Editor's Note.

• Position: Brief Article

As the father of a child who just completed the first grade, I can attest that few things are more stress-inducing than turning your child over to a school for long days of instruction. Part of this is unavoidable: One of the defining aspirations of American education, whether public or private, is to inculcate independent thought and critical analysis. If all goes according to plan, your child will develop his own mind, his own thoughts, his own talents and priorities, many of which will have little or nothing to do with parental wishes and desires. Indeed, what most parents want out of education is not a child who has been molded to fit their preconceived plans, but one who will return home from college with the skills to tell his parents exactly why there's no way in hell he's going to study to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant anymore. That's a successful conclusion to an American education, and it's easy to see why the process inevitably inspires a good dose of parental anxiety.

But a large measure of concern over schools comes from a very different source, one that both can and should be remedied: the inability of parents--especially low-income parents--to pull their kids out of mediocre and failing schools. In "Schoolhouse Schlock" (see page 28), education analyst Lisa Snell writes of her problems enrolling her son in her local public school. She also details exactly how the major federal program designed to help low-income children, Title I, has done precisely nothing to...