I know it's the end of the school year, (or the start of summer school for some of us), but here's a quiz for education leaders and policymakers. (Warning: Clicking, reading, and light thinking are required).

A. Responding to survey results on why students dropout, posted by Barbara Pytel on Suite101.com, McRel suggests that the key to the problem is what teachers are and are not doing to engage students in their classrooms (e.g., relying too heavily on lecture format and seat work).

B. Responding to a question on how to improve professional development for teachers during an interview with the Des Moines Register, Linda Darling-Hammond observed:

"In most high-achieving countries, teachers have 15 to 25 hours a week [that's paid time--my emphasis] where they are planning collaboratively with their colleagues, so they are not just making up lessons at the kitchen table on a Sunday night by themselves."

True or False: Making more of B the rule and not the exception for U.S. teachers would go a long way towards resolving A and lead to better quality teaching for all students.

{Answer key: True}

If you failed the quiz, remediation is available by reading (carefully) Barnett Berry's recent editorial in EdWeek on "Ending the Battles over Teaching" [pay special attention to his list of how the not-so-distant future of teaching in public schools could look].

(Hat tip to Larry Ferlazzo for pointing me to the McRel piece).

ASCD Inservice recently quoted a legislative aide bemoaning how little emphasis NCLB has placed on secondary schools, specifically on increasing the communication between high schools and colleges on performance expectations for students.

Well, some might argue that the testing frenzy engendered by NCLB has not only affected secondary schools, but it has done so in a very disturbing way.

As part of a faculty-led research project at our community college, we looked very closely at the performance of students from the seven-county area we serve (The Delta region of Mississippi) over a five year period (2001-2006). We discovered that as the state high school exit exam in English was settling firmly into place, more students were arriving at our college (and others) in need of remediation. The consensus among English faculty at the college (and our analysis of work samples confirmed it) was that the quality of students writing was measurably worse than it had been before the mandatory testing program was put into place.

As the legislative aide suggests, we thought it would be a good idea to get together with our secondary peers to discuss expectations, curriculum, learning strategies and the like, but they were too busy with test preparation and administration.

Know that queasy feeling you get just before you throw up?

I'm almost there with all these politicians harping about the need for national standards.

Does anybody besides me remember when all the educators in the academic subject area organizations (National Council of Teachers of Math, National Council of Teachers of English, etc.) worked long and hard to develop---let's see, what were those called, oh yeah--national standards? NCTM launched the standards movement in 1980 by becoming the first of the subject area organizations to craft national standards (updated in 2000). The English/reading ones have been around since 1996 (adopted in 1998). Similar documents were produced by our colleagues in social studies, science, technology, music, and the other subjects.

Anybody really remember what happened to them?

There are variations on the story in different places (I'd love to hear some of yours), but generally when faced with truly rigorous, high-order academic standards, many Americans (including some educators, but most notably the USDOE) reacted with a knee-jerk "back to basics" defense of the status quo.

I would love to see us get back to the business of a serious attempt at academically rigorous standards in each subject, but I'm mighty suspicious that may not be what the politicians have in mind. Especially when those of us who have demonstrated that we know our subjects, know our students, and know how to teach those subjects to our particular students are not being included in all these noisy, high-profile discussions (yeah, that was a riff on National Board Core Propositions). 

What do you think? Do we really (finally) have the stomach for national standards?  

My ever-observant husband, who heads our community-based youth organization, has been complaining lately at how little benefit the students in our local schools get from the Internet.

Although schools in the Mississippi Delta region were among the first in the state to get wired for Internet access (long before many of the homes and businesses here--some of which are still dependent on dial-up), the use of web resources in many of our classrooms is pathetically limited.

He pointed to several elementary schools in which the only time students use the Internet is to logon to web-based remediation programs designed to help them prepare for the state tests. This is generally done during the students' once or twice weekly visit to the school's computer lab. Computers in the classrooms are used primarily by the teachers for various administrative tasks, or for individual remediation work with students on programs such as Accelerated Reader. I checked with some of the local teachers who confirmed that doing very much that's creative or innovative with students using Web-based tools is logistically difficult, if not plain impossible, due to restrictions on use and requirements to devote class time solely to prefabricated test preparation. The problem is also compounded by the lack of upgraded hardware since most of the computers in our schools were purchased years ago with one-time grant money.

My husband noted, "Our [Delta] kids need exposure; they need to see what the rest of the world is like outside these small towns. What about all the other wonderful stuff on the Internet like National Geographic and museums, and all that?"  Increasing student and teacher access to web resources and more efficient use of the web in classrooms has proven to be a successful strategy for enriching student learning in many settings. But the myth persists that students in high-need areas are best served by more mind-numbing remediation. As I wrote earlier, there are many who think all poor and minority children need are more drills and discipline.

Meanwhile, President Obama created a stir by giving Queen Elizabeth an iPod. During his international visit, it was apparent that people, especially youth around the world, are highly informed about what is happening in this country, as well as globally. How ironic it is that poor children here in the Delta are still being kept in a state of intellectual deprivation partly due to misguided efforts to raise their academic performance. The good news is this is a problem that can be corrected, if we encourage teachers and administrators to shift focus from knee-jerk test preparation to quality teaching and learning for the 21st century.

As much as I respect President Obama and his overall vision for our nation, I had to cringe as he, like so many politicians, used the children of Mississippi as an example of what's wrong with education in America.

The problems are real, but the comparison of the performance of fourth graders in Mississippi to those in Wyoming focuses attention on the symptoms, not the causes of educational inequity. The problem is NOT that the two states have differently written standards. For a wonderful analysis of the unmentioned and overlooked facts behind the President's comment, look at this in The Daily Howler (hat tip to my TLN colleague, Ken Bernstein for sharing).

Setting the bar high and limited testing at the end only helps us see where potential problems might be; it doesn't solve them.

The Howler piece points out several realities that separate education in the two states (per pupil spending, percentage of poor and Black students, which tests are administered, etc.) One it does not include is the difference in teacher pay: Average pay for teachers in Wyoming (5th in the nation) in 2006-07 was $50,771, while Mississippi teachers only averaged $40,182 (47th in nation). All of these disparities have their roots in Mississippi's sad history of racial discrimination and its sibling: opposition to progress, especially in the public sector where Black people might obtain some of the benefit. The price of having fought for generations to keep one group of citizens at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder is now having to be faced and paid.

Improving the quality of education for all our children is a national priority, but a localized task. It requires the knowledgable contributions of many parties, most notably the parents and teachers of a given state or community. Two groups historically left out in the planning stages of these major reform efforts.