SARAH ALVIAR-EISMA

SHARI ANN KATLIN C. GALINDO

ABSTRACT
In this paper, we will look into the issue of ability grouping and tracking practices in school as a medium to create social stratification. Participant students from a secondary public school in Bulacan were asked to answer a survey with details of their socio-economic status. And teachers were interviewed about the difference in the instruction given to the last section from the first section of a particular fourth year level.
Keywords
Social stratification, socio-economic status, tracking, ability-grouping.
Objective
As early as enrolment period, parents as well as students are already looking forward to what section their children will belong to. As for the students, they are looking forward to their section because they wanted to know who will be their classmates and if they have a friend in the same section. But behind this sectioning is another hidden agenda of grouping the students not only by their abilities but also by social status. Through tracking or ability grouping we will know who are intelligent and well-to-do from the slow learners and poor. The objective of this paper is to analyze how the tracking/ability grouping can foster inequality among students.
I. INTRODUCTION
After the first day of the school, the first thing a parent will ask from his/her child is “What‟s your section this year?” and the reaction will be a disappointment or a surprise. From early graders to secondary levels all students are grouped into sections and as a matter of fact every section has its own label such as for the top class will have “cream section”, “star section”, and all the good names that you can mention while if it‟s the bottom class they will be labeled as the “poor performing class”, “teachers enemy”, “a pool of problem students”, “latak”, “ang future tambays” and other negative labels that you can think of. These labels are product of the sectioning that school administrators do each school year. And once they are already in their 

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section the socialization that happens inside that section mold the students‟ personality, aspirations, and academic achievements. There are students who used to be of a behaved attitude seems to change as they become members of a certain group or section. In the public schools where there is more number of students yet less classrooms, they have a lot of sections that reaches up to 30th and with more than 50 students for each class. The most achievers are grouped together in a section and known as the section one. And then the rest to be heterogeneously grouped but unintentionally students other than the first section were grouped according based on academic and non-academic factors.With these situations, we can see the „unintentional‟ creation of a discriminatory and segregated system in school. Just like in the United States before and some at present that all white students were able to make it to the best schools while the minority in the inferior schools and programs (Newton 1990).  

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