Keeping
Track: How Schools Structure Inequality.
(Second edition.) Jeannie Oakes.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Pp. 288. $19.00, paper. ISBN:
0-300-10830-3. TEL: 203-432-0972 • FAX: 203-432-0964
This book, honored as one of the twentieth century’s most influential
books on education, shows how tracking—the system of grouping students
for instruction on the basis of ability—reflects the class and racial
inequalities of American society and helps perpetuate them. In this revised
edition, Oakes expands her original work with two new chapters reviewing the
past 20 years of research and reform on this highly contentious practice.
First published in 1985, Keeping Track questioned a ubiquitous schooling structure
that delivered inferior education to many students and virtually guaranteed
that poor children of color would receive the very worst. In the late 1980s
through the 1990s, the education and policy worlds took note of Oakes’
and others’ research and set out to alter the practice of tracking.
There were hopeful glimmers of well-intentioned change, but at nearly every
turn powerful forces stopped the reforms. Oakes reports here that, in these
“tracking wars,” the reformers’ technical strategies were
no match for the political power and the beliefs and values entrenched in
school communities.
Although much has changed, the themes set forth in this book remain as vital
as they were 21 years ago: Race and social class remain salient as boundaries
around educational opportunities; the values and interests of advantaged communities
intent on preserving their privilege continue to drive educational policies.
At the same time, Oakes tells us, wise and courageous educators and activists
have found ways to “de-track” their schools. Their stories are
instructive, not only about de-tracking schools, but also about the larger
struggle for equitable schooling.
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