Is Tracking Effective? Now that you have read and reviewed the material on cognitive development during adolescence, take your learning a step further by testing your critical thinking skills on this scientific reasoning exercise. In an effort to boost achievement, many schools employ tracking, in which students are separated into distinct groups based on standardized tests of ability and achievement. In theory, eachclass then contains students of about the same ability level, and teachers can direct their presentation to that level to maximize learning However, critics argue that tracking is divisive and damaging, particularly for lower-track students who often face a "dumbed down" curriculum taught by burned-out teachers. Your task in this exercise is to design an experiment to deter mine whether or not tracking is effective in boosting academic achievement in high school students of varying abilities. The principal has rounded up 100 students who have volunteered to serve as subjects. To make sure your study will be valid, she wants answers to the following questions.
1. What would be the independent variable?
2. How would you implement the independent variable, using the 100 volunteers?
3.What would be the dependent variable?
4. How would you perform the actual experiment?
5. What variables would you need to control in order to ensure a valid test of your hypothesis?
6. What might be your hypothesis for this experiment?

1. The independent variable in this experiment would be the separation of students into distinct groups based on standardized tests of ability and achievement.

2. To implement the independent variable, the experimenter needs to divide the 100 volunteers into separate groups based on standardized tests of ability and achievements. He must also make sure that each groups’ students’ ability levels are the same. Then they would be given tasks as per their ability level.

3.The dependent variable here would be the academic achievements of the groups formed based on ability.

4. First, the volunteers’ achievement would be tested. Then based on their abilities as per standardized tests, they would be divided into groups of students with similar abilities. Then they would be given tasks as pr their abilities. Finally, their achievements would be measured to see if there is any significant difference in achievement between them before and after the grouping as per ability.

5.

6. Null Hypothesis: There would be no significant difference between the academic achievements in high school students of varying abilities due to separation into distinct groups based on standardized tests of ability and achievement.

Alternative Hypothesis: There would be a significant difference between the academic achievements in high school students of varying abilities due to tracking.