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A recent study reveals that while high schools largely sort students into math and science classes based on academic readiness, social pressures from wealthier families also heavily dictate who gets access to advanced courses. The findings illustrate how curriculum tracking operates as both a practical teaching tool and a mechanism that can widen social divides. The research was published in the journal Social Science Research.
Educational tracking is the practice of assigning students to different educational paths based on their past academic performance. In American high schools, this often looks like placing some ninth graders in basic algebra while others take advanced geometry. Teachers and school administrators generally defend this practice by pointing to its practical benefits. When students in a single classroom share similar skill levels, teachers can tailor their instruction to match the pace and needs of the entire group.
Sociologists call this the functional perspective of education. From a functional standpoint, a school acts as a rational organization that efficiently matches a diverse student body with appropriate coursework. If a school has students with vastly different academic backgrounds, a functional tracking system will offer a wide variety of courses to accommodate everyone.
However, sociologists also view tracking through a conflict perspective. This alternate viewpoint suggests that tracking systems are shaped by social inequalities and competition for status. Affluent parents often lobby for highly exclusive academic tracks to ensure their children gain a competitive edge for college admissions. This behavior is sometimes called status competition. Another related concept, opportunity hoarding, occurs when privileged groups attempt to restrict access to premium educational resources, keeping marginalized groups out of advanced programs.
Researchers Shangmou Xu and Sean Kelly wanted to understand which of these opposing theories actually drives the way American high schools organize their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses. Xu is a researcher affiliated with both the University of Washington and the University of Pittsburgh. Kelly is a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh.
To test these theories, Xu and Kelly analyzed student transcripts and survey data from four massive national educational datasets. Their final sample included 3,620 high schools, covering student cohorts from 1982 through 2013. The researchers used this data to measure the demographic and socioeconomic makeup of each school, looking at factors like average test scores, family wealth, and racial diversity.
The researchers then built a detailed profile of how each school organized its math and science curriculum. They focused on four specific organizational dimensions of tracking. The first dimension, inclusiveness, measures the sheer volume of rigorous courses a school offers and how many students take them. The second dimension, selectivity, measures how strictly a school relies on past academic achievement to dictate a student’s current course placement.
The third dimension is scope, which evaluates whether a student’s placement in one subject mirrors their placement in another. In a school with high scope, a student placed in an advanced math class is highly likely to also be placed in an advanced English class. Finally, the researchers measured mobility. Mobility tracks how often students move into harder or easier classes as they progress from ninth grade to graduation.
When examining inclusiveness, the researchers found strong evidence for the functional theory of tracking. Schools with higher average achievement scores tended to offer more advanced math and science courses. This suggests that schools rationally expand their rigorous offerings to meet the needs of a high-achieving student body.
At the same time, the conflict theory also proved accurate. Schools with a higher average socioeconomic status offered more advanced courses, even after accounting for academic achievement. This indicates that privileged families exert pressure on schools to create more top-tier academic opportunities for their children. Over the three decades covered by the data, this specific wealth-based pressure on the overall volume of advanced courses grew weaker.
The researchers found a similar split when looking at the strictness and structure of the tracking systems. Schools with a wide range of academic abilities among their students tended to have a wider variety of math courses. They also tended to have highly selective placement systems, where past math scores strongly dictated future math placements. This aligns with the functional approach, showing that schools adapt their course structure to handle diverse skill levels.
Yet, social status again played a major role in shaping these structures. Schools with higher overall social status exhibited a wider gap in course difficulty among their students. These high-status schools were also much more selective in their placement processes. Privileged families appear to push for highly differentiated, strict tracks to maintain an educational advantage for their children.
The researchers did not find strong evidence for the theory of opportunity hoarding. If opportunity hoarding were a major factor, schools with highly diverse student populations would have the most rigid, exclusive tracking systems. The data did not support this assumption. Instead, competition among advantaged students within a school seemed to be the primary social force shaping the curriculum.
When looking at scope, the researchers noticed that affluent schools often linked placements across completely different subjects. In these high-status schools, a student in an advanced science class was very likely to be placed in an advanced English class. This practice restricts learning opportunities by locking students into a single generalized track, rather than evaluating their readiness subject by subject.
The data on track mobility offered a slightly more optimistic view of American high schools. Upward mobility in math and science classes increased gradually between 1982 and 2013. Schools became more flexible over time, providing more students with the chance to step up into harder courses as they progressed through high school.
This upward mobility was more common in schools with high average social status and in schools with diverse student populations. The researchers interpret this flexibility as a functional improvement. As schools open up learning opportunities and allow students to change paths, the tracking systems become more responsive to actual student growth.
There are a few limitations to keep in mind when interpreting these results. The study relied on student transcripts, which show the classes students ultimately took. Transcripts do not reveal the specific school policies, teacher recommendations, or private conversations with counselors that led to those final placements. The mechanisms of how parents lobby for advanced classes remain largely unseen in this type of data.
Additionally, the research evaluates the structure of curriculum tracking, but it does not measure how these systems affect actual student learning. The data cannot show whether placing students in highly tracked math classes improved their standardized test scores or helped them succeed in college. Future research should investigate how the design of science and math programs ultimately impacts long-term student success.
Educators and school administrators are often reluctant to discuss the social implications of how they sort students into classes. They tend to frame course placement as a purely objective, administrative task. This study demonstrates that while academic readiness is the primary driver of course placement, the social wealth of a school community also fundamentally shapes the curriculum.
The study, “Variation and change in high school STEM opportunity to learn in the US: Is the organization of the STEM curriculum functional or conflict driven?,” was authored by Shangmou Xu and Sean Kelly.