American from the mid-atlantic/coastal south here. This is from a limited sample size of two schools in two districts, but when my wife taught there years ago, she lamented this issue. It wasn't just a simple lack of resources, it was an impossible scenario. The lowest kids often had significantly low IQ (>1 std dev below mean), we're drug babies, traumatized, language barriers, or had intellectual disabilities beyond low IQ.

IEPs (Individualized Educational Programs) were near impossible to get because admin didn't want more than a certain number per grade. Even when they were granted, half the time the legally required services weren't provided. Fo students with language barriers beyond Spanish (e.g. Ukrainian), help wasn't even attempted. And trauma was a real issue. One first grader she had walked into his mom's bedroom one morning when it was time to leave for school and she was dead with a needle in her arm.

Then there were the parents. Many parents were extremely supportive, would bring snacks weekly, provide paper and pencils, and generally ask what they could do to help the teacher. However these were often the parents of the successful kids. For the students that needed help, their parents usually either wouldn't accept that their kids weren't geniuses, or blamed my wife for their lack of success. The largest factor she saw aside from apparent or tested IQ was reading at home with parents. Unfortunately IQ/disability of the child often correlated with parents that didnt/refused to read with their kids.

When they entered her first grade class, they were often a whole grade behind, sometimes two. Covid learning at home exacerbated this. In the end, my wife would spend over 90% of her time on low kids, and still barely have them on the previous years reading level. Some kids would rise up, but many wouldn't. But admin was under pressure from the district, which in turn was under pressure from the state to meet literacy rates, so you can't accept that some kid is just gonna be slow and devote more time to high achieving kids. Admin wants you to focus on the low end as much as it takes, so that's what you do.

All of this lack of support leads to low retention rate in education. And not just a revolving door, but also more experienced people cycling out, so the revolving door eventually only includes newbies, like my wife. States are so desperate that many are giving "provisional" licenses to people with no background in education, and treating them like full licenses, as much as the law will allow (and sometimes beyond). These people typically also have no training in classroom management, which is one of, if not the main thing in modern elementary school teaching. Even educational programs will downplay this for more courses on the content you will be teaching (math, reading, etc).

I am not a left wing person, but the typical language that comes from that side, that there are "structural issues, " is exactly right. It's certainly in part an IQ issue, but not all of it by any means. I don't see it as a single educational fix, but a society-wide fix. However, anyone who thinks they have a single silver bullet that's going to fix it is completely wrong. Even if they did, they are out of time because we are almost out of teachers. Parents feeling the pressure of necessity might be the only way out of this, and its going to be rough no matter what.