In order to best meet the challenges of NCLB legislation, and heighten student success, student schedules must be determined by their individual needs, not the track that they are in. For example, with tracking, students may be in gifted classes for math and language arts, even though they are only gifted in math. Students in other tracks who may be gifted in one of these two areas are not able to be in the appropriate class. Moving to a model based individual students needs will meet the challenge of today's middle school education.
Take a look at the scheduling models available in the Digital Library for middle schools, for example, the model named the "Outstanding Middle School".
In addition, I would recommend that you take one of the Professional Development courses on student scheduling to be offered on the web. We will be announcing the dates next week.