Not one of the high schools met AYP?
I firmly believe that in large part, this is a curriculum problem, which the BoE has no control over. Another problem I hear from a lot of middle and high school students is the lack of text books. There are not enough to assign subject text books to each student, therefor they don't have one to take home to use for study. There's not enough time for a student to both read the material in the classroom and for the teacher to lecture on the material. To give the teacher ample time to lecture on the subject matter, each student should have their own text book to read the material the night prior.
If I was on the BoE, I would occasionally sit in on classroom instruction unannounced to see what is going on for myself. As far as the curriculum goes, the state BoE controls that. The local district has no say so in curriculum. I'm a firm believer the control of the curriculum belongs at the local district level. If you have this and school choice, you create competition amongst the districts and within. Competition will improve academics. If any of you attended the GOP County convention, you would have heard Howard Maxwell say the state needs to control the curriculum. I like the guy, but I strongly disagree with him on this.
If I remember correctly, the only elected official on the state BoE is the State School Superintendent, while all the board members are appointed. When they control the curriculum, how much of a voice do you think we have with people on the board who are appointed? None really. How accessible are the state BoE meetings to parents across the state? Not very. We really have no voice with them at all.
If the control of the curriculum were at the local district where it is much easier for us to attend meetings and every member is elected; we'd have a huge voice. Not only that, it makes it much easier to hold those at the local district accountable. How accountable is the state BoE to us? Not much at all.