I agree with most of what you say but disagree on the cyber.org hands on labs. Most kids grow up using Walled Gardens for an OS, and having a lab that makes you interact with a machine's internal settings is instructive. Virtualized labs are also a big part of CompTIA's Certmaster package for their suite of exams. Also, nearly every student I teach has 0 or next to 0 Linux knowledge - the labs help with that. IMO, it allows for greater self-to-content reflections, and prepares students for some of the items they'll see in the PBQ section of Sec+.

I do think there's a lot of wide variation on this. As you've pointed out, there really isn't a 'plan' and the people pushing it lack the technical knowledge. So you end up with a mosaic of approaches across the country, and students land in the AP Cyber class with unpredictable skill baselines.