Academic Tracking

I wonder what classrooms Navarrette has taught in or visited lately. It certainly has not been my classroom, the other classrooms at my school, or the classrooms of many of my colleagues throughout the school district.

I have a sixth-grade class of 100% Latino students. Yes, I have six groups in the classroom--six heterogeneous cooperative learning groups. The entire class reads the same literature book; right now it is “Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady.” The entire class learns and struggles through long division with decimals. The entire class learns about the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs and the rise of man. And the entire class receives the same assignments both in class and for home study.

Yes, the entire class also knows who the smart kids are and who the not-so-smart kids are. But they also know that it changes with each subject and because they all have the same opportunity, it changes from day to day. They also know the value of teamwork and the responsibility we each have to help the not-so-smart kids become the smart kids. And lo and behold, my classes’ test scores over the years show that they do!

BECKI ROBINSON

First Street School, San Gabriel