this, exactly. Thank you. I have similar concerns re; my DD who will start Kinder next year. With things like reading, writing she's the type that will just shutdown and stop trying if she gets the inkling that she's not up to par, and then will just deem herself incapable, making it harder for her to improve at all.
And no, am not overthinking it, the whole sparrow/robin/bluebird thing is not something a teacher "just made up", it was a nationwide thing. We had different reading textbooks (obviously color-coded/labeled) which we used for the whole year (e.g. in the beginning of the year, you were selected to be in the red group, you got a red textbook for the year). I found this article below which describes it pretty well. It sounds like this sort ability grouping started in the 1960s, mostly in the South, when schools were forced to desegregate (gee, I wonder why). I was in the North, at a Catholic school but still it was painfully obvious there were biases amongst SES/ethnicity, plus there was the impression that whatever group you were in, that's where you were stayed. As the article mentions, for some kids that makes them want to try harder, but for most it does not.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8...ng.html?pg=all
FWIW, i am not against the idea of grouping by ability AT ALL...in fact i think it is a good thing and especially in the context of redshirting and having kids of wide age ranges it sounds like its pretty necessary these days. though I 100% agree with the article that to be done well, it has to be pretty fluid and be implemented in a way that encourages kids to improve vs. simply labeling them.