No Longer Letting Scores Separate Pupils

STAMFORD, Conn. — Sixth graders at Cloonan Middle School here are assigned numbers based on their previous year’s standardized test scores — zeros indicate the highest performers, ones the middle, twos the lowest — that determine their academic classes for the next three years.

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times
Aidan Bracken, left, and Evenson Andre in class.
But this longstanding system for tracking children by academic ability for more effective teaching evolved into an uncomfortable caste system in which students were largely segregated by race and socioeconomic background, both inside and outside classrooms. Black and Hispanic students, for example, make up 46 percent of this year’s sixth grade, but are 78 percent of the twos and 7 percent of the zeros.

Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/education/15stamford.html?_r=1