ABSTRACT
This chapter follows three girls,2 classmates in a detracked ninth grade English-History core3 program, through their first year at Cedar High School. As Kiana, Tiffany, and Sasha entered the ninth grade, each brought
with her a particular set of home resources and responsibilities, a circle of friends, and previous schooling experiences. In the racially and socioeconomically divided context of Cedar High, the classroom-based reform of detracking both provided opportunities for these students to have powerful learning experiences together and threw the disparities among them into stark relief. As the opening quotations indicate, although Tiffany, Kiana, and Sasha physically inhabited the same space, detracking was a distinct experience with distinct results for each of the three girls.
