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Los Angeles-based writer and lecturer Luis Rodriguez can remember
being ashamed of being Mexican, beginning with his first day of
school. He was sent home early every day of his first week. And
when Rodriquez spoke in Spanish, his teacher hit him. Soon he was
assigned to special education classes.
That was in the 1960s, but Rodriquez still thinks of his life in
the “the dumb class” where “we fell further and
further behind our white classmates.”
Today, Rodriquez leads diversity workshops at North Hollywood High
School, where 85 percent of the student body is Latino. But only
a handful of Latino students are on the “gifted” education
track.
North Hollywood High is among the thousands of schools across the
nation that separate students based on perceived ability.Once a
student is categorized gifted, average or slow — a practice
known as “tracking” — that decision can narrow
a student's course offerings and future options. A practice that,
like the establishment of “magnet schools” was designed
to promote racial/ethnic diversity is in reality re-segregating
the nation's schools. 
According to North Hollywood High School teacher Randy Vail, anyone
who thinks segregation in our schools ended fifty years ago with
Brown v. Board of Education is fooling themselves. “You
have Latino kids who go through their entire school day without
seeing a white kid, and you have white kids who have almost no interaction
with their Latino classmates, and it is all done within the same
school.”
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