The school I work at has done the same thing with social studies and English. The idea is that the higher level kids will bring up the others and the teacher will no longer have the classes that do absolutely nothing and that more students will be motivated to do better because of the higher general standard of the class.
My colleagues love it so far. They say that it really has worked in terms of motivating the lower level kids while still allowing the higher kids to do higher level work that they need.
On the other side of the issue though, the science and math teachers have refused to make the switch on the grounds that honors science and math are actually different subjects most years, not simply different versions of the same subject. So far the administration has supported us on this.
