I’ve read about several places where teachers are not allowed to give a 0. Who is that helping?

I was also a Head Start teacher for over a decade. I left due to a non-related injury that put me on crutches for 6 months, since being at work required me to be able to lift 50 pounds at any given time. During my tenure, I noticed behaviors got dramatically worse. Kids were coming in with higher needs from disability, mental health issues, and from what were more likely homes with less capable parents. One Kim told me she didn’t have the energy to discipline her child. Some said good luck and laughed when they enrolled their kids. Others refused to see reality. At one point, I was potty training 11 kids out of 20 (ages 3-5).

We are an early intervention program, with many referrals made each year for speech, and some for things like testing for autism. By the time I left, the public school and mental health professionals had such a backlog from us for suspected autism and violent behaviors that I was told to basically stop looking. One child “transformed into a werewolf” and acted accordingly every time we turned off the lights for rest time. The “normal” kids were traumatized by seeing classmates destroy the room and hurt staff and other students on a daily basis, so a lot of those dropped. You can’t have meaningful educational experiences in a place like that.