> the iPad requirement is my but beef.

I feel your pain. At an obligatory 500 bucks a pop I would have been much happier to buy them laptops.

I rent them, but unless you have other Apple products you can only setup adult accounts, so my kindergartner has to be "13".

We somehow dodged the iPads for kindergarteners bullet but that would have made my blood boil. I guess the FingerPaint app is less messy than actual fingers and actual paint.

In my less charitable moments I think teachers are getting lazier, but when I go to those parent conferences and see the teaching staff looking like rabbits in the spotlight as parents of 3rd graders grill them on the latest academic theories I realise that really they're caught in the middle of a whole set of weird expectations.