Contesting Placement
摘要
Academic streaming, or tracking, has been a historical practice in public schools for generations. Although largely attributed to secondary schools, streaming can begin in the early years. Streaming refers to a process through which students are organized across different levels of academic programming that lead to vastly different outcomes. Ability is often narrowly conceived, yet it is frequently used as an organizational factor in schools. Responses to and perceptions of ability are susceptible to bias and discrimination. Streaming has long been identified as a practice that enacts racism, classism, and ableism. This chapter draws on an extensive qualitative study based in Ontario, Canada, and includes interviews with approximately 85 students, educators, and administrators across 4 secondary schools. Each of the schools involved in this study was engaged in some form of de-streaming practices. Through this chapter, we argue that streaming structurally reproduces and upholds white supremacist ideologies and disproportionately privileges white, wealthy families. There are many scholars and advocates who argue that constructs and evaluations of student ability are steeped in whiteness and Eurocentric ideologies. Therefore, one of the priorities of anti-discriminatory practices is the disruption of structural- and ability-based approaches to education. While there has been a fair amount of research highlighting the detriments of academic streaming, there has not been as much attention paid to the interconnected and relational experiences of students, educators, and administrators through periods of structural transition.