Interesting, yeah. I know some of these parents don't want their kids to even be in the "needs extra help" category, let alone special ed, but certainly not all.

My mom was the same way (with my elementary school in Jakarta) - she hated that parents were expected to make costumes for the kids' school plays, contribute food to the school bazaar, etc., because she and my dad both worked but all my friends had stay-at-home moms who had seamstresses on retainer, etc. (crazy situation, really). There's a constant struggle going on with regard to who's "responsible" for kids, it seems to me.

I totally agree on that - and you can stretch the metaphor of not being able to admit problems/failings and dealing with them pretty far, I might venture. The other issue is that everyone is also liable to get frustrated very fast with everyone else - teachers with kids/parents/administration, administration with teachers/school boards/state government, parents with teachers/administration, etc. So at the same time that all of these people are afraid of repercussions (my mother has said if she was interviewed she'd be afraid that I would be punished for any criticism she gave, but again, that actually happened when we were in Indonesia), they're also very quick to get fed up with the people they need to cooperate with. Not to mention how fed up students get, of course.