In California, Florida, Michigan, Texas, and other states, completely online or technology enhanced face-to-face Advanced Placement and Honors courses, some developed by higher education, are being served in high schools, not as some remote, incidental activity, but, increasingly, as the preferred method of delivery for the majority of under-served schools in those states.

Similarly, several of the large, electoral-vote states are addressing a much-anticipated national crisis in teaching and learning Algebra by asking their state-funded higher education systems to come up with educational technology-driven solutions. Algebra is a high school graduation requirement and entrance requirement for many colleges and universities, and there is a growing lack of qualified math teachers reaching perplexing proportions.

Why higher education? Because, ultimately, they will be the recipients of these unprepared students.

The grade creep of the high-achieving students and the grade drag of the under-performing students who are approaching college are issues that higher education can no longer ignore. Just as the technology does not discriminate between the level of the learning institution, legislative committees and governors, lining up for elections this Fall, don’t discriminate. They want results, and they want performance. The fact that electronically delivered education reaches as easily into the soccer-mom schools as it does the barrio schools is not lost on the politicians.

As technology for eLearning gets more coherent, its efficacy becomes clearer to policy makers. The demands on the technology will take a quantum leap as a growing body of state-run virtual schools move from the handful of states where they operate now into the mainstream. Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and West Virginia already have mature virtual programs in which full high school curricula and teacher training are created or acquired centrally, in some cases with help from higher ed and in other cases without it. It is only a matter of time until this trend spreads.

With the help of Federal programs like the Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind legislation enacted earlier this year, the capability for under-performing schools to augment teaching and learning with online education is a financial reality. Higher education is starting to see this trend as a means to get a higher grade and more diverse freshman class and as a revenue stream to amortize faculty and facilities.

In Washington, the issue is taken very seriously. The rhetoric in the Bush administration has gone from the economic argument that necessitates a strong elementary and high school performance effect on the economy to the defense of the nation; a highly educated populace is a bulwark against terrorist regimes. Education Secretary Rod Paige writes in the Department’s strategic plan, "Ever since A Nation at Risk" was published almost 20 years ago, we have acknowledged the importance of our education system to our economy. Now we acknowledge its importance to our national security, and to the strength of our democracy itself."

A prominent engineering professor from India who currently teaches at a US graduate school asks: "How is it that you have the best universities in the world and among the worst high school systems? Doesn’t this bother you?" The best answer is that, in theory, there is a cooperative spirit, but, in fact, there is little understanding, or motivation to establish it between a county board of education and a research institution.

An unanticipated repercussion of the success of Silicon technology in education is that it casts us, the human-carbon models, in a bad light. We don’t seem to be able to do what Barney and others counsel our young ones to do — cooperate, work things out, and share. While the technology proceeds down its path with a few hiccups, but almost no attitude, people seem almost constitutionally unable to do work on commonly recognized problems across institutional and personal boundaries.

Tinkering here and there is no longer going to work in changing our schools. Letting kids slip by is in no one’s interest, individual or group. Education, after all, is like an ecosystem. All the parts must work together and if one or two fail, the whole system can fail. No amount of mandatory annual testing is going to make better critical thinkers. It may ensure people can read and do arithmetic, but this in the 21st, not the 19th century.

However, like an ecosystem, education and learning can evolve through complex interactions. The grade creep and grade drag can both be assisted by higher education and by technology lifelines or safety nets tossed to students, parents, teachers and school administrators by their colleagues in colleges and universities.

The problem, in many cases, is that institutions are like battleships; they are hard to turn and, harder still, to do so in unison with other institutions. There are plenty of small ships in this sea going many different directions. In the end, the admirals have to plot the changes. The chancellors, presidents, superintendents, and academicians must sit together in the same war council. The good news is that we are beginning to know what works. Expert teaching and curriculum, developed in conjunction with higher education, and distributed electronically to students and teachers for at-home or in-class delivery is a start. Ask the kids in Michigan and Florida.