I talked to a friend who teaches at a highly rated public middle school.
Her take is that they send stuff home to be signed like this to prevent a lot of issues with some parents saying they did not know about problems or grades. Most of the problem parents are the ones who never sign the paper in the first place, but if they did not send it home, they would then drop in screaming that the school never told them.
Yes, that's pretty much it.
Fairly recently, I got an e-mail from a parent who wanted to know how her child's report card grade of D happened. I wrote back, "Well, I wrote a D in her planner on this date, and sent home a D on her midquarter report on this date, and I see that you did sign her plan to bring up her grade from an F on this date, thank you for that. She did bring her grade up to a D at that point..."
