By the Mississippi Delta, A Whole School Left Behind

Shatarya McGhee, foreground; DeMontray Houston, center; and Tyronza Thompson at Como Elementary, where math and reading test scores rank last among Mississippi schools. (By Peter Whoriskey -- The Washington Post)

"Unless we do those two things, it's going to be very difficult to provide kids with the quality of education they deserve," he said.

On the edge of the Mississippi Delta about 45 minutes south of Memphis, Como is a small town surrounded by fields. Its downtown consists of a strip of old brick storefronts, some empty, facing a railroad track. A rusted water tower hovers in the distance.

About 25 percent or more of the population is white, but only a handful of whites -- about 1 percent -- attend the public schools. Many instead attend Magnolia Heights, a private academy.

Como Elementary's student body is 99 percent black, and most of the students live in poverty, many in tattered mobile homes.

Some teachers have to buy books and other basic supplies for their classrooms, and then take their neediest students to Wal-Mart to buy clothes and backpacks. Last week, a teacher gave an old clothes dryer to a grandmother who kept sending a student to school in wet clothes. The school itself could use a coat of paint and new linoleum floors, which have been worn through in places to the concrete.

Challenged by poverty, indifferent parents and transient teacher ranks, Como Elementary scored dismally on Mississippi's annual school tests.

According to the government tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the "Nation's Report Card," Mississippi ranks last among states in combined math and reading scores for fourth-graders, the only elementary grade in the survey.

And within Mississippi, Como sits at the bottom for test scores. The combined reading and math scores for grades two through six -- the earliest grades are not tested -- were among the bottom three in the state.

The state as a result recognizes Como as a "low-performing school."

Yet under No Child Left Behind, Como Elementary is considered to be making "adequate yearly progress" because enough of its students have demonstrated "proficiency" -- a standard that the state itself gets to define, and has done so at a very low level.

A report by the Education Trust is telling: While the state has judged that 89 percent of its fourth-graders are reading proficiently, the federal tests assert that only 18 percent are.

"There are clearly some state tests that are too easy," said John Cronin, a researcher at the Northwest Evaluation Association and co-author of a recent paper on the subject called "The Proficiency Illusion."