Who do you mean by "the schools?" You think the teachers really want to be the parents? Ever talked to any at the end of a long day in May? You think teachers and principals have much control? You think they thought up the Common Core Standards and Smarter Balanced? Pressure on the schools comes from everywhere--from the US Education Department and Justice Department down through judges and courts and corporations and through state legislatures and state educational bureaucracies--even the corporate publishers swing their weight. And of course activists of all stripes try to gain influence through the schools. 

We need families and households and teachers and principals and community organizations and businesses all to get involved in the schools. We need a better balance between local involvement where individual children really are valued and the involvement of all those other social powers that want to use schools and children for their own purposes.

And we need M97.