Curricula and Coursework: A Surprise Ending to a Familiar Story

Abstract

Previous research on high school tracking has neglected students' course enrollments and students' course grades as possible selection criteria for curriculum assignments and as possible mechanisms whereby track membership exercises its influence on school outcomes. The present study extends the Alexander, Cook, and McDill (1978) curriculum process model to include detailed information on students' coursework patterns over the junior high school and senior high school years. We find that traditional academic criteria, including relevant prior coursework and grade performance, are quite influential in determining students' high school track placements. We also find, however, that previous studies have overstated the potency and pervasiveness of curriculum's influence owing to their neglect of such selection criteria. Curriculum's actual influence is restricted to students' orientations toward postsecondary education, and it apparently has little to do with the sorts of educational treatments that justify curriculum differentiation in the functionalist perspective. We discuss these results in light of claims for curriculum's efficacy as an organizational intervention and conclude that much of what is observed in high school studies of school achievement processes simply reflects achievement trajectories set in motion years earlier. Attention is directed to experiences in the primary grades as a high priority for future research.