How Do You Raise Achievement Scores?

First, let me tell you a little about myself as a school administrator.

I have worked in the public schools since 1977. Since 1983 I have practiced public school administration. In all of my administrative posts I have seen student achievement measures increase. I followed established procedures and practices and the measures went up. Mind you now, those are Standardized, Normed test scores to which I am referring. I am on record as stating that normed scores tell the educator very little about individual student learning. An individual child's achievement test results will not tell you what he has learned. However, those tests will tell you much about the academic culture of the child's school building and district as you look at group scores.

Normed test scores indicate the rigor of the curriculum. When you examine the compiled scores of the children in the tested group, normed scores are an accurate gauge of content standards, student cooperation and discipline, student attitude toward work, and the focus of the school on learning.

Now that I've said that, we can proceed.