• Know Your Power: Check out the Center’s Parent Power Index, an interactive tool that parents can use to discover whether their community gives them the power to improve education—and if not, what to do to get it.

• Know your options. Understand what choices you have about where, what and how your kids learn.

• Get active to bring up any problems or questions at a home-school association or a parent- teacher organization meeting.

• Communicate clearly, calmly and forcefully about any issues, first to teachers, then to principals. Let them know you want to help them work out the right balance. Ask for whatever your concern is to be explored, at internal professional development and teacher training sessions. Educators should be encouraged to come up with ways to help students do better.

Learn More

For further facts and advice, go to www.edreform.com.

On the Net:North American Precis Syndicate, Inc.(NAPSI)