Stopping the Blame Game: It was nice to see a post titled "The Best Reasons Why Parents Should Be Looked At As Allies & Not Targets Of Blame" on the blog Engaging Parents in School this morning. I get why teachers want to blame parents, and why parents want to blame teachers, and sometimes the blame is deserved. It's never particularly useful, though, and tends to distract from more important things. I've enjoyed being allies with most of my kids' teachers. And I've hated the way parent-bashing has become a regular campaign activity at school-board elections in my town. It's time for some serious re-thinking about how schools and teachers interact with parents, moving from a school-based PTA meeting and teacher conference model to freer interaction on the Web and via e-mail. It could happen.