To a large degree, the competent US high schools do that sorting within the school. In my 4-year public high school there were at least 10 different math cours

To a large degree, the competent US high schools do that sorting within the school. In my 4-year public high school there were at least 10 different math courses. The lowest students would still be taking some remedial arithmetic and such, normal students would take algebra, and I was taking discrete (first year). This applies for pretty much all study areas, with AP/advanced options available for the best students and remedial courses for the worst. There's also a large degree of flexibility in choosing your schedule, so students who aren't planning to go to university could choose mostly shop classes and have half days for their final year or two of high school. The end result was that I wasn't in a single class with the remedial bullies from elementary school (where unfortunately there is substantially less segregation, with the only solution being to move up a grade).