Aspiring teacher checking in. Seems the issues you point out are a byproduct of the growing infestation of retail manager mentality among admin and district/state education officials, which is one of the biggest things that I'm afraid of as I make my way into this career field. Somewhere along the way "the customer is always right" went from "the customer is always right about how they spend their money" to "the customer is always right even if they're abusive assholes and make asinine demands to which no sane person would ever acquiesce". Americans allowed this mentality to overrun the public school system with the students/parents (more so the parents) being the customers and teachers/admin being the retail workers.

A convenient (for some) side effect of this paradigm is that as the education system continues to fail our society because of this, it's all too easy to point to the teachers as the scapegoats for the failing system. Thus the public begins to favor initiatives that make the teacher's lives even harder while simultaneously degrading the education system and inhibiting it from meeting the public's needs (NCLB anyone?) so the teachers suffer, the kids get fucked out of a legitimate education, and those who are actually responsible for this get to laugh their way to the bank scott-free.

Sadly, as long as this trend continues, it's impossible that things will get any better and almost guarantees that things will continue to get worse.

This society is fucked.