Talkin Points#5 Oakes

Argument: I believe Oakes argues that tracking students is not the right thing to do because it doesn’t help the children in the lower groups also neither does making them work all together Oakes argues that the teachers should change the way they teach incorporating the individuals.

1.In low-ability classes, for example, teachers seem to be less encouraging and more punitive, placing more emphasis on discipline and 'behavior and less on academic learning.
When I came upon this quote it kind of made me think I stopped for a moment and thought why is this? Is it that the teacher doesn’t care or is it that the students don’t care and do things in order for these teachers to become less encouraging? Are all the students misbehaving or is it just a selected few and the teachers have to stop and call on them few every couple of minutes? Anyhow I don’t think it’s fair that these teachers penalize all these students just because they are in lower levels that shouldn’t take away from their learning even if it takes much longer to teach these kids they should be taught.
2. In many classrooms the evidence of students' capability is a matter of public record. Grades and progress are prominently posted: letters, numbers, stars, smiley faces, race horses, and halos -along with sad faces, zeros, and the ever present blanks.
This is another thing I find kind of if-y, but once again many teachers do this I can honestly say I haven’t stepped into 1 elementary classroom was there wasn’t some sort of chart thingy like this. Before when I was a child I never really saw anything wrong with this but as I grew older and spent more time in class rooms I have observed what this really causes the children to do. In the class room I am in now the teacher has a system were each child starts at the color green which is good as the day goes on and the children disobey rules or directions the teacher asks them to change the color which after green becomes yellow, than, orange, than red. When I am there it’s mainly the same children who are either on yellow orange or red. These students always seem not to care about anything else after their card is moved from green and this is problem. At the end of each day the students either get a smiley face or a sad face to be given to their parents to show how they behaved that day.


3. Typically, low-track high school students have been in low-ability groups and remedial programs since elementary school. The gap between them and more successful students has grown wider -not only in achievement but in attitudes toward school and toward their own ability to succeed.

This is sad… so what is it that they can’t progress, they don’t progress, or there progression is not seen?
& I personally understand why it hurts them and their attitudes to succeed because if they’ve always been looked down upon why would they bother to keep on?



I thought this was an short and easy read it wasn’t bad at all although I did get up a few times to see what else I could do beside read it when I was done I believed it was really informative and useful. This is another great piece of work every teacher / future teacher should read.