Thereby making it not an honors program; the entire point of an honors program is to group people of a higher level of ability together so they can go faster.

It is true that CCHS says it will do the extra work. It's reasonable to be hopeful. It's also reasonable to be skeptical.

It's not reasonable of Kasparian to not acknowledge this and simply characterize it as giving up on the kids who aren't excelling. But you decided to devote time to this one example and it's not reasonable of you to fail to explain how the concern might be warranted and simply proceed as if Kasparian was talking about a pure myth.

CCHS's own detracking materials explain, "Segregation of students based upon the perception of ability denies equity in education by denying students the right to participate in the richest language environment possible." (emphasis mine). Why do they say perception of ability rather than actual ability? Why do they frame participation in the "richest language environment possible" as a right as opposed to something that is earned, worked towards, done when it is of greatest benefit to the student, or anything like that?

They link to studies which: admit that there are concerns, don't contrast increased effort to boost people into honors track vs. detracking with extra effort to boost people along the detracked area, and do show several case studies where certain outcome metrics improved overall but don't address or measure whether the students who would have been tracked were doing as well after as before.

So there isn't much evidence for it being a thoughtful embrace of peak academic excellence based on sound research.

Now, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. One can make a robust argument that the mission of public schools is to serve the public on average, not to produce a modest number of stars and let everyone else muddle along. But if you're going to embrace that broader mission, either (1) admit that you are willing to sacrifice some of the opportunities for the best performers for the benefit of the prospects for anyone who is motivated, or (2) take seriously the charge that you might be and show evidence that you're not. As far as I can tell, CCHS has done neither, which makes Kasparian's charge sorta-not-too-far-off-base-maybe.

I don't like Kasparian's characterization. I don't think it's entirely fair given CCHS's stated intent to bring everyone up rather than water things down. But it's also a bad example to use of simply "echoing conservative media" because there's some significant content behind this which you completely washed over, e.g., that you can take at face value that the intent will translate into action.

If she was echoing charges that the 2020 election was stolen, that would be a clear example of simply echoing conservative media.

As it is, it seems like she's drifting that direction, but this isn't very clear yet. Maybe something else is clearer.

Finally, I don't think it's remotely fair to say that how to approach education is not an "actually important issue". Education is one of the most impactful things we do as a society. In the long run, there's hardly anything else that is as important. We should be having far more discussions about that.