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I agree that there have always been levels and tiers, but I think that more kids are performing at the low tier level and the gap between tiers has grown. In the olden days when I went to school, I think the average graduate, even from the dumber tracks, was basically employable in a non-intellectual job upon graduation (at least in part because kids would quit school when they couldn't hack the work so the "worst" students never graduated).
Now, we've lowered the expectations for graduation to such a low level that a low tier students might not even understand that he or she needs to show up to work daily and complete the tasks assigned if they want to stay employed. (I'm not saying all low level kids are this way, but school certainly doesn't require many lower level kids to be responsible for much.)
But weirdly, in contrast to what some of you have said, I think I'd go the other direction and encourage students to track themselves more as a method of fixing it. What I see happening when we try to push everyone through the same material is that the standards get lowered to the lowest group. If we allowed student and parents to select classes for kids, but held the standards in those classes pretty rigid, I think we'd end up with better education overall because no one would be kidding themselves about what the present level of performance meant or what it would allow kids to do next.
At the school where I teach, kids are either in resource special education, college prep, or AP by the time they are juniors. College prep can't really be college prep if it's the lowest level class offered to any kids who doesn't qualify to be in a special education class, can it? (Do you imagine that our school is prepared to flunk anyone who can't really do the work? The answer from the administration is no. Teachers are expected to "differentiate instruction" for low and high level learners. )
And yet, there's no indication to the kid or the parents that they aren't really getting truly college prep level classes and that if they really want that, they need to be in AP.
So, if we made college prep really college prep, but offered general level or vocational level as an option for the kids who serious couldn't or wouldn't do college prep work, they we could have some true standards for performance.
And if the kids change their minds about the track later, let them stay longer taking the new classes or offer more junior college or vocation school training for kids after they finish one track.
But pretending to be all things to all people when we're really focused on getting the low end through does a disservice to everyone.
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