Seating arrangement

I guess I've bought in to this No Child Left Behind idea because I'm always paying attention to my worst students with my method for seating students. After a couple of weeks, I give a fair test to my students. I then arrange the seating chart based on their scores. I know all the research says to place your worst students next to your best students so all that knowledge will somehow magically rub off on the bad students. What the Harvard researchers don't get is the lower students will cheat off the good students and trick YOU into thinking they don't need help. I put my best students in the back row; I put my worst students where I can keep an eye on them. One benefit is I can stand in the middle of the classroom facing front with my best students at my back. I don't need to watch them as much. My lower students are always within arm's reach in case I need to tap on their desk to wake them up or genuinely ask them if they need help. If my low students want to copy off of somebody, they'll have to copy off of another student who needs help or actually try to do the work. This seating arrangement allows me to profile before even getting to know my students. On week 4, I might not know my students' personalities, but I do know how they did on that last test I gave them. Certainly, they can move if they do well on the next test. Be careful not to make it the dummy area. I've seen a teacher do that in a rough school with some success (half the class could eat and drink; the other half couldn't)