Your blueprint for success, if I recall correctly, depends upon the voucher system. Vouchers, at least in their current implementation, require significant efforts from the parents of these voucher students.

Parents often will need to provide transportation to the new school (which may be much, much farther away than a public school). Vouchers do not typically cover the entire cost of a private education. Parents will need to make up this difference, as well. It seems to me that parental involvement, or at a minimum support, is a necessary requirement of the voucher reform movement.

And then you write,

Let's turn "parent involvement" on its head by considering this: How many times do parents call the school to complain that Johnny hits his sister, won't clean his room and refuses to do his chores?

Well, if the school was teaching Johnny to hit his sister and not do his chores that'd be one thing. But schools don't do that. On the other hand, many parents do create environments where their children can't/won't do their homework. In this case, parents are hindering what goes on at school and it seems logical to call home and work with the parent(s) to create an environment where the student can do his/her homework.

Jeff, thank you for your comments.

My blueprint for education reform has 6 points, the first of which is to free up all avenues of parent choice, including vouchers, charter schools, and homeschooling. Even if vouchers were never enacted my blueprint could still be enacted in its entirety (because vouchers aren't the only way to enable parent choice).

All the rest of my points (except for freeing up principals to hire who they like--which requires changes in state law) can be accomplished in any school simply by applying resolve.

Regarding homework, while there may be distractions at home, it is rare for a child's parents to make it impossible for a child to do homework. That's another excuse / straw man, the exact reason why Casey Carter wrote the book No Excuses.

While I agree that schools use parental involvement as another excuse for their poor performance, I cannot agree that "a parent should just be able to do nothing other than send Johnny to school each morning, and the school should still be able to complete its mission".

In fact, it has been my experience as a parent that schools, both public and private, agressively work to minimize parental involvement beyond mundane clerical and chauffering tasks and the paramount parental task of fund raising. Educationists fear the threat of parents who know more than they and who represent a threat to their job security.

Regardless, parents bear primary responsibility for their child's upbringing. They may choose institutions and organizations such as churches, schools, scouting, athletic teams, etc, ad infinitum, to assist them, but they in no way can escape the burden of primary responsibility. (Note also that in any list of the organizations that parents use to help in rearing their children, schools will probably be the only one that actively excludes parental participation and involvement).

I would be willing to bet that most children attend school without a proper breakfast or a full night's sleep. This is reflected in behavior and performance throughout the day. This is the parent's responsibility. I am tired of other parents dumping kids they fail to rear properly onto the schools my children attend to the detriment of my own children's education, and this is a major problem with public schools.

To concede the point that parents do not bear responsiblity along with the teachers and administrators for their children's behavior and performance at school is to open the door to greater "involvement" of the schools in the upbringing of our children.

Let's not mix apples and oranges. Yes, parents are responsible for giving their children food, basic ethical and moral education, a safe environment and in general the best life they can. No, parents are NOT responsible for teaching their children how to add, divide and read. No, parents are not responsible for xeroxing, driving, mopping floors, providing extra tutoring or doing a million odd jobs for the school. THESE ARE ALL THE SCHOOL'S RESPONSIBILITIES.

US spending on education per capita is among the highest in the world. Schools have more than enough money to do their job without help. If they fail, it is their fault.

I am a parent with a demanding full-time job and two children for whom I must make the best life I can. I would never dream of asking my kids' teachers to xerox things for me! Why do they think they can ask this of me with impunity?

Let's turn "parent involvement" on its head by considering this: How many times do parents call the school to complain that Johnny hits his sister, won't clean his room and refuses to do his chores?

The bottom line is that it's simply another excuse to blame school failure on parents, just as parents can't blame schools for the child's actions at home.

I am a senior in high school at the moment. My sister is 6 years onld and in first grade. Countless times she has come home and hit me or called me a new insulting name. I asked her where she learned these things. The answer is the same all the time: at school. Granted, the teacher, I'm sure, doesn't teach these things,-except for one time when the substitute on April 1st told my sister to tell her parents that the teacher had broken her leg-but, nonetheless, my sister learns them at school.

This is just an example to show that a children's actions are affected by everything that they experience. I attribute the cause of my sister's actions in the above case to attending school. Should I hold school accountable for these actions? Well, that's a question I don't have a good answer to-except in the case of the substitute mentioned earlier. However, Parents can greatly affect students performance in school and should be encouraged to do so. In most cases, a parent taking time out of their "busy" schedule to read to their kids, instead of working those extra hours to buy them a game boy, will help greatly improve kids performace in school.

I was homeschooled from 2nd to 6th grades, and my mother would read to my brother and me often as kids. Consequently, I am graduating high school a year earlier than if I stayed in the public school system, attend a Calculus 3 class at the local community college, and take A.P. Chemistry and A.P. Physics (for those of you that don't know, A.P. means Advanced Placement, and, at the end the course, one can take the A.P. test, and many colleges will grant credit for good test scores). I don't think I would be as successful as I am if my parents hadn't been so involved in my education early on.

Donovan, your argument is right on the money. The point of my post was not that parents don't have an effect on kids' learning, or that students don't learn bad behaviors at school, but rather that if a school is failing, the parents should not be held to blame for that failure.

If a school system has its act together, it can teach any group of kids, with or without parental involvement.

Parents working on their own can be tremendous sources of good influence for their kids. They just shouldn't be blamed if the school's not doing its job.