Students who enjoy the involvement of their parents in their educational journey are far more likely to excel. I know for a fact that the academic success of our two children is directly and proportionally tied to the amount of time we give to their learning experience. Granted, parents are overloaded. Usually both parents work. There are many more single-parent families today.
Some parents fail to understand the importance of their involvement or are simply negligent.
The fact is that until more parents embrace certain key values, things are not likely to improve very much for our schools. Until reading is more important than television and video games, and discipline, values, character and respect are more important than popular expressions of culture, and school smarts are more important than street smarts, and spending more time with our children is more important than personal freedom and money - many of the serious problems of our schools will remain with us. Parents, it is up to us. More money will not buy us a solution and cannot take the place of our responsibility. Perhaps more public school dollars need to be spent on educating and helping parents to understand and fulfill their enormous responsibility.