Teachers are becoming less like educators and more like surrogate moms and dads. Even the best teachers are forced to spend more and more time dealing with unruly, disrespectful kids. Teaching becomes, by necessity, a luxury which happens between crises, especially as class sizes grow. And so on. But that is very difficult to do.
School takes up a big chunk of a kid's time, and homework takes hours more.
I'm sure many parents have felt the same frustration we felt. And frankly, a lot of the homework seemed like busy-work to us. It was incredibly frustrating to feel that our opportunities to interact with our son were losing out to dumb, make-work assignments. Ultimately, it seemed to us that the school system was taking something valuable away from us. I suspect that children need to be more closely involved with their parents than usually happens in our culture.