Deacongirl-
I do completely understand what you are saying and where you are coming from. I have seen too many friends' kids with disabilities, autism spectrum issues and other problems that the school did not handle appropriately and the kids did not receive appropriate education.
For me, though, the problem comes down to legal standing. In CA, I have absolutely NO legal standing on appropriate education for my child. I throw around FAPE, sure, and administrators that aren't so knowledgeable rack their brains and give in to what my son needs because they don't know any better. The ones that do know better just laugh us off.
Or worse, these admins play what I call "the meeting dance." "We'll meet with you after the teacher gets to know him. Oh, after the first quarter. Did we say 1st quarter? We meant Thanksgiving. Haha- we can't meet between Thanksgiving and Christmas! After the holidays things will settle down. Yes, we know it's February, but really- we start test prep next week so there won't be any differentiation anyway." And suddenly... it's April and there has been no actual education.
On top of no legal standing, we also have no funding for gifted education that is mandated to be spent on gifted ed. Which means that teachers that actually do care and are educated, have zero resources in most districts. It's very hard to convince a brand new teacher who has an interest but no money, to throw her own cash at a higher level curriculum. So we end up purchasing it for the school as a "gift."
For the most part, we are left to the whims and kindness of a school system that really doesn't care.
I take that back, they care three weeks out of the year when he is forced to produce test scores that get the school funding and cover their mistakes with the bottom 20%.
What you're sensing is not anger, it's complete frustration at a system that is broken for most of the kids! I say this as a classroom teacher and a school administrator myself. Even from within the system, you can barely make small changes, let alone sweeping changes. It took me two years and two school board votes to get a math placement test instituted in 6th grade. A placement test!!! That didn't even count the time to get the leveling of courses approved... that was just the test.
