Well said, CCN! I agree about parental responsibility, etc.
The teachers, meanwhile, are hired by the district to teach one year's worth of curriculum. That's it.
While this may be what we've been used to, a change has begun and may gain momentum like an avalanche... teachers/schools may do more than teach curriculum. In striving to gain positive personal or institutional reviews and financial benefit, they may perform social engineering: following orders to ensure all students even out in 3rd grade, closing the achievement gap or excellence gap by capping growth of top performers, and entering data (which parents may not be privy to) into longitudinal data collection and student information systems. Teachers may conduct various student surveys and activities designed to coerce students to volunteer personal and familial information (including health, possessions, financial, psychological, social, behavioral).
Interested parents may wish to know who their state and federal legislators are, read the position statements on their websites, be familiar with their voting records, and be willing to contact them for clarification or to express their views on education issues of importance to them. Some examples may be: preserving homeschool rights, protecting student privacy, parental access to minors' records, and parental ability to correct records.
