The goal of anti-tracking extremists is to destroy education for more able students. To a large extent they have succeeded. Public education is hugely focused on less able students, and the more able students are left disenfranchised from the public school system. Millions of children have been driven out of public education due to these hostilities.
I have read "Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality", 2nd ed. (2005) by Jeannie Oakes. The first edition of the book was very influential. I think she is misguided and has had a negative effect on American education, but she never says anything like what was asserted above.
I think 22B wrote elsewhere in the thread that gifted or ability grouped classes won't have much benefit if they use the same curriculum as the other classes, and I have seen research supporting this. Even in kindergarten, if some children don't know the alphabet and how to spell their names, and others read fluently, the language arts curriculum should be different for the two groups. But a good multi-year curriculum builds on what was covered in previous years and does not repeat material unnecessarily. If you group children from the beginning and provide different curricula, how do you preserve the ability of children starting in the lower groups to move to a higher group? Do you give exams each September to help sort the students?
I think there should be ability grouping in math and reading, from the beginning, with distinct curricula, but doing so will raise thorny questions.
