Forget catering to "gifted students". San Francisco's school district (SFUSD) wanted to take algebra out of 8th grade, simply because poor kids and POCs were failing it at disproportionate levels. Here's a relevant article: https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/algebra-for-none-fails-in-...
So the solution to bad grades in some communities was to take away the opportunity for ALL communities.
Thankfully, a vocal group of people raised a stink about it and even put it on the ballot. The uproar caused the school to backtrack and bring Algebra back in 8th grade starting this year.
This kind of idiotic "social engineering" that the SFUSD is doing is killing the public schools. Parents who can afford to spend the $50K/year on private schooling are taking their kids out of SFUSD and the district is losing funding.
Democrats often say that the Republicans would like to kill public education. But the Democrats are doing a great job of it themselves! Case in point: my friend's kid goes to an SFUSD Middle School. Their 5thgrade class has no math teacher! Math is taught via Zoom and "self-paced learning". SMFH...
I think you're taking the wrong read on the situation, if you have a cross-section of your students that are failing a class that doesn't match with the roughly normal distribution you would expect then it means that it's a failing of the class. You have a bunch of affluent involved parents who are looking to advantage their child in any way possible teaching their kids algebra outside school hours. It's not a bad thing, it's actually great that parents are involved, but it means the class isn't doing anything one way or the other so why even have it?
You only see this kind of behavior in math where there's an on-paper advantage to be conferred by letting kids jump ahead, you don't see it with social studies or english.