High schools need to get down to business.

• Author: Cline, Ned
• Position: CAPITAL

Braggarts across North Carolina are trumpeting rising test scores as proof of how great the state's public schools are. It ain't bragging if you can do it, former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean opined. But is the state really doing it?

Much of the hoopla sounds as hollow as a whiffle ball. Test scores have become a dime a dozen because government now grades schools almost as often as teachers grade their charges. More doesn't always make things better, though.

Concern is growing about the value and volume of these tests, some of which are cousins of political polls, providing only a one-day snapshot of knowledge. The scores reveal little about the quality of education. Students might only be learning to pass government-mandated tests. If they can do that, though, the politicians and educators can keep bragging.

Evidence of this comes in State of the South 2004, published by Chapel Hill-based MDC Inc. The latest of MDC's biennial reports, it assesses public high schools across the South. MDC isn't a left-leaning think tank looking for ways to spend government money. Founded in 1967, it studies pressing public-policy issues in 13 Southern states and proposes ways to address them. A small part of its $2.6 million annual budget comes from the state of Mississippi. Other support comes from foundations such as the Duke Endowment.

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The study's results don't put the Carolinas among the top of the class. High schools are failing not so much because of what they aren't doing but more because of what they aren't getting. A key ingredient that's missing, the report says, is community and business involvement. Among its recommendations is a challenge to business leaders to take a more active role in improving public schools in their communities. If they don't, the report says, they may end up with a work force that isn't trained to work.

"What we really need is more civic will and a kind of civic cholesterol test," MDC President David Dodson says. "We cannot solve the problems by using only people with educational titles. We need to involve community and civic leaders because they know what is needed for economic progress."

The MDC report urges civic and business leaders in North Carolina and other Southern states to step forward as leaders in this state did more than 40 years ago when they created the community-college system. It recommends job-training programs in high schools that will meet specific needs of businesses...