Parents are involved in some way when it's possible for them to do it, but with working parents, who live many miles from their child's school, there is often not time for them to get home, have dinner and attend a Parent-Teacher meeting at 7:00.

Furthermore, there are so many restrictions imposed on both teachers and parents by the rules, regulations, and guidelines of the Dept. of Education, that objections to what's happening in the classroom cannot be controlled by them.

My home is in a neightborhood with school children of all ages and I hear these complaints constantly.

The solution is to defund the Dept. of Education on the federal level and let the schools return to local control. This would mean that even the textbooks could be selected by the local citizens with no higher authority than the State being involved. As it is now, only the Feds have the ability to present a list of "acceptable" textbooks from which choices in textbooks may be made. This is just one reason that our children have been "dumbed down" to such an extent.