This study analyses the procedures for students' transfer between schools of the first and the second segments of elementary education. It focuses ordinary public schools of Rio de Janeiro City education system. It aims to identify the factors that determine the chances of access to schools with good results in national assessments. It focuses on two neighbor schools located in two nothern neighborhoods of the city with a wide variation in school performance and socioeconomic status. The study analyzed students' school trajectories in 2008 and 2009. Results suggest that student transference in the transition period analyzed did not occur randomly and that it created a scenario of homogenization of the schools surveyed. The data also suggest an early definition of the school trajectories of those students in the early grades of elementary education.
school stratification; hidden quasi-market; education opportunities
