I am a writing teacher.
This is a huge issue, and it is not a gifted issue. The time spent critiquing essays isn't properly compensated. As a result, teachers aren't doing it anymore. Your child's freshman comp teacher is most likely a grad student with other demands on his time. Right now I'm teaching one class as an adjunct. The pay is completely meaningless. That's why I only teach one class. (I'm keeping my foot in the door, so I can work again when my child is older.) But the issue is the same for part time and full time teachers of writing on all levels: critiquing papers takes time.
I actually do comment meaningfully on papers, but that's why I only teach one class. I spend around three hours of grading for every one hour of class time (and that's with peer reviews and ungraded journal entries). It's just a HUGELY time consuming activity.
Fight all you want, I don't think you're going to get satisfying resolution on this issue. We're moving towards standardized testing, so what a paper "looks" like becomes vastly more important than the content. That affects feedback. Lack of time affects feedback. Low teacher (adjunct or other) pay, high student/teacher ratios, lower levels of literacy... all of these issues affect the ability to spend quality time with a student's paper. Those issues aren't going away.
For those of you with children who aren't in college, perhaps talk to the school about offering grading software. I have software on my ipad that allows me to link to websites and leave verbal notes. It saves time and can encourage teachers to grade papers more completely. If your children are in college, encourage your school to use fewer adjuncts and hire more full-time employees.
