Everything old is new again.
When I was a kid, they broke up the class into Early Birds and Late Birds. The early birds went to school an hour earlier and had more advanced instruction. It was a way to separate the smart kids from the dumb kids where the dumb kids didn’t slow down the smart kids. I think this is a way to separate the merit students from the affirmative ones so the merit ones are not slowed down and further become contemptuous of the affirmative ones