Editorial
November 17, 2004
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Forget, for the moment, the vicious and inaccurate sniping regularly leveled at the county school system and superintendent by a few malicious county commissioners narrowly focused on installing their own puppet superintendent and calling the shots for the school board. Hamilton County schools are performing better and better, thank you, under the competent — though underfunded — administration of the present superintendent and properly independent school board. The latest comprehensive report card for the school system issued by the state under federal No Child Left Behind guidelines makes that indisputably clear.
Test scores improved across the board from 2003 to 2004 scores in all categories and among all ethnic groups and all special education groups in the K-8 grades tested. That includes academic proficiency measurements in reading and language-plus-writing and in math, as well as in attendance and graduation rates. What's more the Hamilton County school system scored higher than average, and also had higher-than-average percentage gains, among the state's five metro areas in 2004.
Overall, the percentage of students showing proficiency or advanced proficiency in reading and language-plus-writing improved from 82.8 percent to 86 percent. In math, the overall proficiency level improved from 78 percent to 82 percent. While white students overall scored better than most other groups, owing generally to greater family affluence and education levels, African-American, Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander students achieved generally higher year-to-year proficiency gains.
That is particularly gratifying, because achievement gains traditionally have been most difficult to attain among these groups in the past. Math proficiency rates soared among African-Americans from 59.9 percent in 2003 to 67 percent 2004, for example. Achievement gains in math were reached by 78 percent of Hispanic students, vs. 71.8 percent in 2003. By contrast, among white students, where achievement levels already were higher, proficiency levels improved at half that rate, from 87.6 percent of students to 90 percent Notably, 95 percent of Native American students (vs. 84.7 percent the year before) achieved a proficiency rating, the highest group proficiency score in math.
Improvement gaps and gains were similar among the ethnic and special education groups (economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency) in the math and reading and language-plus-writing categories.
Other findings showed that student achievement at the high school level is also going up, while the dropout rate has diminished, from 14.3 percent to 12.1 percent. Equally significant, scores improved in the three subjects — science, English and math — measured by the Gateway exams that high school students, beginning this year, must pass to obtain a diploma.
The across-the-board gains validate the improvement trends that Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Jesse Register has rigorously and correctly emphasized. They also confirm the inaccuracy of the distorted 2003 scores for Hamilton County schools circulated two weeks ago by County Commissioner Curds Adams, who continues to misrepresent the standing of the school system to rationalize his unjustified call for Dr. Register's resignation.
By validating Dr. Register's focus on all schools, as opposed to the suburban schools about which Commissioners Adams, Fred Skillem and Bill Hullander are most concerned, the state's report card also illuminates the problem of the commissioners' wrongheaded vendetta against Dr. Register. They still want a school system — like the former county system (absent Chattanooga city schools) under the commission's control until 1997 — in which they can direct favors to their own district's schools. Dr. Register seeks improvement for all students in all schools. That's the way it should stay.