Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence

Recognizing the inequities caused by compensatory education, tracking, and ability grouping, educators are exploring alternative practices. In San Diego, one effort to break down the barriers erected by school sorting practices is to "untrack" students.

Untracking places previously low-achieving students (who are primarily from low-income and ethnic or language minority backgrounds) in the same college-preparatory academic program as high- achieving students (who are primarily from middle- or upper-middle-income and "Anglo" backgrounds). The "Achievement Via Individual Determination" (AVID) untracking program shifts education policy for underachieving students away from a simplified or reduced curriculum toward a rigorous curriculum with increased support for low-achieving students.

The San Diego untracking program has been successful in preparing its students for college: 48% of the 248 students who completed three years of AVID enrolled in four-year colleges, 40% enrolled in two year colleges, and the remaining 12% are working, traveling, or doing voluntary work. Parents' income and education are not responsible for the impressive college enrollment figures of these untracked students. Students from the lowest income strata enroll in four-year colleges in equal or higher proportion to students who come from higher income strata. Students whose parents have less than a college education enroll in four year colleges more than students whose parents do have a college education.

In our search for the reasons behind AVID's success, we found that AVI D coordinators explicitly teach aspects of the implicit culture of the classroom and the hidden curriculum of the school. They also mediate the relationship between families, high schools, and colleges. In Bourdieu's terms, AVID gives low-income students some of the "social" and "cultural capital" at school that more economically advantaged parents give to their children at home.