Our school does them, it's a TAG school. It's actually adorable. DD will sit in the teacher's seat and go through papers that she personally selected for each subject and tells us what she was learning and why she was proud of the work she had done. Once she had said her piece, she went into the hallway and we had a chance to speak to the teacher alone.
We've had a couple of issues at the school. In third grade, dd was failing math and the school wanted her to move back a year in math to be on grade level. We did not find this to be acceptable after talking with dd and how she felt about the work. We hired a tutor and got her up to par pretty quickly. The school admitted they were wrong and apologized.
We also had trouble with one of the specials teachers, half dd being stubborn and half the teacher being stubborn. This was never resolved.
I find that conferences are a better place to sit and listen and that making appointments when we have longer than 15 minutes is best for real issues.
