Michael Lopez and Kimberly Swygert graciously agreed to guest-blog for me for the next three weeks while I’m busy with my wedding, which is today, the receptions (Bay Area and Chicago) and the honeymoon. I may pop in to do some blogging from time to time, or I may decide to go cold turkey and let Michael and Kimberly handle it.

If you’re thinking of a thoughtful wedding gift, buy a copy of my book, Our School, for yourself or a friend. Or several friends.

At Mountain Sky Junior High in Phoenix, Principal Linda Marlar plans to teach teachers the difference between “dawg” and “dawging,” so they know what current slang is “aiight.” The Arizona Republic reports that Marlar is “hip to the lingo of today’s young teenagers.”

Marlar talks with teachers often about issues involving slang and what’s acceptable and what’s not, not only in classroom discussions but also in writing assignments.

“Wack” is not an acceptable word for “weird” or “inappropriate” in an essay, especially on the state’s annual exams. Compliment a student on her “slammin’ new kicks,” or shoes.

But Marlar cautions teachers not to overreact if kids use the word “pimp” as a verb, as in “pimp my backpack,” because they’re not referring to prostitution but accessorizing. The term was made popular by MTV’s Pimp My Ride.

She’s planning a training session on slang for teachers when school starts again Aug. 14.

“I school ‘em; I learn them well,” Marlar said.

In jest, I hope.

Gadfly points out that using kids’ slang — “jocking the style” — is a fad that is no longer tight.

When I was in high school in the late ’60s, I wrote an essay parodying adults who try to keep up with teen-age slang. I used standard English which I’ve found very useful over the years. It is, as we used to say, my “bag.”

Conservative guru Charles Murray blasted No Child Left Behind in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

NCLB takes a giant step toward nationalizing elementary and secondary education, a disaster for federalism. It pushes classrooms toward relentless drilling, not something that inspires able people to become teachers or makes children eager to learn. It holds good students hostage to the performance of the least talented, at a time when the economic future of the country depends more than ever on the performance of the most talented. The one aspect of the act that could have inspired enthusiasm from me, promoting school choice, has fallen far short of its hopes.

NCLB is justified only if it’s raising performance, Murray writes. But it’s not.

Jay Greene and Marcus Winters of the Manhattan Institute come back at Murray in today’s National Review, arguing high-stakes testing does improve student learning.

Reducing teacher autonomy by requiring students to learn tested material is only worrisome if it doesn’t also produce real learning.

But student scores on low-stakes tests, which teachers have no incentive to teach to, closely track their scores on high-stakes tests, a Manhattan Institute study found.

If the scores on high-stakes tests were manipulated or if students only learned skills that would help them to “beat” that particular standardized test without gaining real knowledge, then their results would not correlate with those of other respected tests on which there is no incentive to “teach-to” or manipulate.

Greene and Winters agree with Murray’s critique of the way scores are reported, but argue for better use of performance data, not abandoning the effort to measure results.

Without testing we have no way of knowing how well (or poorly) our schools are performing, and we are left to trust schools when they tell us that they are doing their best. That public schools insist that they are performing up-to-par should provide no more comfort than if your money manager insisted that you need not see your portfolio because he was working as hard as he could to invest your money properly.

Research suggests that high-stakes testing can improve real student proficiency.

NCLB really does tilt attention toward students at the bottom who most need testable foundation skills. Murray wants to focus on students at the top, but they’re already highly motivated by the race to get into competitive colleges.

Update: On Gadfly, Michael Petrilli defends “proficiency” as a meaningful concept. If the achievement gap remains because whites and blacks have improved, that’s progress, he writes. Also see Petrilli on the internal contradictions of NCLB in What Works vs. Whatever Works.

Schools are trying to ban candy. Writing on Slate, economist Tim Harford doubts schools can stop children from snacking.

My school used to offer two varieties of food. There was cafeteria food, which was inedible, and there were chocolate bars from the snack shop. For two years, I had four chocolate bars for lunch every day.

These days schools are trying to outlaw the unhealthy options, but some markets are irrepressible. William Guntrip is a 13-year-old boy whose central England school banished vending machines and snack-shop food in favor of nutritious offerings at the cafeteria. Guntrip spotted a market opportunity and has been buying soft drinks and candy and reselling them in his school playground. The school is trying to stop him and claims that most students are happy with the new regime, although if that was true then Guntrip wouldn’t be making nearly $100 a day.

For my last three years of high school, I never set foot in the cafeteria, which was dirty and noisy. Some days, I brought a sandwich, which I had to eat surreptitiously in the student lounge or a study room. Many days, I lunched on two packs of M&Ms and a Tab.

Dayton, Ohio is starting a video game high to motivate underachievers. Scott Elliott writes:

Capitalizing on youthful passion for video games, school leaders hope to keep more kids in school by offering the chance to conceive, design, build — and sell — their own video game.

. . . The Dayton Technology Design High School will enroll about 100 students, with about 80 in the “virtual game” track, requiring a three-year commitment and culminating in the completion, marketing and possibly sale of a student-created educational video game.

The school is designed for students 16 to 22 years old who are willing to spend three years in school. They’ll study math, science, social studies and English in addition to working in small groups to design an educational video game.

The new National Survey of Salaries and Wages in Public Schools (2005-06) is out. This result is surprising:

Among superintendents, females out-earn males by more than $9,000, a margin of about 8 percent. District leaders from black and Hispanic racial and ethnic backgrounds earn average salaries between 21 percent and 25 percent higher than their white counterparts. Pay is highest for black and Hispanic females with average annual salaries topping $155,000.

For administrators, pay is highest in large districts. Teacher pay tends to be best in mid-sized districts.

Text Savvy hosts this week’s Carnival of Education, which takes the visitor to HUNblog’s Carnival of Student Blogs. Also check out the Museum of Online Museums.

Schoolhouse Rock is the theme of this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling over at Lilting House.

Submit entries to the Carnival of Education by 11 tonight, Eastern time.

Check out the Carnival of Children’s Literature too.

Get on the Bus blogger Scott Elliott’s review of my book, Our School, is now in the ink-on-paper Dayton Daily News. The book is an ‘informative and inspiring read,’ writes Scott, who is an informative and inspiring human being.

In an LA Times op-ed, California education secretary Richard Riordan defends the graduation exam, which requires, at most, 10th grade English and eighth grade math skills.

Some will say the exam unfairly affects low-income students and English-language learners, and thus should be lifted. To that, I rebut: If low-income students and English-language learners are disproportionately failing the test, this tells us something important — we need to do a better job teaching these students. Deploy more resources. Improve instructional strategies. Replace incompetent faculty. But do not punish the students by sending them out ill-equipped into the world. Take responsibility. Educate them.

With the latest round of testing — students get at least six chances to pass – 91 percent of students in the class of ’06 have passed. Some of those who failed didn’t have enough credits to graduate anyhow; only about 5 percent of students failed to earn a diploma because of the exam. Students who don’t want to spend more time in high school, adult education or community college programs can try the exam again this summer.

As Riordan writes, it does students no favor to send them out in the world without the skills they’ll need to get an entry-level job or take a community-college course.