[summer]

I wouldn't rule out grade inflation and teachers basically lying to the parents at conferences.

In addition to your valid points above, I also would not rule out that some teachers would like to give parents more accurate feedback on every student, but find it impossible to do so for a variety of reasons -- not enough time to accurately assess individual students, not enough time to analyze the weaknesses of students, more students than that individual teacher can handle, inexperience of the teacher, etc.

Unless a student's weaknesses are glaring, a new teacher of 35 students could easily miss or unintentionally overlook something, and some teachers would feel terrible about it. This does not mean a smaller class size is always the answer, but it does mean that parents need to keep a watchful eye over what is going on. Some teachers really do want to do more -- I know I alway felt that way. But there is literally only so much time in a day, and I am including time after school and evenings.

It is also overwhelming to teachers who have students on every grade level in their classrooms. In FL, with GOv. Bush's new law prohibiting social promotion (and financially punishing school districts that continue to socially promote students), I believe that one important result will be that over time, we'll see more accurate assessments of students by teachers -- because now, for the first time, a 3rd grade teacher may in fact have a class of students reading on a 3rd grade level.

And, consequently, that teacher will certainly be more likely to immediately notice the student who starts falling behind.