Yes math=maths=mathematics. No big mystery
I have mixed feelings about issues like elite schools vs schools for all abilites and such. I'm coming from an Australian school perspective so I can't comment on American schools, but the school I went to was a public (state) school for all abilities. For maths and english in the first three years they had different streams, hard, medium and easy (insert PC names
). I think that was a useful thing to do, because if you have all ranges of abilities in one classroom, you end up having some kids not keeping up, and some getting terribly bored. With segregated classes the extremes in the classroom are not so extreme, with the difference between the least able medium kid and the most able medium kid being quite reasonable. Because as will always happen, teachers end up teaching to the average - you can't, as is suggested by experts in effective teaching, teach to the least able in the class and keep repeating things until every one has got it, because that's not fair to kids who have greater abilities, and at the same time you can't go as fast as the smartest kids want to go as it's not fair to everyone else. So I think separating students abilities-wise for core subjects is helpful. But then for other things, like history, I don't think it's really necessary to separate people.