the rich get richer & the poor get poorer

i finished my final project for multivariate statistics. there's one more final paper to work on for a class i'm taking on Social Foundations of Education. the paper is worth 100% of our final grade, so everything hinges on it. yikes! it's due monday @ 5pm, which will mark the beginning of my "summer"! "social foundations" is a very broad, interdisciplinary area that is fascinating, because it gets at economic, global, political, and social forces that shape education. but the broadness and flexibility is exactly what made it so hard to decide on a paper topic until, uh,.....very recently (ahem).

it's 80 degree today, and i'd rather be anywhere but cooped up here inside my house trying to write a paper. i'm tempted to put on shorts, slather on sunblock, pour myself a glass of lemonade, and take my laptop and books and go sit and work under a shaded area by the swimming pool. the pool at my apartment complex is super nice, with a waterfall, fancy architecture, etc., but i under-utilize it, probably because i'm not a sun-worshipper and i tend to be a more serious indoor lap/fitness swimmer. but i'm certainly paying enough to live here, and might as well take advantage of all the amenities starting now.

so about this paper i'm doing: i need to think "aloud" for a minute, so bear with me. i'm trying to craft an argument against ability-grouped tracking in schools, saying that tracking mirrors and feeds socioeconomic, racial and demographic stratifications that exist in larger society. i want to show that labeling students as "gifted", or "average", or "remedial", places them on trajectories early in life that are hard to exit, and that largely pre-determine who their friends will be and what kinds of career and academic opportunities will be available to them.

i myself am a product of a K-12 school system that had tracking. yeah, i was in all "advanced", "honors" or "gifted" classes. i'm sure it helped set me on a life-course where i was able to take advantages of opportunities that have helped me achieve the things i have in my life, to date. have i given it much thought 'til now? honestly, no. would i go back and change those experiences? not really.

but for this paper, the more i read, the more i see that this kind of system has the potential to make the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. gifted and honors students tend to be given accordingly more enriching opportunities, while those in the tracks considered less "able" tend to be overlooked and often suffer at the hands of poor quality instruction. so it looks like my job is to take a stand against tracking and argue in favor of mixed-ability classrooms with teachers who are skilled at individualized instruction, and who don't just "teach to the middle" and then hope everyone gets it, regardless of whether their IQ is 80 or 150. i think in a way, it calls for more skilled teachers to engage students of diverse capabilities. maybe what i'm looking at is large-scale education reform. wow.

....if i haven't lost you yet, does that make sense? if not, i've got my work cut out for me this weekend.