After school reopens next fall, teachers all over California will be making house calls--not to tutor children but to encourage parents to get more involved in their kids' education. Jim Sweeney, superintendent of a Sacramento district where such home visits are already in place, says they have "changed the whole relationship" between teachers and parents. Test scores and attendance are up, and discipline problems are down.
The program's success is not surprising, especially considering the results of a new survey conducted for the Nickelodeon channel and TIME. What emerges from the poll of 991 kids, ages 9 to 14, plus 400...