What about the parents?

The entire staff at Central Falls Schools in Rhode Island has been fired for poor performance. Given the stats coming out of the place, I would venture that is an understatement. 7% of eleventh graders were proficient in math. That stinks!
Some one at another venue today asked what part the parents should play in this though, and they do have a point. We as parents should take a larger role in educating our kids. Facts is though that after we have spent eight hours at work, two hours comuting, an hour fixing meals, time spent with laundry house cleaning, running to activities shopping etc, the last hing we want to do at home is play instructor. We want to have a little time to socialize with our children, play games, and be a family. teaching them math, geography, spelling and the like is something we THOUGHT the teachers were doing.
Schools have drifted away from the basics. Maybe drifted isn't the right word, since it seems like intentional diversion, or maybe thats just me. Any way, where once was taught the basics, reading, writing, history math, and science, we now have keyboarding, sex education, and a host of other curicula that is feel good junk.
We as parents have a responsibility to our kids, and we attempt to meet that by sending them to a school where we hope the teachers will educate them to the best of their ability, which should be better then we as common folk can do. It isn't though. Home schooled kids out score their publicly educated peers by a wide margin. We as parents do better. The trick there is that we also need to feed cloth and house them. In addition, some parents are just too lazy to teach their kids. Those are the moms who have a welfare check every month, an uncle or three who visit and spend nights etc. Nuff said on that.
What can we as parents do to fix this mess?
If we give up our day jobs, it means less for our families. That may be ok, its a personal decision and I will not advocate for it.
We can cut out our social lives and those of our kids and teach them at night. But what about during the day when we ar at work? Allow them free reign on the streets? not a good plan.
What we really should do is demand control of our schools. run the unions out of town. If a teacher wants to be entrusted with our kids, they damn well better keep that trust or risk being canned. We do not need the feds or the state telling us what our kids should think. We want our kids to excel at math reading and such skills so they can be successful. The feel good stuff can go out the door.
No more tenure. No profession should have it, if you cannot make the grade, be prepared to get sacked. Well you should, especially when the lives and future of our nation are on the line.
Congress needs to disband the dept of education. they need to break up the NEA, and make teachers toe the line.
Schools should be performance based, not age based. If that were the case, I would have had a daughter graduate at thirteen (or younger).
Control should be local, parents only. funding should be local as well. If a couple decides to not have children, why should they pay for every one elses?