Amen and Amen!

YES, YES, YES, YES. It is a team effort to educate students, Student, Teacher and Parents. Any one of the three not doing their part it will never happen.

Nothing more to be said.

Well-said!

I believe there is something more to be said, and it is that the legislature is not the only entity that micromanages education. The U.S. Department of Education, the state School Board, and every local School Board all love to micromanage teacher classrooms. They all do it under the guise of "accountability," but isn't there a better way to achieve accountability than allowing a bunch of legislators and bureaucrats to tell teachers what must go on in the classroom? Why not have the decision made between parents and teachers. If parents are willing to be parents again, as hoped for by the author, can't we turn accountability over to them?

I think local public schools should be able to control their own budgets, but to do this and have accountability, you'll also need to give parents the ability to switch from school to school easily. Once you have this in place, the micromanaging will no longer have an excuse for existing, since if a school isn't performing well, the parents will be able to leave and go elsewhere. Until you put market accountability into the system, you will always have micromanaging from every level of government above the school.

One last thing, notice how the teacher doesn't look in to see what could be improved, but out at everyone else. I think this is another problem with our system: no one has the courage to look at what might be wrong with themselves, it's always someone else's fault, whether it's the administration, the teachers, the parents, the kids, the legislature, or even our culture.

Problem is, we don't live in a perfect society and we won't any time soon. So while Mr. Barney waits for parents and kids and the entire state to change it's culture to line up with the current system, thousands upon thousands of kids fall through the cracks.

It's time to realize that we can change the system, and that changing the system can happen a lot quicker than changing an entire culture that doesn't respect education (an assertion I think is debatable).