Overall, California's student body is incredibly diverse. On closer inspection, it is well sorted.

Throughout childhood, students get used to being sorted: they are sorted by age, by gender, by height, by neighborhood. They are sorted by interest, or readiness, or preference, or luck. Not so long ago, students were explicitly sorted by race. As discussed in Lesson 5.1, today sorting persists by zip code or community, often with similar effect.

This lesson focuses on sorting that schools and educators do intentionally, as part of their educational strategy, as well as sorting that just happens.

Academic sorting

Schools routinely sort students academically. Classes are organized into grade levels and then further into learning groups. In lower grades, students are often sorted into math groups and reading groups. In higher grades they are separated into courses and classes. In many high schools, Advanced Placement (AP) courses are the academic equivalent of varsity: not all students make the team. Some schools allow students to enroll in these challenging courses based on their interest. But allowing isn't the same as encouraging or requiring. Many colleges and some high schools are selective; students must demonstrate their ability and commitment to gain admission.

What is tracking?

The practice of grouping students according to readiness or ability is known as tracking, particularly where groupings persist from one course to the next. Tracking often begins in elementary and middle grades in the form of reading groups or math levels. In middle and high school grade levels, tracking is particularly common for math classes because more advanced concepts build from less advanced ones. It's difficult and risky to skip steps.

Education equity advocates tend to dislike tracking, especially in mathematics. The main alternative is called differentiated instruction, an approach that requires teachers to serve multiple learning levels in the same class. Not all educators agree that this improves results for students, especially those who are relatively advanced. Arguments in favor of tracking can be found in this article from Education Next and this one from the Atlantic.

Selective policies tend to benefit those who ask

Grouping by interest

Some schools work to attract similar birds of a feather as part of an educational strategy. For example, some schools promote their emphasis on the arts. Others promise an enhanced focus on technology. Schools that emphasize Gifted And Talented programs (GATE) attempt to identify students with exceptional academic promise and provide extra learning opportunities appropriate for their needs.

Sort if you like, but don't expect extra money

In the Ed100 blog
What do gifted students need?

In the past, both the federal budget and the state budget included funds to support programs for gifted students. As we discuss in length in the Ed100 blog, little remains of that support. Some gifted programs remain here and there, but they are sufficiently rare that the National Association for Gifted Children has difficulty even collecting useful information for an annual report.

Co-ed schools, or keep 'em separated?

Single-sex schools were somewhat common in America prior to the civil rights era, when co-education became the expectation in public education. In 1996, the US Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Virginia that under some circumstances gender-separated public schools can be separate but equal. The number of gender-separate schools remains quite small, though the number has risen slightly in recent years according to 2023 reporting from GreatSchools. The most important relevant research and reporting about the effects of gender separation in education is from Ireland, where it remains a common practice in a minority of schools.

The minimal available research, mostly from Catholic schools, suggests that all other things being equal, academic achievement is generally higher in single-sex school classrooms than in co-ed ones, but the research finding is not straightforward. Like most social science, the data are messy and the validity of this conclusion can be disputed.

California’s first new single-sex public school in twenty years opened in Los Angeles in 2016. It’s an all-girls school. California law prohibits sex-segregated schools, but federal law permits them. LAUSD obtained a California waiver from the State Board of Education to open the school. Very few public gender-specific schools have been opened since then.

Selective public schools exist, but are rare

It is common for private schools to be selective, but selective public schools are rare. In California there are very few of them, including Lowell High School in San Francisco. In 2022, the school briefly converted to a lottery-based admission system. The move was deeply unpopular, and it contributed to the recall of several members of the school district board. Read more about it in the Ed100 blog.

Want to be selected? Stand up for yourself!

At the risk of stating the obvious, selective policies tend to benefit those who ask to be selected. Selecting anything (or being selected for something) usually requires action, even a small one like raising a hand, filling out a form, or talking to a teacher. These small barriers requiring student self-advocacy or parent advocacy tend to reinforce patterns of selection, even unintentionally.

Each school, intentionally or unintentionally, develops its own reputation for the ways in which it is selective and the ways in which it is diverse. In cases where parents have a choice about where their children attend school, they respond to these signals. Parents can influence the balance their local schools strike between these two competing values.

The next lesson will examine the role of special schools for children at risk.

This lesson was updated March 2024.