The first paragraphs and the latter are about quite different topics. I'm addressing the first only: let's face it, the United States does not - in general - care about kids or families. There is no national consensus regarding paid sick leave, child care availability, universal health care, family-friendly work hours, etc. etc. Even for those parents who would like to be there for their kids, it's not always possible because their workplaces do not acknowledge, let alone permit, mothers and fathers to adjust work hours for family activities.

On the education front, NCLB and Race-to-the-Top are not good-for-the-child-focused pieces of legislation. Much as I hate to say it, the Bush-era NCLB was better because it tried (did not succeed, granted, but at least tried) to address the needs of ALL children. RttT openly admits that it's a winners-take-all process; forget the losers in this race, they never get a second chance. And RttT is a process that does not work well for rural states like Maine. It's darned hard to have charter schools in areas where there is only one school to begin with.

There is no question that many parents do not care much about their kids. And it's those parents who teachers would like to see more involved in their students' school experiences. And it's very easy for the rest of us to blame those parents for not reading to their children, or not coming to parent-teacher conferences, or not providing a decent breakfast in the morning. However, let's face a strong underlying current to all this: the U.S. doesn't care much about those kids either.

Multiple-grade classes or looping works well in some instances, there may be a question from someone asking about "highly effective" teachers. Since there is now a definition of that term - whether it's a good one or not - under Race to the Top, having a teacher who is not termed HE may become problematic for a school and that person if s/he were to shepherd a class through several years of school.