Standardized test scores. Dropout rates. On-time graduation percentage. In Suffolk Public Schools, all three measures of student performance have been found lacking in recent years.

In August 2011, taxpayers and parents learned that only three Suffolk schools had met federal learning goals during the 2010-2011 school year, ranking the city at the bottom of the pack in Hampton Roads in terms of school achievement. It took a statewide reprieve from the provisions of No Child Left Behind to help the school system avoid a similar — or potentially worse — pronouncement this year.

But the most important components of the scoring mechanism for NCLB are still wobbly in Suffolk.

Two out of three public Suffolk high schools failed to achieve the Standards of Learning test scores needed this year for full accreditation. Even students at Nansemond River High School, perennially Suffolk’s top-ranked public high school, struggled to pass this year’s math tests, and more than a third of them did not.

At King’s Fork and Lakeland high schools, students fared somewhat worse on the state tests. Even more telling, those schools struggle to meet state standards for both dropout rates and on-time graduation. More than one in 10 students in each of those facilities fails to complete high school at all. And nearly two in 10 fail to finish on time.

With these statistics as the backdrop for the conversation, school administrators talk about focusing on the things that will make the most difference in students’ lives. Among the responses to the problem is a commitment to evaluate at-risk students and teachers, alike, with the aim of intervening while intervention can make a difference.

But the School Board’s discussion this week about amending a policy prohibiting students from using cell phones and other personal electronic devices while in school calls into question just how focused anyone really is when it comes to public education in Suffolk.

Clearly there is a distinct need for students to be focused on their schoolwork. The test scores bear that out. The dropout rate bears that out. The on-time graduation rate bears that out. Surely there are many factors involved, but there is no question that all three measures of student success would be higher if students had fewer things to distract them from learning.

It is hard for most people to fathom how the average student — the one at whom public educators must aim most of their efforts — would improve with access to cellphones. But even assuming such a benefit, one then must wonder what becomes of the rare student who doesn’t have a cellphone to bring to school. Will Suffolk taxpayers then be called on to buy phones for those students? Would it not be preferable for the school system to make the most of the computers and other equipment it already has?

Instead of focusing on the real issues of inadequate educational attainment and preparation that threaten students’ real lives, the Suffolk School Board has allowed itself to be distracted by materialism and populism. Perhaps if School Board members paid a little more attention to what is important, they would set a good example for their failing students.