As a current high school student, I can say that the trend away from tracking, at least in my district, is largely a product of parental indignation: they feel as though their kids are being systematically disadvantaged or academically repressed due to some sort of misguided assessment of their kid's innate ability. It's really pretty intuitive; no one wants to be told that their kid is too dumb to succeed in the upper-echelons of secondary education.
Although, in my personal opinion, tracking is probably detrimental inasmuch as success in high school is determined by sheer effort and monetary resources (and to a much lesser extent by academic ability.) Most people are capable of sufficiently completing most AP courses, but either don't have a desire to work for 4 hours per night on top of 10 hours at school, or aren't even offered the opportunity to take them. Because of that, tracking (like most other paradigms in k-12 education) rewards people with high income and supportive parents that compel their kid to take on more responsibility, and ends up artificially excluding potentially qualified students based on a test they took when they were literally 10 years old and is defined largely by wealth anyway.
On top of this, tracking involves a disproportionate allocation of resources whereby the "smart" kids get the most time poured into them, artificially increasing their test scores to a greater extent while leaving the less-qualified students out to dry. Malcolm Gladwell articulates this quite well in Outliers (which everyone ought to read). So, an arbitrary difference when one is 10 becomes a massive dichotomy when individuals are 18 because the kids on the higher track are given access to superior resources, while the kids who aren't are perpetually disadvantaged. Tracking takes minute differences in intelligence and, based largely off of one's circumstances and not innate ability, exacerbates those differences through unfair allocation of resources.
Tracking is largely arbitrary, enables disproportionate appropriation of district resources, and is needlessly exclusionary.
Just a minor comment: I assume you are well read, but one of the biggest tells of being a clever youth is writing style. George Orwell had some good advice on the matter here:
I've taken the liberty of rephrasing your post below:
I'm in high school; I think that we've stopped using
tracking because parents don't like it--nobody wants to
be told their kid isn't talented.
I'm not sure this is wrong. Tracking seems to be more a
function of wealth and parental guidance than of talent.
This being the case, we end up with a system that rewards
kids with those resources and ignores--or even slights!--
those without.
Another awful feature of tracking is that it multiplies
differences over time: because resources are allocated
based on test performance, minor differences in scores
snowball over time--two students with only minor
differences in ability may well end up in very different
classes, with one being trained to get to the next level
and the other abandoned by the system charged with
teaching them.
To sum up: the choice of tracks is arbitrary, unfairly
spreads resources, and is too skewed in demographics.
Although, in my personal opinion, tracking is probably detrimental inasmuch as success in high school is determined by sheer effort and monetary resources (and to a much lesser extent by academic ability.) Most people are capable of sufficiently completing most AP courses, but either don't have a desire to work for 4 hours per night on top of 10 hours at school, or aren't even offered the opportunity to take them. Because of that, tracking (like most other paradigms in k-12 education) rewards people with high income and supportive parents that compel their kid to take on more responsibility, and ends up artificially excluding potentially qualified students based on a test they took when they were literally 10 years old and is defined largely by wealth anyway.
On top of this, tracking involves a disproportionate allocation of resources whereby the "smart" kids get the most time poured into them, artificially increasing their test scores to a greater extent while leaving the less-qualified students out to dry. Malcolm Gladwell articulates this quite well in Outliers (which everyone ought to read). So, an arbitrary difference when one is 10 becomes a massive dichotomy when individuals are 18 because the kids on the higher track are given access to superior resources, while the kids who aren't are perpetually disadvantaged. Tracking takes minute differences in intelligence and, based largely off of one's circumstances and not innate ability, exacerbates those differences through unfair allocation of resources.
Tracking is largely arbitrary, enables disproportionate appropriation of district resources, and is needlessly exclusionary.
Just my two cents...