MS/HS math teacher here.

Biggest concern is that the students are coming in with a fundamental lack of understanding what it means to be human. Yes, COVID messed us up and set a good cohort of kids back some years. Yes, some of my students deal with generational poverty and societal issues that are often adjacent to that poverty. But hot damn...I see 7th graders who act as if they've never seen a parent actually parent before. There is a wholesale mentality that personal responsibility isn't a thing, and it ends up biting these students once they hit high school and end up having to retake classes they've failed. (Because, you know, that doesn't happen until high school level.). And even though a good percentage of the kids do have issues, giving them rewards simply for showing up to class (no joke--they even get "scribes" to write for them), is not setting the students up for anything other than a massive sense of entitlement.