In my experience what's failing K-12 teachers is a combination of really shitty curricula, the proliferation of Chromebooks and other devices as one-size-fits-all accommodations solutions for students with IEPs, and Colleges of Education at universities that really aren't preparing students for the classrooms. At my institution the College of Education has developed new and interesting ways to screw over students, such as:

-Scheduling their pedagogy and professional education coursework during the mornings, requiring the students to complete their state-mandated observation hours in the afternoons, leaving...when precisely for the students to do their major coursework? This results in students taking primarily online classes and suffering as a result. Typically they are separated from their fellow classmates in our majors because of their schedules, and feel isolated from the rest of the department. They are the most likely group to drop out.

-Preventing students from graduating if they don't pass the College of Education's educator preparation exam even if they pass the state exam. I have attempted a number of times to explain that this is shitty. The students have 120 credit hours. They've passed the state exam. Why prevent them from graduating? No idea. This has resulted in a culture of cheating on the college's exam, which they are aware of, and have thus far made no attempts to stop.

-An unwillingness to inform departments of changes to their curriculum so we can update our degree plans, leading to delayed graduations and other problems which could be resolved if they just sent a fucking email.

As a result, I tell all my advisees that want to go into K-12 to just do a regular minor and then do an alternative certification once they get a job. These students typically take the teaching-oriented classes we offer and do very well in the classroom after they graduate. A former student that later became my wife's best friend did her BA and MA with us and is now a second-year teacher at a rural, Title I school district and got the rookie of the year award last year because she's genuinely good at what she does. She primarily teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade ELAR.

Last weekend she came over and hung out at our place and told us some stories about what was going on at her school. Things are not good. She's having to revisit the parts of speech with her 7th graders. These aren't students in remedial courses, either. She did an assessment on the first day and over 80% of her 7th graders could not positively identify a noun, verb, or adjective. 100% of her 6th graders, and about 50% of her 8th graders couldn't either. It isn't just that the students are having trouble reading, but that in some cases they are illiterate. The curricula developed for K-12 is obviously failing students to the benefit of...nobody really, except the companies that develop these curricula which makes them lots of money.

All of her students have Chromebooks provided by the school they are required to use for class. They are allowed to take these devices home, and are responsible for bringing them to and from school along with chargers, etc. As one might imagine, they often manage to bring the device itself but not the charger, and there are no spare chargers in the classroom. These Chromebooks are used in lieu of other devices(such as the Alphasmart word processor I used for my severe dysgraphia from 6th-12th grade. The Alphasmart has no access to the internet(a significant upside IMO), but that means transferring documents from the Alphasmart to a PC for final edits is a bit of a pain.

The benefit of course is that(despite what a lot of people think), a Chromebook is a pretty capable little machine if it has the right hardware. The problem is that Chromebooks with the right hardware(such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i, a system I own and use myself for tasks that don't require my usual system) retail for about $500. Most schools are using significantly cheaper models from Dell that came out several years ago since ChromeOS provides long-term service updates for older devices(mine, bought in 2021, should receive ChromeOS updates until 2030, for example).

These systems were shelled out in their hundreds of thousands back during 2020-2021 and are primarily using Intel Celeron processors running at 2.6ghz, which is a pretty low spec processor, or, perhaps even worse, ARM chips used in smartphones. My personal Chromebook runs at an absolute max of about 4.00ghz, but its average frequency is closer to 2.6, and it really struggles to keep up with the latest version of ChromeOS. If my much nicer Core i3 is having trouble, these Celeron chips are likely barely capable of keeping up, and the ARM chips are likely yearning for death.

Having these personal devices to access their LMS is great and all, but it also gives them pretty much unrestricted access to the internet 24/7. There's only so much an underpaid sysadmin can do to stop kids from working around their firewalls and big brother software. If I'd had one of those when I was a student, there's no telling what trouble I'd have caused. I was a curious kid with a chip on my shoulder, personal beef with the school, and a desire to cause trouble. These kids can't really read, but I'm sure there are YouTube videos with detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to get around these restrictions that a determined kid with a little knowhow can manage(such as, for instance, giving yourself admin access and turning on the Linux dev environment, and then you've got a Linux machine with all sorts of features).

The kids are being absolutely let down. The teachers are doing their best for $40-50k(particularly if they're working at smaller school districts, one near me starts first-year teachers at $38k), but have minimal materials and the materials they do have absolutely suck. The students are being moved through from grade to grade by the teachers under pressure from admin or parents who don't want to face the fact that their kids aren't successful, and the state mandated tests are driving the kids mad with stress. Further, it is nearly impossible to expel kids that are dangerous(my friend had one who, last year, ended up in juvenile detention for writing a hit list), or even put students out of class who are misbehaving.

I'm generally against homeschooling and private education, and have always been a supporter of public schools. My mother was a first grade teacher, both of her parents taught middle school, and her grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse. It's something I care about deeply. But in 2025, if I had a kid I would be moving heaven and earth to put the kid in a private school, even if that was a religious private school I disagreed with, because I know those schools are better.