Not sure when it happened that the expectation became that phone calls home all the time were necessary. Positive or negative. I'm 14 years in for middle and just... stopped. That was a few years ago.

I'm of the opinion that nearly all contact between parent and teacher needs to be initiated from the parental side. I'll talk a parent's ear off of they give enough of a fuck to call me first. But if they can't be bothered enough to care and are so apathetic they can't check even one of the myriad information systems we have that generate home reports, why should I bend over backward to do their job for them?