Two new working papers released by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggest that having high grading standards and grouping students by ability (i.e. tracking) lead to improvements in academic achievement. For more, see "Do High Grading Standards Affect Student Performance?" by David Figlio and Maurice Lucas at http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7985 and "School Choice and the Distributional Effects of Ability Tracking: Does Separation Increase Equality," by David Figlio and Marianne Page at http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8055
