I think the second paragraph of this article is unintentionally revealing: > One high school near me just dropped freshman advanced-standing (honors) English “

I think the second paragraph of this article is unintentionally revealing: > One high school near me just dropped freshman advanced-standing (honors) English “to combat the effects of academic ‘tracking” because it “ultimately separates students of different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds.” It turns out that middle schools from lower-income areas aren’t adequately preparing their students for high school. So rather than fix that problem, they dumbed down high school. So rather than write about that problem, the author takes the far less interesting path of complaining about lowering standards. Much easier to advocate a return to a recent status quo than to dig into the sticky, uncomfortable reasons that education is stratified by race and class. This article is basically a case study in what it purports to call attention to. What could have been an interesting article is merely a mediocre fallacy-filled defense of conservative economic policies that, increasingly clearly, do not work.