So what is a "High Performing School"? Note to some trustees, parents, college admission teams and reporters...

The idea of "high" is code for ranking, and a ranking system in education means that it acceptable for some students to win at education, and some to lose - in order to support an arbitrary thermometer of what's hot and what's not!

Let's face it; it's easy to chunk a few numbers to make a fast food decision about school quality. The so called tests given do not provide any sense of a quality school. While they do provide a toxic working and learning environment, they do not promote what experts know to be ideal settings for preparing young people to be critical and creative learners.

Performance is about application of learning and many experts might go as far to suggest that schools that make a difference in the lives of their local community members or global neighbors are doing much more than 'training' students to select the 'most correct' option on a multiple-choice test.

This brief article was targeted for some trustees, parents, college admission teams and reporters who are not aware that trusting test scores has given a rancid system of standardization the fuel to continue burning out kids, teachers and administrators. Many feel school can be an UNREMARKABLE place when what moves and motivates learners is minimized (i.e. project-based learning, apprenticeships, student leadership for all students, peer teaching, patent design, entrepreneurial work and co-curricular experiences) or dropped from the curriculum entirely.

Do people understand that in order to get a nice ranking distribution, students need to be asked questions about items that are taught often several grades ahead of their current grade expectations? How fair is that? Do people understand that in order to find winners and losers, the textbook companies (who are often the test makers in the US) need to stuff the curriculum so full of content - that kids need school time, all their personal time after school - and at least a 'head start' at age 2 - to get all the 'filler' in? This makes for a nice wide context for test item selection, but much of the filler makes such learning experiences (teaching for the test) a series of disconnected and boring regurgitation efforts.

What quality schools do is prepare students for a future that is not filler; rather, quality admission teams view portfolios of experience (much like corporations do who have hundreds of thousands of applicants each year). If they want a quality business, they use quality lenses to find quality people. Universities that still subscribe to the SAT and ACT are taking short cuts with the illusion they are scooping quality candidates - if they chunk out 'high scores'.

High performance has to be about much more than test scores if we really want to improve schools.