I just came back from a meeting with Jonah's school principal. We had a chat about the curriculum for the 6th grade, and then the conversation turned to the current climate around education.

She was furious about the growing attacks on teachers. She said that her teachers were working very hard. Yes, the test scores went down again in our school, but they've gone down across the entire state. She said that educators didn't know why that was happening. She said that there's a limit to what teachers can do if the kids have low IQs and if the parents aren't involved.

She complained that she spent the summer dealing with girls bullying each other using e-mails and text messages. At the same time, she offers a parenting class on Internet security and nobody attends the meeting. She said that parents are so busy that they aren't involved in the kids' school work. In fact, some parents pull their kids out of school, because they say that their kids are too stressed out. Some parents want their kids to do less work in school.

While I think that schools could be doing a lot better, I do agree with much of what Principal H said. Schools aren't going to change until parents change.