Classroom Detracking in the US

This book offers a comprehensive examination of how school leaders can institute detracking in their school with research-based best practices. Since the 1980s, researchers and educators have called for detracking as an alternative to the common practice of seperating students into classes by supposed achievement levels. In its most basic form, detracking places students in the same classroom regardless of perceived previous achievement. In this book, Thornton focuses on four high-quality detracking programs across the US to provide a roadmap of best practices for school leaders. Focusing on schools in diverse suburban and urban areas, this book will be beneficial to a wide variety of school leaders as well as school leadership researchers. With the effects of the pandemic still felt in schools and the heated debates at school boards across the country, leaders and researchers both need a path forward for equity-focused work. This book helps to provide way finders on that path while also speaking to the need to travel the path in the first place.

Margaret Thornton is Assistant Professor at Rowan University, USA. She studies equity-focused school leadership development, school leadership for detracking, and Critical Race Theory.