One country wants to close math achievement gaps by ending academic tracking

一个国家希望通过结束学业跟踪来缩小数学成绩差距

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Many students in New Zealand have a story to tell about “streaming” — being grouped into separate math classes based on their perceived ability to master the subject.

新西兰克赖斯特彻奇——新西兰的许多学生都有一个关于“流”的故事——根据他们对掌握该学科的能力被分组到不同的数学班级。

Manaaki Waretini-Beaumont, now 18 and an environmental science major at the University of Canterbury, learned about the downside of streaming when she enrolled in Avonside Girls’, a 1,000-student high school in Christchurch.

现年18岁的Manaaki Waretini-Beaumont是坎特伯雷大学环境科学专业的学生，当她进入克赖斯特彻奇一所拥有1000名学生的Avonside女子高中时，她了解到了流媒体的负面影响。

Avonside starts at Year 9, equivalent to eighth grade in the United States, and ends at Year 13, equivalent to 12th grade. Before the start of her Year 9 term, Waretini-Beaumont and her fellow students were divided up into groups to take tests in “maths,” reading comprehension, and patterns and shapes.

Avonside从9年级开始，相当于美国的八年级，到13年级结束，相当于12年级。在她九年级学期开始之前，Waretini-Beaumont和她的同学被分成小组参加“数学”、阅读理解以及模式和形状的测试。

Afterward, the students were separated into lettered groups that spelled out the word B-I-N-O-C-U-L-A-R-S. Waretini-Beaumont was a “9-N” student in mathematics — as she describes it, “the top of the middle block.”

之后，学生们被分成字母组，拼出单词B-I-N-O-C-U-L-A-R-S。Waretini-Beaumont是一名数学系的“9-N”学生——正如她所描述的，“中间街区的顶端”。

But she said she didn’t feel comfortable as one of the few Māori students in the class.

但她说，作为班上为数不多的毛利学生之一，她感到不舒服。

“I felt like I wasn’t good enough to be in that space,” said Waretini-Beaumont, whose iwi, or tribal affiliations, are Te Āti Haunui-A-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Apa, Ngāti Paoa. “If there was something I wasn’t understanding, I felt like I wasn’t able to say that, because I’m supposed to be in the smart class with all these smart people.”

“我觉得自己不够好，无法进入那个空间，”瓦雷蒂尼-博蒙特说，他的部落或部落隶属关系是Teāti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi、Ngāti Rangi、Ngāti Apa、Ngāti Paoa。“如果有什么我不明白的地方，我觉得我不能说出来，因为我应该和所有这些聪明人一起在聪明的班级里。”

So she shifted to another mathematics class with her Māori friends, who were in the “S” classes.

于是她和她的毛利朋友一起转到了另一个数学课，他们都在“S”班。

“Being in two different spaces, I could really see the change,” Waretini-Beaumont said. “At the top classes, the teachers’ language towards the students was always positive and it was always encouraging. And they really wanted students to learn and were trying to help them.”

“在两个不同的空间，我真的可以看到变化，”瓦雷蒂尼-博蒙特说。“在顶级班级，老师对学生的语言总是积极的，总是令人鼓舞的。他们真的希望学生学习，并尽力帮助他们。”

In the classroom where her friends were assigned, in contrast, the mathematics work mostly amounted to simple worksheets — “coloring pages and word find,” Waretini-Beaumont said.

相比之下，在她的朋友们被分配的教室里，数学作业大多相当于简单的工作表——“涂色页和单词查找，”瓦雷蒂尼-博蒙特说。

Related: Sign up for a limited-run newsletter that walks you through some of the most promising solutions for helping students conquer math.

相关：注册一份限量发行的时事通讯，带你了解一些最有前途的帮助学生征服数学的解决方案。

For years, much like in the United States, New Zealand has worried about sliding student proficiency in mathematics, as captured by both national and international test scores. Later this month — the beginning of the New Zealand school year — the country is launching an overhaul of mathematics instruction that education leaders hope will reverse the trend.

多年来，就像美国一样，新西兰一直担心学生的数学水平下滑，这反映在国家和国际考试成绩上。本月晚些时候——新西兰学年的开始——该国将启动一项数学教学改革，教育领导人希望这将扭转这一趋势。

But other groups in the country have been trying to approach the problem of academic achievement from a different angle. They believe that streaming is driving achievement gaps in the country, including in mathematics. Tokona te Raki/Māori Futures Collective, a think tank focused on youth, has been working since 2019 to persuade schools to voluntarily end the practice by 2030. The initiative is called “Kōkirihia”— Māori for “take action.”

但是这个国家的其他团体一直试图从不同的角度来处理学术成就的问题。他们认为，流媒体正在推动这个国家的成绩差距，包括在数学方面。Tokona te Raki/毛利人未来集体是一个专注于青年的智库，自2019年以来一直致力于说服学校在2030年之前自愿结束这种做法。该倡议被称为“Kōkirihia”——毛利人的意思是“采取行动”。

Streaming is just one of many ways that schools group students by academic ability. Ability grouping can include separating students into vocational or university tracks at different schools as early as age 10, as is common in Germany and other Western European countries. But it could also include teachers creating informal and non-permanent groupings within their own classrooms to provide enrichment or extra support to students who need it.

流媒体只是学校根据学术能力对学生进行分组的众多方式之一。能力分组可以包括早在10岁时就将学生分为不同学校的职业或大学课程，这在德国和其他西欧国家很常见。但它也可能包括教师在自己的教室里创建非正式和非永久性的小组，为需要它的学生提供丰富或额外的支持。

In New Zealand, critics say streaming pushes two groups into so-called “cabbage,” or lower-level mathematics, at a disproportionate rate: Māori students, who are indigenous to New Zealand, and students who are Pasifika, the New Zealand term for people from Samoa, Tonga and other nations in the Pacific Islands.

在新西兰，批评者说，流媒体以不成比例的速度将两个群体推向所谓的 “卷心菜” 或低级数学: 新西兰原住民的毛利学生和来自萨摩亚的新西兰术语Pasifika的学生，汤加和太平洋岛屿上的其他国家。

In the 14th century, the Polynesian ancestors of today’s Māori migrated thousands of miles by canoe to what they called Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. Hundreds of years later, English settlers came to engage in trade and now represent the majority ethnic group in New Zealand. In 1840, the two groups signed the Treaty of Waitangi that established New Zealand’s bicultural identity.

在14世纪，今天的毛利人的波利尼西亚祖先乘独木舟迁移了数千英里，到达了他们所谓的Aotearoa，即长白云之地。数百年后，英国定居者开始从事贸易，现在代表了新西兰的多数族裔。1840，这两个团体签署了《怀唐伊条约》，确立了新西兰的双文化身份。

Many youth with Pacific Island backgrounds are descended from people who were encouraged to move to New Zealand after World War II to address a labor shortage.

许多具有太平洋岛屿背景的年轻人都是第二次世界大战后被鼓励移居新西兰以解决劳动力短缺问题的人的后裔。

Both Māori and Pasifika are a fast-growing, and young, population. By the 2040s, more than a third of children in the country are expected to identify as Māori, according to Stats NZ, the country’s official data agency.

毛利人和帕西菲卡人都是快速增长的年轻人口。根据该国官方数据机构Stats NZ的数据，到21世纪40年代，预计该国超过三分之一的儿童将被认定为毛利人。

Related: Eliminating advanced math ‘tracks’ often prompts outrage. Some districts buck the trend

相关: 消除高级数学 “轨道” 通常会引起愤怒。一些地区逆势而上

The New Zealand Ministry of Education’s official stance discourages streaming, but the country’s more than 2,500 schools operate with a great deal of independence: Principals have similar powers and responsibilities as school superintendents in the United States, and each school has an elected board that sets policy and manages budgets.

新西兰教育部的官方立场不鼓励流媒体，但该国2,500多所学校的运作具有很大的独立性: 校长与美国的学校负责人具有相似的权力和责任，每所学校都有一个民选董事会，负责制定政策和管理预算。

New Zealand does not track streaming or ability grouping by race or ethnicity, but surveys show it is common: Eighty percent of students are in schools that group students by ability level in mathematics, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment.

新西兰没有按种族或民族追踪流媒体或能力分组，但调查显示这很常见: 根据国际学生评估计划进行的2022调查，有80% 的学生在学校按数学能力水平对学生进行分组。

Other data shows a wide academic gap among students of different ethnicities in New Zealand.

其他数据显示，新西兰不同种族的学生之间存在很大的学术差距。

In the Auckland region, the country’s most densely populated of 16 regions in all, 76 percent of Asian students left secondary school with the highest of three levels on the country’s National Certificate of Educational Achievement in 2022. Like a high school diploma, the NCEA Level 3 is a minimum qualification to enter college in New Zealand.

在奥克兰地区，该国人口最稠密的16个地区中，有76% 名亚洲学生在该国国家教育成就证书2022年的三个级别中排名最高。与高中文凭一样，NCEA 3级是进入新西兰大学的最低资格。

About 66 percent of Pākehā, or white, students left school with that credential. About 46 percent of Pasifika students and 40 percent of Māori students did the same.

大约66% 的p ā keh ā 或白人学生以该证书离开了学校。大约46% 名Pasifika学生和40% 名毛利人学生也这样做。

In comparison, the high school graduation rate by race and ethnicity in the United States in the 2021-22 school year was 94 percent for Asian American/Pacific Islander students, 90 percent for white students, 83 percent for Hispanic students, 81 percent for Black students and 74 percent for American Indian/Alaskan Native students.

相比之下，在2021至22学年，美国按种族和种族划分的高中毕业率为亚裔美国人/太平洋岛民学生94%，白人学生90%，西班牙裔学生83%，黑人学生81%，美洲印第安人/阿拉斯加土著学生74%。

Misbah Sadat, the newly appointed principal at Kuranui College, a high school 50 miles northeast of the capital of Wellington, began actively working to “destream” mathematics courses soon after emigrating to New Zealand in 2009 and becoming a teacher there.

Misbah Sadat是位于惠灵顿首府东北50英里的Kuranui学院的一所高中的新任命校长，在移民到新西兰2009年并成为那里的老师后不久，他就开始积极地 “分流” 数学课程。

As head of mathematics at a high school called Horowhenua College, she started by identifying promising Māori students on her own, moving them to higher level classes, and mentoring them, as described in a Ministry of Education newsletter.

作为一所名为Horowhenua College的高中的数学负责人，她首先通过自己确定有前途的毛利学生，将他们转移到更高级别的班级并指导他们，如教育部时事通讯所述。

Related: OPINION: As a middle-class Black student, I was tracked into lower-level math classes that kept me back

相关: 观点: 作为一名中产阶级的黑人学生，我被追踪到较低水平的数学课程，这使我退缩了

Eventually she convinced her colleagues at Horowhenua to create mixed-ability classes rather than dividing the students. She continued the same work as deputy principal at Onslow College in suburban Wellington, where she worked before her new appointment.

最终，她说服了Horowhenua的同事创建混合能力课程，而不是将学生分开。她继续在惠灵顿郊区的Onslow学院担任副校长，在新任命之前在那里工作。

The streaming practice comes from a patronizing mindset, said Sadat, who was also a math teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland.

萨达特说，流媒体的做法来自一种光顾的心态，他也是马里兰州蒙哥马利县的一名数学老师。

Schools are telling parents that their children might be lost and overwhelmed in a more rigorous class. In actuality, “We have demoted some students to learn crap,” she said. “And then we are saying that at age 16, ‘You are dumb at maths.’ How dare we decide what a young person is capable of or not capable of?”

学校告诉父母，他们的孩子可能会在更严格的班级中迷失方向，不堪重负。实际上，“我们已经降职一些学生学习废话，” 她说。“然后我们在16岁时说，'你在数学上是愚蠢的。' 我们怎么敢决定一个年轻人能做什么，或者不能做什么？”

Both of New Zealand’s unions for elementary and secondary teachers signed onto the pledge to end streaming by 2030. In a newsletter to members, the elementary teachers union noted that its members have noticed “a sense of ingrained hopelessness that comes with being in the ‘cabbage’ classes.”

新西兰的中小学教师工会都签署了终止流媒体2030年的承诺。在给会员的时事通讯中，小学教师工会指出，其成员已经注意到 “在 '白菜' 课程中存在一种根深蒂固的绝望感。

But in the same newsletter, another teacher said educators struggle with the mix of abilities in one classroom, along with managing behavior challenges.

但在同一份时事通讯中，另一位老师说，教育工作者在一个教室里的能力组合以及应对行为挑战方面苦苦挣扎。

David Pomeroy, a senior lecturer in education at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, is studying schools that have committed to reducing their reliance on streaming.

克赖斯特彻奇坎特伯雷大学教育高级讲师David Pomeroy正在研究致力于减少对流媒体依赖的学校。

It’s a difficult task, he said. So many teachers are accustomed to the practice, since they went through it in school themselves. Parents of students in high-level classes are worried their children will be shortchanged. Teachers also say that it is easier to work with students who are all roughly on the same skill level.

这是一项艰巨的任务，他说。许多老师都习惯了这种做法，因为他们自己在学校里经历了这种做法。高年级学生的父母担心他们的孩子会被换掉。老师们还说，与技能水平大致相同的学生一起工作更容易。

And then there is an emotional connection to the practice, Pomeroy said. Unlike in the United States, lower-level mathematics classes are often taught by teachers who have a lot of classroom experience and who express real fondness for their students, he said. Pushing students too hard is seen as setting them up for repeated failure, which teachers were reluctant to do.

Pomeroy说，这种做法与情感上的联系。他说，与美国不同，低级数学课通常由具有丰富课堂经验并表达对学生的真正喜爱的老师教授。过分逼迫学生被视为使他们反复失败，而老师却不愿这样做。

“Even if they accepted streaming wasn’t the right next step, they wanted to protect them from anything that could damage their confidence,” Pomeroy said.

“即使他们接受流媒体不是正确的下一步，他们也想保护他们免受任何可能损害他们信心的事情，” Pomeroy说。

For schools that have made a commitment to reducing or ending streaming, he said, one useful tool has been to bring mathematics teachers in different schools together so they can work through challenges, such as lesson planning, and share successes.

他说，对于那些承诺减少或结束流媒体的学校来说，一个有用的工具是将不同学校的数学老师聚集在一起，这样他们就可以克服挑战，比如课程计划，并分享成功。

Related: Racial gaps in math have grown. Could detracking help?

相关: 数学上的种族差距已经扩大。detracking可以帮助吗？

The research into the benefits or harms of academic tracking or streaming show mixed results. In 2016, a group of researchers compiled all the best U.S-based research on ability grouping and acceleration at that point, going back for a century. They found certain kinds of ability grouping, such as placing highly gifted students together, was a benefit to those students. But grouping students in high- or low-performing classes did not show any benefit or detriment for students.

对学术跟踪或流媒体的利弊的研究显示出喜忧参半的结果。2016，一组研究人员汇编了当时美国关于能力分组和加速的所有最好的研究，可以追溯到一个世纪以前。他们发现某些类型的能力分组，例如将有天赋的学生放在一起，对这些学生是有益的。但是，将学生分为高或低表现班并没有给学生带来任何好处或损害。

The New Zealand Initiative, a right-of-center think tank, said that the country should conduct its own research on the effects of streaming in the country, rather than relying primarily on research done elsewhere and on qualitative reports that primarily capture feelings about the practice. “Research suggests that lowerstream students are often taught less engaging content by less experienced teachers. So, it may not be streaming itself that increases gaps in achievement but streaming done poorly,” the initiative said in a report.

中心权利智囊团 “新西兰倡议” 表示，该国应就流媒体在该国的影响进行自己的研究，而不是主要依靠其他地方进行的研究以及主要捕捉有关情感的定性报告。实践。“研究表明，低年级学生通常由经验不足的老师教授较少引人入胜的内容。因此，它可能不是流媒体本身增加了成就的差距，而是流媒体做得不好，“该倡议在一份报告中说。

But the efforts to reduce streaming voluntarily seem to be catching on.

但是自愿减少流媒体的努力似乎正在流行。

When looking at all academic subjects, not just mathematics, principals on a 2022 PISA survey said 67 percent of students in New Zealand are grouped by ability into different classes for at least some subjects. That’s a drop from 2015, when 90 percent of principals reported that students were grouped into different classes in their schools.

PISA 2022的一项调查显示，在考察所有学术科目时，不仅仅是数学，新西兰67% 的学生至少在某些科目上按能力分为不同的班级。这是一个下降的2015年，当时有90% 位校长报告说，学生被分为学校的不同班级。

The change is welcome, said Waretini-Beaumont, who works on social media for Tokona te Raki. Streaming “has more impact than just cutting off some opportunities and stopping someone from doing calculus,” she said. “Our grandparents have been streamed and they don’t know it was even a thing. They just thought they were dumb.”

在Tokona te Raki的社交媒体上工作的waretini-beaumont说，这种变化是受欢迎的。她说，流媒体 “比切断一些机会和阻止某人做微积分更有影响力”。“我们的祖父母已经被流了，他们甚至不知道这是一件事。他们只是认为他们是愚蠢的。

Contact Christina A. Samuels at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingereport.org.

联系Christina A. Samuels在212-678-3635或samuels@hechingereport.org。

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

这个故事是在教育作家协会报告奖学金计划的支持下制作的。

This story about academic tracking was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

这个关于学术追踪的故事是由Hechinger Report制作的，这是一个非营利性的独立新闻机构，专注于教育中的不平等和创新。注册Hechinger时事通讯。