The de-tracking movement ignores the elephant in the room, which is that not all kids have the same cognitive ability. Poverty and stress make the problem worse, but dragging down the high-ability kids won't help the other ones. But I suppose that pretending it works serves a certain ideology.
If we are talking about ignored elephants ...
If scores on IQ tests had the same distribution for various income groups and races, there would be less resistance to using IQ scores or proxies to select students for gifted programs or selective colleges. But there are substantial differences, as documented by scholars such as Charles Murray and Arthur Jensen.
It will be difficult to preserve meaningful gifted programs or honors classes as long as it is assumed that they must be demographically representative of the general student population.
