Tracking in my middle school

At St. Theresa's there were classes offered for different levels of students during our 8th grade year. The school did not refer to this as tracking, but it was a form of tracking. The good thing about the way that it was done at St.T's was that a student was not put in one track for all subjects. In fact, only two subjects were divided by ability levels, Math and English. Three Math classes were offered, Math, Pre-Algebra, and Algebra. I took Pre-algebra. Two English classes were offered, English and Literature. I took Literature. As I detailed in a previous blog, that literature class was one of my favorite classes of my school career.
The other classes, Science, Social Studies, Religion, Music, Art, Gym, Computer, and Library were not tracked at all. I think that my school had a good way of handling the use of tracking. Students were recommended for their Math and English classes according to the observations of the 7th grade teachers. The student and their parents had the final say as to what class they would be in. The fact that most of the school day was spent with the entire class, diminished the perception of some kids being the "smart kids" and others the "not so smart kids". That, coupled with the fact that some kids were in the high English class but one of the lower math classes, made it so that it was not really noticeable, or at least not a focus of anybodies attention.
I really liked that the high ability classes tended to treat less like kids. We were given responsibility for our own work, and we were never given the kind of boring "busy work" kinds of tasks that I always hated.