Parents are the key to education, no matter what happens in the classroom.
Yet no one is talking about how to enable parents themselves to help their children improve their education. Of course, many other topics flood the debates. Options range from vouchers to charter schools to magnet schools. On one level, they are linked to educational choice, since testing could provide criteria for determining if children in under-performing schools should have the option of learning elsewhere. However, they also can provide the instruments for rewarding exceptional schools, flagging needs for improvement and isolating schools, departments and teachers that could benefit from specific help, such as training, mentoring or implementation of new programs.