TRENTON, N.J. – In case government officials haven’t become intrusive enough in recent years, one New Jersey lawmaker wants schools to track parents’ involvement in their child’s learning and incorporate those results in the state’s new teacher evaluation process.

In other words, he wants to give teachers a very convenient excuse if their students are not learning.

Democratic Assemblyman John Burzichelli, author of the proposed law, believes measuring parental input is only fair now that New Jersey teachers are being held accountable for how much students learn in their classroom.

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We’re willing to bet that Mr. Burzichelli was elected with the endorsement, and perhaps financial support, of teachers unions in his area.

“Parents certainly play an important role in raising student performance and closing educational achievement gaps, but currently the degree of parental support is not a factor in measuring student achievement for the purposes of a teacher’s evaluation,” Burzichelli said, according to MyCentralJersey.com.

Burzichelli said his bill would incorporate “a fairer and more balanced approach to teacher evaluations by recognizing that a student’s success does not rest solely on the shoulders of a teacher and that parental involvement has long been a key factor in a child’s outcome.”

Under the terms of the proposed legislation, the state Commissioner of Education would be directed to assess the degree of a parent’s involvement in his or her child’s education –through things such as homework completion rates, participation in parent-teacher conferences, and responsiveness to teacher-initiated communications, MyCentralJersey.com reports.

Quantifying those parental behaviors would be very difficult, if not impossible, which is why Burzichelli’s bill leaves it up to the education commissioner to hash out the details. The education commissioner would also have the unenviable task of incorporating the parental behavior metrics in the evaluation rubric used to assess a teacher’s classroom performance.

The Garden State’s new teacher evaluation system – which was part of the state’s 2012 tenure reform law – is taking full effect this school year. The new system links half of an educator’s annual job review to student learning, and the other half to teacher practices, which are primarily determined through classroom observations.

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Officials from the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, naturally approve of Burzichelli’s bill.

“There are a number of factors known to go into student achievement and if we are going to evaluate teachers you have to take these factors into account,” NJEA spokesman Steven Baker told NJ.com.

In plain terms, the NJEA likes Burzichelli’s proposal because it would shift the blame for poor student performance from the classroom to the home. Union leaders have long tried to pin America’s K-12 failures on two things: a lack of money and an excess of inattentive and disinterested parents.

This legislation only feeds into the unions’ attempts to turn parents into scapegoats. Union leaders and their pet lawmakers want us to believe that all teachers are highly effective, and if a kid doesn’t learn, it couldn’t possibly be the fault of the teacher.

Nobody with a grain of common sense disputes that parents play a huge role in whether or not their children are successful. But the fact is that controlling students’ home lives falls outside the purview of the government (for now).

Modern teachers have no choice but to accept students as they are – and help them learn – regardless of the details of their home lives. It’s a tough job, and some teachers may lack the skills to pull it off.

If so, they need to be directed to another occupation.

Burzichelli’s attempt to track a parent’s involvement is not only creepy – it’s an obvious attempt to let the NJEA off the hook for the stunning ineffectiveness of too many public schools.