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Tracking:Why Schools Need to Take Another Route  is written by Jeanie Oakes.  In this writing piece Oakes talks about the educational method of grouping and tracking and how it can have many negative affects on a majority population of students as well as propose possible alternative teaching styles.  “ One fact about tracking is unequivocal: tracking leads to substantial differences in the day-to-day learning experiences students have at school.”  This can also be the start to the forming of a social hierarchy in which the higher level groups feel and seem more important then the groups of students who were in average classes or classes that were slower than the higher level classes.   As Oakes also writes that based on personal observation that the higher level classes received a higher grade education therefore better preparing them for further schooling that their fellow students in lower level classes.  Jeanie Oakes then goes on to write to teachers ...

While in my site placement I have few significant situations that drew me to a writing that have been read in the class yet there were the few.  One author that I can relate to through my experience is Delpit and her codes of power.  OF course my class has rules  that the students are expected to follow as well as the expectation for the students to listen o the teacher and follow he given directions without doubt.  There are also more subtle codes of power as the class has each student trusted with a specific task around the class, such as door holder or paper collector, there are clearly jobs that students want more than others and they also might see certain tasks as more important than others.  Another example of a concept I can connect my site placement to is SCWAAMP.  I am placed in a second grade classroom, the students in my class are just starting to get old enough to compare what they have to others and feel embarrassed or upset if they don't e...

In “Citizenship in School:Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome “, written by Christopher Kliewer one of the main ideas towards the middle of the assigned chapter was about how the mainstream society view students with special needs versus the reality of the situation.  A student by the name of Lee is used as an example.  Lee was a student who had Trisomy 21 in a class of 24 “normal” students and 2 other special needs students.  Lee’s teacher said that if a guest were to walk in the room and were informed of the social needs students present, the guest would not be able to pick out the special needs students aside from physical characteristics.  This example helped show that behind the outside appearance of a person or a student everyone’s intellectual capacity is similar.  “Lee is, in a sense, in a way he is branded.  People see him.  They see down syndrome.  They see mental challenge, retardation, whatever you want to call it.  Thats what they s...

In this podcast Nikole Hannah-Jones speaks on her experiences with school district desegregation.  Who even is Nikole Hannah-Jones?  Well she is an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and was reporting on the schools in Durham, North Carolina.  At the time of the placement it was the height of the No Child Left Behind era.  Jones was trying to go around and improve upon all the bad schools in the district and the students in those schools.  She observed through her time in the field that rarely if ever did the bad schools “catch up” to the good schools and not for a lack of trying.  Nikole then goes on to talk about how integration in schools has helped to split the achievement gap in half almost. Nikole pointed out that in 1971 black student test scores were 39 points behind the white kids yet in 1988 when desegregation was at its height the gap fell to 19 points.  This makes me wonder if integrations seems like such an easy an efficien...