Do you get the sense that there is an 'Us vs. Them' dynamic when it comes to school administration and parents? Sometimes it seems as though both want dominance when it comes to the kids, and other times it seems as though both sides want to put off more responsibility on the other. Your thoughts?

Oh definitely...that's why my brother and I were homeschooled, because the teachers here decided the parents couldn't make any decisions about their kids. My sister's teacher actually had the balls to tell my mom that HE would decide when she needed to wear a bra, that my mom needed to stay out of it.

And at another time, the teachers assigned the students journals that they should NEVER show their parents, don't take them home, and one kid forgot, took it home and his mom read it and realized that the teacher had been telling the young students about her husband's impotency, and when the parents complained the teachers' response was the student was wrong for taking the journal home, they belonged at the school and the parents had no right to read them.

School administration wants parents to teach their bad ass kids some manners and appreciation for learning. Parents want the administration to do it. It's a no-win situation.

Parents: The parents (even the generally involved ones) don't like having their role as the #1 most important factor in the children's educational experience pointed out to them... they would prefer to be able to blame the schools and teachers and community at large when Johnny doesn't do well rather than cut back on their work (or play!) schedules to actually be the involved parents they like to portray themselves as.

Teachers: Beyond the salary issues that most are reconciled to anyway, being expected to absorb the classroom materials expenses that the system and/or parents should be providing is an every day in their face reminder that most consider them overpaid babysitters rather than qualified professionals... teachers don't like being forced into the role of social worker and substitute parent that too many systems put on them.

Community: The community at large doesn't want to take on the responsibility nor the expense of doing education right or face the truths about the poorly performing role of parents that the system insists the teachers make up for by the social work and pseudo parenting built into their schedule and mandates.

On top of that you get the Charter School advocates.
A relatively few motivated parents and abundance of frustrated teachers pushing for something that will remove the glue that holds what passes for a school system from falling apart altogether.

What an interesting topic.

I don't think the teachers necessarily seek dominance in the kids' lives. I think that too many teachers get caught up in generalizing parents to not give a damn because too many parents don't. So, for those of us who do, we are labeled by teachers first as uninvolved, then have to prove otherwise through the year.

It is an interesting dynamic that we parents have with the schools/teachers. These are important adults in our kids' lives and they are also adults that we don't know well. So, I think that make some of us feel vulnerable and so we are maybe too quick to judge when something happens and isn't handled as we would.

The hard thing for good, involved parents, is having to adjust to a new teacher each year. From kinder. to grade 5, not two of the teachers my son had were alike. Not alike in the amount of homework (first grade was actually his worst for that, with a lot each night), personality, or anything. So in order to help my son, I had to map out what the teacher put importance on.