Students are segregated by ability in the US, but in a variety of inconsistent ways. "Tracking," or comprehensive separation by ability, fell out of favor thirt

Students are segregated by ability in the US, but in a variety of inconsistent ways. "Tracking," or comprehensive separation by ability, fell out of favor thirty years ago. A lot of this has to do with racial politics, but there's definitely a Lake Wobegon component as well. That said, in individual subjects, there's almost always a regular and an advanced course, and it turns out that the same group of kids are in all of the advanced courses at most schools. Intra-school politics aside, in the US class and geography are tightly linked. Schools are locally controlled, so rich areas will have their own schools populated solely with their children, and poor areas will have their own schools populated solely with their own children. Rich schools have more advanced and AP (it's like American IB, basically. Very rich areas will have IB courses too) courses, poor schools often have trouble meeting state and federal requirements that science be taught. So, since 'rich' and 'academic ability' are tightly linked, whatever the nominal defenses against tracking are, they don't mean anything in practice.