Tracking, having separate advanced, standard, and/or remedial classes intended to homogeneously group students by perceived or actual ability, is a frequent practice used in U.S. schools, particularly at the secondary level. To promote educational equity, close achievement gaps, and counteract the de facto racial separation between advanced and standard-level courses, some districts and individual schools in Virginia are moving to detrack their offerings and stop offering separate advanced and standard-level courses. This qualitative case study explored how a middle school's newly adopted detracking policy with an honors-for-all approach impacted teachers' beliefs and pedagogy. Data were collected from documents and interviews with six school and district personnel and analyzed using inductive coding techniques until a mutually exclusive scheme of categories had been generated. The study concluded with the discussion, implications, recommendations, and conclusion of the results. The findings identified four categories that answered the research questions: opinions on honors-for-all, defining what "honors" means, instructional shifts in an honors-for-all classrooms, and challenges in practices. Overall, the study found that: (a) teachers' beliefs on tracking and honors-level classes did not change after implementation of detracking and there was a general divide in opinions between the teachers and non-teaching faculty, (b) there were varying definitions of what "honors" means among the district, school, and staff, (c) teachers' instruction shifted to adopt new pedagogical tools and strategies to meet the diverse learning needs in a mixed-ability honors classroom, and (d) teaching in an honors-for-all classroom was challenging, especially in differentiating for students' needs, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the accelerated standards in honors mathematics courses. Implications of the study included: (a) the necessity of having teacher buy-in when implementing a new programming initiative, (b) the benefits of vertical articulation with feeder elementary schools to prepare students for the rigor of middle school honors courses, (c) the need for common language and clear definitions across the district and school, and (d) the importance of providing professional development and support personnel to assist teachers in adopting new pedagogical practices in an honors-for-all setting. / Doctor of Education / Tracking, having separate advanced, standard, and/or remedial classes intended to homogeneously group students by perceived or actual ability, is a frequent practice used in U.S. schools, particularly at the middle and high school levels. To promote educational equity, some districts and schools in Virginia are considering detracking by no longer offering separate advanced and standard-level courses. This was a qualitative case study that used document analysis and interviews to explore how a middle school's newly adopted detracking policy with an honors-for-all approach impacted teachers' beliefs and instruction. Overall, the study found that teachers' beliefs about tracking and honors-level classes did not change after detracking, but teachers did adopt new instructional practices to meet the wide range of learning needs in the honors-for-all classrooms. The study also found that there was a lack of common language and definitions of what "honors" means and despite teachers' best efforts, teaching in an honors-for-all classroom was difficult, especially in the mathematics courses and given the timing of the new policy beginning immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings and implications from this study provide education leaders and policymakers with an understanding of teachers' perspectives on honors-for-all as other schools and districts consider detracking.

The main argument of this thesis is that research has to take the institutional character of education seriously. Educational institutions carry considerable weight for outcomes of education and their design is a matter of intense political debate. This work focuses in particular on the institution of tracking that has wide-reaching consequences for the structure of education. The thesis consists of an introductory essay, together with three empirical essays. The empirical essays all acknowledge the main argument but study different outcomes and relationships connected to education. Essay I studies how the institutions of political economy and education together affect equality of income and equality of educational opportunity. This essay contributes to the literature by distinguishing the effects of the different institutions of political economy and education, as well as how they interact to affect the two contrasting conceptions of equality. The results reveal that tracking hinders equality of educational opportunity but is also related to better incomes for vocational education graduates in certain institutional settings. Wage bargaining coordination reinforces the more equal educational opportunities of weakly tracked contexts and improves the relative income of vocational graduates in these contexts. Essay II explores how education and tracking affect social trust. It makes two contributions. First, the empirical approach provides strong support for causal inference. Second, it is the first study to consider how tracking affects social trust. The empirical evidence finds no general effect of educational attainment on social trust, but decreasing tracking has a positive effect on social trust for individuals who come from weakly educated backgrounds. Essay III aims to explain cross-country differences in tracking by focusing on the impact of government partisanship. The study contributes to the literature by being the first comparative study to explore how partisan politics may explain differences in tracking and being one of few comparative studies there are on the topic at all. The results show that tracking is strongly related to a dominance of Christian democratic governments, whereas detracking reforms have mainly been carried out by social democratic governments.