Thoughts on education and civics, part 4

Here's the fourth installment of the series I began in my post on March 2, and have continued here and here. As previously, it should be read as a continuation of the same overall essay. Comments welcome, of course.

We must, then, consider the possibility that it is the government which is (or at least should be) both competent and empowered to distribute educational resources to students in ways which maximize the good of the society. Such, for example, might be a system of 'tracking', in which, responsive to performance on standardized tests, students are assigned to sequences of courses designed to match and strengthen their aptitudes as demonstrated on said tests. Thus, in principle, students whose natural proclivities and skill sets are generally well suited to successful, productive, and satisfying engagement in, say, the legal profession will receive an educational experience tailored to this specific set of characteristics, and will be spared the wasted time and frustration of struggling through irrelevant classes. The government will be spared the wasted expense, supplying exactly the right education to the students who will most benefit from it, without paying for future artists to take trigonometry or future physicians to take computer-aided drafting. Students will, at a younger age, experience the camaraderie of like-minded and -talented peers, benefiting from cooperation and competition with fellows who are striving for similar goals and whose interests coincide closely with their own. Such homogeneous grouping will also allow for inculcation of a sense of the value of the particular vocation or pursuit particular to the group. Thus, the apparent second option, its features and consequences.