Spring) Matchmaking: The dynamics of high school tracking decisions

Over the past 20 years, research has expanded educators ' knowledge of the impact of high school tracking on students ' curriculum opportunities and outcomes. Researchers also know that students are unevenly distributed among tracks, with low-income and minority students more likely to be in low ability classes for the non-college-bound. At the same time, they still understand little about how schools actually match particular students to tracked courses. Scholars and educators variously draw on technical/struc-tural (e.g., a match between tracking and the differentiated structure of workforce), cultural (e.g., norms regarding race, social class, and educa-tional prospects), and political or individualistic (e.g., choice, parent pres-sure) theories to explain students ' track assignments. To shed further light on the school dynamics that shape track-related course taking, we provide findings from a 2-year examination of tracking decisions at three compre-hensive high schools. Setting these findings against prior theoretical and empirical work, we suggest an eclectic explanation that blends structural