I'm curious where this was. My experience has been that, even in very liberal areas (such as Montgomery County), if you have a high percentage of college-educated yuppie parents, the schools tend to be awash in advanced courses for the yuppie larva.
You see, some years back there was a controversy here in Federal Way when one of the "honors" students came to a school board meeting and informed the school board that although she took all advanced placement and honors classes, and was the high school valedictorian, when she got to the University of Washington she found herself unprepared for the college level science courses. She was interested in majoring in some sort of science career. Now, this girl was actually speaking to the school board to help them, perhaps, re-evaluate the program and improve it. The school board was not impressed and decided that the problem was (yes, you guessed it), her.
She was informed that not all students adjust well to college. Now, if their valedictorian can't "adjust" to college what are the rest of the graduates from this school system doing? After much discussion in the local paper and elsewhere, it was revealed that the "honors" classes had exactly the same curriculum and textbooks as the regular classes, it was just that you were in a class with other highly motivated students. No real extra challenge.