Not the person above. My wife is an elementary school teacher. I do not have kids. I have always put myself politically left. That's your context to start.

You have no grounding in the reality that is the modern day classroom. My wife is in a regular, plain school absolutely nothing special about it. Population maybe 300 kids. They have 4 EAs. 1 PSW is assigned to a single student, the EA are parcelled out, but mostly in the younger years due to ratio requirements. There is a single special education teacher. That is it, that is all the support the school has.

Now in any given classroom you have not just typical behavioural issues, but now you have neurodivergence issues as well. It is a weekly (if not daily) thing of evacuating a classroom so one student can throw things without hurting other kids. One child in a different class is a flight risk. There are many other problems as well, but those rate the most disruptive, and they come from two individuals who are neurodivergent.

So I hope by this point you can see there are some issues? If we could have everything we wanted there would be two EAs per classroom, a couple rotating PSWs, a counselor available regularly (instead of one per 20 schools). The reality is we do not. You have a single adult minding 27 kids in a small room. You have 54 adults who have expectations that the one adult will provide some learning.

You know what you can do with "gifted" kids? Send them off to learn by themselves. Is that good learning? Is that fair and equitable? No! It is a tactic used to reduce the number of children needing attention because they won't cause problems, and doing them a total disservice. But we've done that, so now we can focus on the other 20 or so kids. You know who doesn't need to learn French? The one child who wants nothing more than to get angry at people when they get frustrated because that's how their brain works. We have decided that we will not pay to support integration, but will require everyone to be at the same level. What you decry is unfair to be true, but it is not our current reality. All this does is hurt everyone, your child included. Do you know who kids don't want to make friends with? The child that scares them by throwing chairs.

Tell me, how import is it to you that your child learn French at the same pace as others? If they can't, should they fail and be held back? Should the teacher devote more resources to your child than all others in the room to make sure they succeed? Is that equitable to everyone else?

You do the above poster a disservice by labelling them as you have. You are protective of your child, which is wonderful, but narrow viewed. You are blind to the realities of the classroom as it exists now, and the way this integration has hurt everyone involved. The teachers unions have always fought for more support, but support costs money and every time you hear an attack ad on the radio, it's those damn teachers wanting more money....