You shoulder your way through the school hallway, squeeze into a desk three sizes too small for you and await the teacher's verdict on your kid.

The parent-teacher conference is a ritual of American education. It can be as tense as a traffic stop. Or a moment of joy.

That's if you show up for it.

Many parents don't bother. That's not a crime. Yet.

In Detroit, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy thinks that authorities should be allowed to jail parents for up to three days for repeatedly missing a parent-teacher conference. She's serious. Parents with high-achieving kids would get a pass.

Worthy thinks such a law would make parents more accountable and cut down on truancy and violent crimes committed by teens.

"I have seen that younger and younger children are committing more violent acts and we need to look at different approaches. I know we need to try something different. We should not have to legislate this, but what we have been doing is not working."

At a gut level, this sounds appealing. We're sympathetic to teachers who say there's only so much they can do to educate children who get no help or direction at home. The threat of a few nights in the slammer would boost parents' attendance at those meetings.

No, we're not going to endorse locking up parents for skipping a meeting at school. The threat would probably get more parents into the school, but it wouldn't make them listen to the teacher. The parent-teacher conference isn't the litmus test for effective parenting. Skipping a meeting shouldn't be a crime.

Not caring about whether your kid gets a decent education should be.

If you were lucky, you grew up with parents who cared about your education. They read books to you. They helped you grasp basic math concepts. They turned off the TV. They checked that your homework was finished. They set expectations for you.

The evidence is clear that those basic steps can yield huge benefits: better school attendance, higher grades and a greater likelihood that a student will graduate high school and attend college.

School districts around the country — including some in the Chicago area — ask parents to sign a "contract" establishing how they will participate in their kids' education.

"We know parental involvement works," says Kevin Walker, president of Project Appleseed, a national nonprofit group that helps schools reach parents. "We know it is more important input than anything else in education."

We're probably preaching to the choir here. If you read these pages, you're more likely than most people to be involved in your community, your school, your children's education.

We just think it's important to keep this in the equation as we talk about improving schools. It does start with the parents, and it starts at birth, not the day a child enters kindergarten. So give Worthy credit for making this point.

We may not lock parents up for it, but ignoring their kids' education is child neglect.