I always bristle when people talk about doing a better job in the elementary years. What would that look like?

We've been doing 20 - 1 in CA for 12 years or so now for grade K - 3. In all honesty, it hasn't made much of a difference by the time they get to me. I still have at least a third of my class who can't read at grade level and who don't know their basic facts. I have 33 fifth graders crammed into my classroom. Would smaller class sizes for longer make a difference? Fourth grade is when they are expected to start learning from their reading and that's when class size jumps up by ten - fourteen kids. But it all costs money and there's no money to be had now.

What do we teachers do with those kids who impinge on the learning of others with their emotional baggage that they are bringing from home? What do we do with those kids who don't eat breakfast? Who arrive late every day? Who have no place to do their homework? Who are expected to babysit younger siblings after school so they can't do their homework? What about the kids with ADD who are a constant distraction to their peers? Or the ones with Oppositional Defiant Disorder who will scream at you if you look at them funny? Or the first grader who tells his teacher to F--- off? All that and more happens at my school and I'm at one of the better schools in my town.

So, come on, tell me what I should be doing differently so that we would have a better elementary education system. How would you fix it?

Veronica