Story by Jarel Loveless

Late on a Wednesday afternoon, students from Betty Lane's seventh hour English class file into the computer lab at Cairo High School. They were preparing for the Prairie State Achievement Exam by doing real life math applications. Minutes after class begins, several students receive error messages from their computers.

Doyal Hunter, technology coordinator, scurries across the room, trying to find enough working computers for the students. One girl, frustrated after moving among three non-functioning computers, announces out loud that she is done for the day, even though only 10 minutes have passed.

“I don't need this (expletive) computer to tell me that I'm smart,” she says, “I know I am, I just don't care. I'm dropping out of school next year.”

Welcome to Cairo High School, a school where few children will make it to college, where the average ACT score is a dreary 15, where 11 percent of the female students are pregnant, where 96 percent of the children are poor, where the principal's office is a revolving door, where one year of Spanish is the only foreign language offered, where there are no advanced placement courses and where, some years, the math sequence doesn't reach trigonometry, much less calculus.

Cairo was put on academic probation in 2005 because of its students' poor performance on the Prairie State exams. Only 12 percent of the students either met or exceeded testing standards in reading, while 14 percent met or exceeded standards in math.

The ACT average of 15 reflects this low level of academic achievement. That score is five points below the state average of 20.2 and puts the average Cairo student in the bottom 13 percent of high school students nationwide. An ACT score of 15 is below the minimum admissions requirements of all Illinois state colleges and universities.

Still, Cairo made progress on the reading portion of the Prairie State test in 2006. About 26 percent of the students met or exceeded testing standards in reading. The increase, of more than 10 percentage points, kept Cairo off the list of failing schools under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Executive Dean Tony Maltbia credits the turnaround in reading to several factors, one of them being the Positive Behavioral Intervention System. It awards students for positive behavior through a punch card. Every time a faculty member observes a student displaying positive behavior - consistently turning in homework, receiving high grades, or any positive action - the student receives a mark on the card that eventually brings a reward.

“Students have to keep up their behavior, which is key to improving the classrooms,” Maltbia said. “If we can keep this up, and keep the kids striving toward positive things, and keep them off of the streets, we'll get them where they need to be.”

One thing is certain, though; without dramatic improvements, hundreds of students will continue to be robbed of their right to a quality education.