At the beginning of the year, teachers are handed a district "pacing guide" (aka racing guide) that tells then what page they will be on on every day. There is no time for remedial work, no time for extra explanation or examples, no time for anything. This is not teaching.
As an aside: In order for Special Ed to have obtained mastery, they must have 85%. What kind of system requires special ed to have higher standards than gifted students do?
Capistrano Valley was one of the worst school districts that I have ever seen.
When my daughter was in 7th grade, I asked for a conference with the English teacher to tell him that I was concerned that my daughter had never been assigned a written book report. His answer was, well don’t expect it from me, either. I don’t assign anything longer than a paragraph and then we exchange papers and the kids vote on the grade. He said that the parents in the district weren’t willing to put our money where our mouth is and hire lay readers to mark the papers and marking papers interfered with his surf time.
I could go on and on about problems in that district, like locking kids in the library during testing and marking them absent if they thought that the kids would not take the testing seriously or were just poor students. They were allowed a 20% absentee rate, so they pushed hard for 100% attendance and then sent the lowest 20% to the library.