed policy paper that spells out his vision of equity placement. He defines equity placement as “equal access to educational opportunity for all students” and says it requires educators to treat people fairly, provide each student with instruction that meets his or her needs and eliminate “tracking practices which do not benefit students.” The last is the nub of the dispute.

The problems with tracking are well-documented: once students are pegged in a lower track, they seldom move up; minorities are overrepresented in the lower tracks; students in the lower tracks appear to receive less-satisfactory learning opportunities than those in the higher tracks.

Minority parents make a strong case that too often their children are presumed to be poor students and are automatically shuffled off to the lower tracks. Stuck there, they are unprepared by their curriculum or their self-image to go to college.

Tracking has led to the creation of second-class students in San Diego schools who, because of their race or late-developing interest in school, receive less from their educational experience than other students. It is a practice that must be changed.

We’re not so naive as to think class assignments should be made by drawing students’ names out of a big hat. When a 10th grade at a school includes students who read at fourth-grade level and others who read at college level, more than a single English class is called for.

The point is that those poor readers cannot be written off. They must be challenged and given the chance to improve.

The changes we hope the school board will make should be the product of a collective effort by all the groups involved with public education. The dreams and ambitions the parents of lower-track students have for their children must be considered right alongside those of parents whose children excel in school.

Teachers must be listened to when they point out that the only policy that really matters is that carried out in the individual classrooms of the district.

There is no dearth of creative people to solve this problem. But their creativity is stymied by the adversary nature of the debate. It’s time for all sides to set aside their suspicion and defensiveness and take a chance on the good faith of others.

They should concentrate on taking Payzant’s policy proposal and developing it so that harmful tracking practices are eliminated and replaced with workable student placement policies that are beneficial to all students.