There a lot more options than tracked vs non-tracked. My public school district implemented a combination of pull-out programs, advanced sections, and tracking

There a lot more options than tracked vs non-tracked. My public school district implemented a combination of pull-out programs, advanced sections, and tracking on a per-subject and sometimes per-previous year's performance basis. A lot of effort was made to keep class cohorts together, while allowing students who excel at a specific subject to engage in a more challenging curriculum for that particular subject. These were all based on independent assessments. There wasn't a notion of "track" because most students were in a hodgepodge of "advanced/ahead" and "regular" courses, depending on the subject, depending on the previous year's performance, or depending on whether they themselves decided to sign up for the class or not. A high school kid could: - be a year ahead in English (which would only separate them from classmates for freshman and sophomore year; English curriculum was completely open, like college, after sophomore-level English.) - be in one of three math cohorts - be in the honors or regular section of a science course (based on the previous year's science performance). It was always the same science subject (eg, honors bio vs bio). - take any AP course they met the prereqs for (iirc, pretty much all APs were available to all students within four years, save AP Calc, which would require a summer school catch up for those in the baseline math track). - have been in the gifted pull-out program in elementary school (no special curriculum for "gifted" students in high school, afaik)