What can we do better?

I am not sure what hit me today, but today wasn't the day to be disrespectful, disobedient, or obstinate. Today was a day for accomplishing tasks, finishing up testing, and gauging the levels of the students from where we left off, way back before snow days and "forever" testing. I have to know where my students stand and what I need to emphasize when I teach. I can feel the days getting shorter, and there is so much left to impart. My sixth graders had finished their testing, so today we began working again with the language arts program. The students had stories from their regular classroom teachers, dealing with inference, and answering questions related to the text. I decided that in the last 15 minutes to explore the three basic concepts of grammar, based upon the text. Could the students pick out the nouns, verbs and adjectives in a four line paragraph? By sixth grade, this should have been pretty easy, but the students were still stymied by their choices. "Does an adjective describe action?", one student asked. So we spent about ten minutes reviewing and working together to help to cement these basics. I am concerned that I see so much of this, not just with my students, but among the English speakers as well. In addition, why are these students handed calculators when they haven't mastered the four basic computations in math? Why are students still counting on fingers to add 7 + 5? What are we doing differently as teachers? What can we do better?