In Tuesday’s Hartford Courant, there was an Op-Ed by Melinda French Gates entitled Students Leaving School Unprepared For College, Work. It recited the standard litany of problems. “Students are sitting in classrooms, bored and unchallenged, and are being left unprepared for the future.” Over a million students dropped out of high school last year. Even students with 4.0 GPAs get off to college and find themselves unprepared.

The article suggested that we need to ask many more questions at the presidential debates about education. That might help, but the rubber meets the road in the local communities and we need to add some focus there.

Do you know who is on your school board? Have you spoken with them about educational priorities in your community and how we can achieve them? Have you spoken to the principal at your local high school or the superintendent of your local school district?

Somehow, I’ve ended up on the mailing list of the National School Boards Association (NSBA). This coming Wednesday, they will hold an online forum entitled, “What are the Educational Benefits of Social Networking for Students and Teachers?” The email I received about this said,

New research by NSBA and Grunwald Associates shows that teens are doing more than hanging out in social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. In fact, 70 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers; and 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork. But how can schools harness this engaging technology tool in the classroom to increase learning for students?

Not only are they discussing education-related topics, but sometimes they even use derogatory terms to criticize school administrations, and that is where you get a true view of how willing a school is to harness the engaging technologies of the internet to increase students’ learning.

The Avery Doninger case in Burlington, CT is a perfect example of this. When Avery used derogatory terms to criticize school administrators, those administrators sought to discourage discourse instead of encourage it. They prohibited students from wearing T-shirts showing support of Avery. They disregarded the voice of the student body who wrote in Avery’s name for the class election the school administration had barred her from running in.

Other schools have recognized the value of this teachable moment and I will be speaking at at least one other high school in Connecticut about Avery’s case and about how the students can use internet technologies to become better advocates of their own positions and along the way, learn better writing and computer skills.

Perhaps school board members in Connecticut will participate in the NSBA’s online forum this week. Perhaps, even more importantly, the voters in Connecticut will take Melissa French Gate’s suggestion to ask more questions about education, and take those questions not only to presidential candidates but also to candidates running for local school boards.

Is your school district harnessing the power of Internet technology to engage students and increase their learning? Or, is your school district attempting to curtail students’ efforts to grapple with technology, advocacy and all the complicated issues of being a teenager in the twenty first century?

Get out and ask those questions before you vote in your next school board election.