The Structure of Tracking: Instructional Practices of Teachers Leading Low- and High-Track Classes

Tracking remains a pervasive sorting mechanism in US high schools. Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration provides a useful framework for understanding how tracking is enacted and how its inequities might be interrupted. This study examines whether teachers reify tracks by systematically structuring generative rules differently for students in low and high tracks. Using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, we observed 26 teachers in low- and high-track classrooms in spring 2012. We found that teachers, on the whole, structured generative rules that communicated lower expectations and provided less support to students in low-track classes than they did to those in high-track classes. However, we also found that a small number of teachers structured supportive environments for low-track students, suggesting implications for the transformation points of tracking.