Frustration!

What is it that we need to do to get 5th and 6th graders to understand and RETAIN information they have learned?! As a teacher, this is a daily battle, but magnified when this TAKS test (which is an entirely different soapbox!) is less than a week away. Not that I agree with the test AT ALL, but...nevertheless, we must give it and must "prepare" the students for it. But that is the problem. We work all year to teach the concepts that the state adopted curriculum gives us, the stuff they say will be on the standardized test at the end of the year, and then ask the kids to apply it in a word problem. They look at me like I have 3 heads! We have taught every method and strategy to convert a decimal to a fraction or convert metrics, and they look at us like we are speaking Greek when we ask them only 3 weeks later, let alone 3 months! Don't get me wrong, I love teaching with all my heart, and I really do like this age group. But most of them seem much more concerned with their "social lives" to care about learning anything at school. And that's just it, they don't WANT to learn! They are here because they are forced, and they don't care about learning a thing! I know that hands-on activities and spending more time on each concept would be immeasurably beneficial, but that is just not an option with the amount of material the state expects us to cover in one year. (Especially when a hurricane takes 17 instructional days from you.) I know I am ranting, probably rather incoherently, but I press on...
It might just help if we had just a handful of parents that cared. Parents that would actually sit down with their children and help them with homework. I mean, it's 5th grade stuff, do you think they can't at least TRY to figure it out?! Parents that at least cared if their child brings home a 50 on a report card!? I know that would not have been acceptable even once in my house growing up, why do so many parents not seem concerned. It just seems sad to me that most of these kids don't have someone whipping their butts when they bring home such awful grades.
OK...I could go on, but I will stop for now. But my frustration will continue tomorrow, and for the next 35 days of school that we have left in this school year.