Schools Need to Upgrade, Summit Told

By ANDREA EGER World Staff Writer

America’s high schools need to be revamped because they leave too many graduates unprepared for higher education and the work force, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Ray Simon said Wednesday in Tulsa.

Simon delivered the keynote address at the Oklahoma High School Summit sponsored by the state Education Department at Booker T. Washington High School, 1514 E. Zion St.

He compared the skills students need when they graduate from high school to electronic calculators — but said too many are leaving with skills that compare to now-obsolete slide rules.

Holding up a slide rule that he said he used as a young teacher, he declared, “Just as this instrument that took us from the Renaissance to the moon was rendered obsolete overnight, we don’t want slide rule skills in a world that demands them to be calculators.”

The Arkansas native touted the federal No Child Left Behind Act for helping to increase student achievement in elementary schools, but he said the law needs to be extended into secondary schools.

“The diversity of quality of our institutions is not what it should be or could be,” Simon said. “There is contentment with the status quo in too many cases.”

The federal government has a responsibility to see that the achievement gap among all students is closed, he said.

“No Child Left Behind is just a law. It’s just words on a page unless we adopt the real spirit of what that law was intended to do,” he said. “Our job is not to interfere in what you’re doing, it’s to ensure the spirit of No Child Left Behind lives on.”

Teams of educators and students from almost 85 high schools across Oklahoma attended the summit.

State Superintendent Sandy Garrett said the teams were supposed to share examples of outstanding practices that work in their schools and to leave with new ideas and plans for redesigning their schools.

The summit’s theme — “Rigor, Relevance, Relationships” — was inspired by remarks made early this year at the National Education Summit on High Schools by Microsoft Corp.’s chief executive, Bill Gates, she said.

Gates calls them “the new Three R’s,” Garrett explained. “His thought is America’s high schools are obsolete.

“By obsolete, he did not mean that high schools are broken, flawed and underfunded — though a case could be made for all of those points. American high schools, though, are working precisely as they were designed to work — 50 years ago.”

Too few students are challenged with rigorous coursework; high school coursework and projects need to relate to students’ lives; and students need more meaningful relationships with adults at school who will encourage and push them to achieve, she said.

Gov. Brad Henry said the state must confront the issue of coursework rigor in high schools.

“My goal is not to tear down our educational system and then rebuild it,” he said. “My goal is not to bad-mouth our educational system. My goal is to sing its praises and build on the great successes in our educational system.”

Henry said professional educators must be involved in efforts to establish accountability measures for teacher preparation and student achievement.

Setting and using consequences for high school students’ scores on standardized tests in English and algebra would cost the state more money to fund remedial courses for students who fail the tests, he said.

“If we’re going to have tests that are going to have consequences, we’re going to have to provide the necessary resources to remediate students,” he said.

Andrea Eger 581-8470

andrea.eger@tulsaworld.com