On the Wrong Track?

By Debra Viadero

Among education practices, tracking often ranks right up there with dunce caps and rapping students across the hand with wooden rulers. Most experts think the practice is outdated and harmful--even if it remains popular among parents and some teachers. The book on tracking, they contend, closed long ago.

But a handful of researchers, pointing to some newer studies and rehashing old ones, are reopening the debate.

"In the education journals, it's taken as gospel that tracking is a bad thing," says Tom Loveless, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard University who is skeptical of much of the literature on tracking. "What I'm saying is we just don't know if tracking is good or bad, and we really don't know if detracking...