This piece reflects on the results and implications of our recent social media study that examined the Common Core through Twitter activity over a 2-year period. During this study, we examined the high-level social side of social media (Twitter) in an effort to analyze, visualize, and make sense of the often hidden world of online interactions that influence educational policy.

Research on integration processes still has a national focus. This article compares the school careers of children of Turkish immigrants across Germany and the Netherlands, indicating that their educational position differs significantly in the two countries. The national context works out differently not only for the group as a whole but also for men and women. The article explores these differences and provides some clues about the factors that determine them.

This study examines the instructional practices observed in honors and non-honors French and Spanish classes at a Midwestern high school, as well as those factors reported by the teachers at that school as influencing those practices. Analysis revealed a statistically significant relationship between type of class and type of activity, with honors classes having more communicative activities. Teachers attributed differences to student expectations for the two levels, students’ level of motivation for language study, and their maturity level. Results generally mirrored those of previous studies that examined the use of tracking students by ability level in secondary school classrooms. Language educators are urged to reconsider differentiation of curriculum according to students' ability level for the profession's future viability.

This article presents a five-year, longitudinal, mixed-method study of approximately 700 students as they progressed through three high schools that taught mathematics in different ways. Large-scale evidence of a particularly successful approach is presented along with detailed analyses of the teaching and learning that took place within it.

This article considers the enactment of detracking in the ninth grade social studies classrooms of three public high schools. Through a detailed look at classroom life in racially and socioeconomically distinct public high school settings, it explores how local notions of ability shape the implementation of classroom practices in general and of detracking reform in particular.

This article describes neotracking, a new form of tracking in North Carolina that is the outgrowth of the state’s reformed curricular standards, the High School Courses of Study Framework (COS). Neotracking combines older versions of rigid, comprehensive tracking with the newer, more flexible within-subject area curricular differentiation to form an overarching, multilevel framework for high school curricula.

This longitudinal study provides an in-depth examination of the long-term positive effects on student achievement when a diverse, suburban school district methodically detracked its middle school and high school. In addition to providing achievement data, the article provides a rich description of the strategies used by the district over the course of more than a decade, as it moved from a system with three or more tracks to one in which all students were given accelerated mathematics in a detracked middle school, followed by a ‘high-track’ curriculum in all subjects in heterogeneously grouped ninth-grade classes.

This paper draws on narrative analysis, critical race theory, and sociocultural theory to inform data from an ethnographic case study. Three types of narrative are examined to show the potential of story sharing for building community, negotiating conflict with the school, and aiding in family identity development vis-a-vis schooling.

This article presents results from a three-year longitudinal case study of ten racially and socioeconomically mixed secondary schools participating in detracking reform. We connect prevailing norms about race and social class that inform educators' parents' and students' conceptions of intelligence, ability, and giftedness with the local political context of detracking.

Evidence from two school systems whose ability grouping and tracking systems were scrutinized in 1993 in conjunction with school desegregation cases demonstrates how grouping practices can create within-school segregation that discriminates against black and Latino students. In both cases, grouping practices created a cycle of restricted opportunities and diminished outcomes.

Few educational issues have been written about more than the problem of ability grouping or tracking. Despite the widespread use of various forms of ability grouping at all school levels, few educational practices have been more controversial over the years. The literature in support of or in opposition to ability grouping ranges from scholarly reports of research findings to philosophical statements to emotional polemics.

The purpose of this article is to examine, from a constitutional perspective, the bases on which ability grouping and tracking might be challenged as barriers to equal educational opportunity. Findings from educational research on ability grouping, commentary from law review journals, and the texts of cases themselves are included as a part of this inquiry into the direction such legal challenges might take.