What you were missing were good teachers. Why do you think a 'label' would get you that? Seriously, rather than trying to ID all the behavior issues, wouldn't it be better to have teachers take the child from where they 'are' to a higher place? Isn't that the whole idea behind inclusion? If you were bored, what the heck was the teacher doing?
I teach in a parochial school, we supposedly have 'regular' kids. It's not so, my guess it never was. In a given class of say 20, I usually will have 1 gifted kid, 3 bd kids, 1 or 2 seriously deficient IQ kids. The rest fall somewhere in between.
So should I teach to the 'gifted'? Should I stop teaching to deal with the BD kids? Should I try to make the lessons on the level the lowest can 'get it?' What if your child was in my class? What if they were 'gifted'? BD? LD? IQ deficient?
What I try to do is direct instruction the the middle. At the same time I prepare separate lesson(s) for the advanced, low. I also separate the BD kids from one another and put them in with students that may have more patience. I also use them as my 'go to' students. "Please go to the office and get copies made. Please get these materials from the cupboards, I can't reach."
Related to all of the above, standardized tests. I'm thrilled to say that each of my students have nearly always performed ahead of the projections based on their previous scores and classroom performance. Now if I was in public school, would that mean we 'hit' NCLB goals, no. The low IQ kids are not going to be able to appear normal on standardized tests, they will NOT hit the grade level, they CAN'T. To make this a mandate shows a real lack of understanding on the part of the government.
