To be fair to the author, he is not the one who framed this as a progressive issue, many of its proponents did that. I agree that it isn't progressive, or maybe just that it is an example of when something goes so far in one direction that it looks exactly like its opposite. In any case, it deserves to be called out as a dumb idea.

Public education is political. It is run by directly managed boards, with funding provided by the legislature, and under the laws of the legidlature.

Education policy is difficult, and every political movement that has worked on it has had at least 1 stupid and counterproductive idea. The particular stupid idea under discussion here happens to be one done by the movement that identifies itself as progressive, and in a state where progressives hold a lot of political power.

What evidence do you have that this policy is influenced by any kind of "movement," and what are the differences of this "movement" compared to the Dallas policy mentioned in the article?

It's a common manifestation of the dissonance in American politics. TFA is advocating for a fundamentally progressive stance, but he's arguing against ostensible Boston lefties. What's unspoken is that the people making these decisions for public schools in Cambridge are elites who send their own kids to private schools, often prep; this is just another way to bleed a public institution so that they're not on the hook. Bonus points: their darling children have less competition for the local universities.

IME, tracking is only a portion of the issue, anyway. A confluence of factors stymied my growth; having to take Algebra 2 and Trig separately and Precalc as a standalone course didn't help, but poor instruction from "sink or swim" advocates was probably more consequential, and having parents distracted by a messy divorce and economic stresses from the 07/08 crash even more so. Between those, I went from starting middle school on track to take college-level Differential Equations or Calc 2, and ended up almost flunking AP Calc. Never really recovered.

I took AP calc in highschool and much later in life got placed in trig for college. I was greatly annoyed that the subsequent precalculus class was the exact same stuff I learned in trig, to the point where I asked the professor if I would learn anything new, and they said no.

Came here to say the same thing. Progessivism, wokeism, etc are being hit by a propaganda campaign by the uber rich. Because they can't profit from the healthy public policies that people like me grew up under in the 80s and 90s. Before they got systematically undermined and replaced with whatever all this is.

If any young people out there are reading this and scratching their heads, let me offer a small piece of advice: if someone's argument hinges on generalizations against a group of people, it should give one pause.

Edit: I just made a generalization about the uber rich. Please, think of the uber rich. They suffer so.