This part in particular:
"Some students desperately want to read a chapter book but are honestly not there yet. They might see peers who are ready for that step and then decide they do also."
sounds like "we are going to hold back the higher achieving kids in order to avoid making the kids who can't keep up with them feel bad or try to do things for which they aren't yet ready."
I was going to write the same thing. If it makes kids feel bad to observe classmates who are more advanced, schools could use ability grouping in reading and math, but that idea is anathema to the kind of teacher described in this thread.
