Schools get greater funding for "special needs" students...
therefore, administration is always eager to label as many kids as possible...
which means that they pressure the teachers to support potential diagnoses.
Not much room in that system to allow for "what's best for the child."
If your kid really is special ed, then the schools don't get enough to educate that kid.
I have a daughter with brain damage (documented with an MRI). Schools don't want her because they don't want to spend the money on her therapies. It sucks!
I didn't really notice a willingness to diagnose my son as special needs - until he got to 7th grade. THEN they wanted to put him in all-day self-contained special education classes, even though he had an IQ of 140. We said "no, thanks," especially after we learned they got like 50% more funding for the all-day kids.
We pulled him out and home-schooled for a while, then sent him to a computer-based high school for ADD kids where he graduated at age 16.