Teachers experience a growing number of angry, abusive parents

[Igel]

6. They push to keep kids with their age cohort.

There are all kinds of education studies that show that's best for the kid. (Whether education studies are worth the price of used toilet paper, there's another topic. Haven't seen the research, my life is irritating enough as it is.)

I think AYP is also based on not failing students. My school has a push to increase grades. Yeah--grades will increase. Then there'll be the recriminations--"How is it that grades increased but the test scores stayed the same?"

It's an issue with gifted/talented kids. And with SpEd/504s. They used to have pull-outs, but those are a no-no now.

The "best practice" is to leave the kid in level math (or whatever other subject) had have small-group instruction in class, possibly with a paraprofessional, pitched at the kids' level. This relies on funding and teacher brilliance. It's hard to juggle all the different groups in one class without assistance.

Funding is a SpEd issue. The federal government's never fully funded it; SCOTUS has repeatedly derived all kinds of restrictions and requirements that they place on schools that were never foreseen in the legislation or Constitution and has no funding mechanism. On a good day the SCOTUS-produced regulations are put into law and Congress funds them.

Otherwise funding, except in the most deprived schools, isn't a serious issue.