I was a teacher for many years and I also had a child who had an IEP. You don't know what you are talking about. The federal government passes laws, they have no constitutional right to control education but what they do is take tax payer money and give it to schools who follow their instructions, It is corrupt and it is unconstitutional.
These laws include imposing rules on schools without providing funding. For the suburbs that may have twice as much money as the inner city they can afford to subsidize these rules. But the inner city can't and they can't afford to not get the money from the Federal government. So there is a loophole, it is called "least restrictive environment". If you have a lot of money that can be a small classroom with ten students and two teachers. But for the inner city that is a classroom of 34 students and 1 teacher. They put all the kids together, this is not helpful to your best students, nor is it helpful to the students that need the most help. When kids are bored or frustrated because they don't understand they will act out and disrupt the class. So the classroom becomes chaos. Then you have other kids who think it is funny to push the buttons of either of these two groups. They don't do enough to get disciplined themselves but can be very instrumental in creating a circus like atmosphere.
Granted, if you are an experienced teacher with ten years, and you are very serious about being a professional you can overcome all this. But most of these teachers will move to the suburb to teach. The suburbs pay more and so they like to get teachers with four or five years experience before they even enter one of their classrooms. So the inner city becomes the minor leagues for teachers. In a well funded suburb a teacher can make twice what they get paid in the inner city between their salary and the pay for clubs and tutoring. Also you don't have to worry about the circus like atmosphere of the inner city, they can afford teachers to take on the IEP students separately.
If you understand this then you understand that "no child left behind" means "no child gets ahead". That is the plan for the inner city. Give the rich suburbs a big advantage in education so that their kids become the leaders and the inner city kids can be cashiers and other low wage jobs.
