Perhaps this is also true in education. At the October 28th School Board meeting a presentation of the "Achievement of the Students of Federal Way Students" was made. This 96-page report can be found at:

http://www.fwps.org/cur/assess/research/board_reports/Final%20Board%20Report%202008.pdf

Starting with page 51and going through page 56 of this report there is some excellent data on SAT scores and Advanced Placement results.

The SAT score trends are not very encouraging.

The decline in Math scores continues and the entire district is now below the average for the State. This is a number that college admissions officials can use to readily obtain knowledge about the quality of the high school diploma that applicants bring to the table. When we couple this with the number of National Merit Semi-finalists, College admissions officials have a pretty good idea of the level of rigor that a student has faced in the high school the student attended.

We have seen in past years some pretty qualified, according to their grades, students being rejected from admission at competitive colleges.

I would guess that this is a contributing factor. The reputation of a student's high school counts! We have at least one high school that hasn't had a Semi-finalist since it opened.

Several years ago in an attempt to "raise the bar" of kids in this district, we embarked upon a program to encourage more students to be successful in college by having them take college level (AP) courses.

More AP courses were offered and more kids did sign up; however, for several years many of these students did not take the final exams in these courses.

These exams are required to obtain college credit. The district claimed, rightly, that "enrollment in AP courses was up."

What was not understood was that there were few kids passing these courses, according to College Board, who gives the AP tests.

These kids may have been getting passing "grades" on their report cards, but they were not getting any credit for the courses!

If you take the time to look at the AP data, page 56, please remember that a "3" is required for college credit at all universities, and the more competitive colleges require a "4" or better.

Based upon the averages shown in this report "The assessment of their capabilities was over optimistic!"

What's the problem?

At the recent School Board work study the secondary principals, and their staffs, seemed "baffled" by the declines in achievement that are taking place in the secondary schools.

I might suggest that some of our readers take a stroll through some of these schools and talk to the kids.

See if you can find many kids that are taking "instruction" very seriously.

In seven years on the school board, I must confess that I found it hard to find many kids that didn't place social activities at a much higher level than any "boring" stuff that was on the front board.

One administrator, a few years ago, stated that most kids found classes a distraction and interruption of their daily schedule. Another administrator thought that schools were successful for about 20 percent of our students and admitted that these students would be successful even if there were no schools.

One student told me that one of his teachers was "annoying."

According to our "Education Reform" law Washington schools' first priority is to graduate students who are "internationally competitive."

If this is the case, we better take a look at the dimensions of the playing field that "internationally competitive" educational systems use. It looks quite different than the field that we play education on!

The internationally competitive education systems seem to have better qualified teachers, spend less on each pupil, and most importantly, place a great deal of the responsibility for obtaining an education upon the student and parents.

Consequences for the lack of effort by either students or parents are usually felt quite quickly. "My child doesn't test well," or some other excuse is probably given a very short shift in places such as Singapore or Israel.

In some cases failure of a test will require the student to stand in class for the next week as there is no chair for them.

My daughter participated in an exchange program with a German "Gymnasium" (High School) several years ago.

First off the school did not have a "gymnasium" and secondly the German students, visiting here, were incredulous when they were asked "What is your school's mascot?" Education there was "strictly business."

Several years later when we hosted a German exchange student we found that after finishing 9th grade she had completed 5 years of English and 4 years of French.

I cannot speak for her French but she was quite conversant in English when she hit American soil.

Her school didn't have a "mascot."