It turned out that the kids who want to do well within their high school had a better chance of doing well in college, even if they had to take catch-up courses or get peer tutoring.
Absolutely not, because being put in the remedial class was "tracking" so there could be no separating kids by ability. My daughter was sent to the library about every other day because she got her work done the first day and it was supposed to take two or three.
I am sympathetic to the idea that when a student is a little behind at one point doesn't mean that they always will be. Maybe things are going on at home, maybe they don't have a home, etc.
But our local school system insists on treating them all the same, regardless of their abilities.
My advice to my kids was to take any AP class that you could. It would be harder but you'd be in a class where the other students wanted to learn and almost always the teacher wanted to teach.
I had no negative experiences other than being a bit out of touch with the culture of my area, which isn't necessarily a bad thing either.
I had mostly ok teachers and no problems learning or making friends. I recall there actually being a lot of free time to just study whatever we wanted most days. We never struggled on the mandatory standardized tests, so the system left us alone. It was very uneventful and boring.
I took some AP classes and some regular classes. The AP classes were probably better or at least on par with my private school Mexican high school.
The regular classes were a grim perspective into the US education system.
It felt mostly like a daycare for young adults. The way they treated us was closer to how you treat infants than 17 year olds. There was little to no hope for learning from the teachers, and no expectation from the students. Cheating was rampant.
When I told my English teacher I had been admitted to UT Austin, his reaction was "no you weren't".
The US takes good care of university bound students, but does a pretend job for for those that are not on that track.