News-Record.com

Very interesting. Four schools have lower scores than in 02. Of course each year of students is totally different, but one would hope that if the quality of education is growing then knowledge would also. The schools? Andrews, Eastern, Page and Southern. Eastern is one of the schools that seems to have lots of problems, but never any dicussion from community! Southern and Page have always had very solid reputations. Could it be the never ending dwindling of money to these schools making a negative impact? And we all know the problems with Andrews.

No one has written about the proposal that passed about Title 1 and redirecting 6.8 million to schools from local money. What will happen if we don't get the budget? The site based teams will have to choose where to cut. Watch out for cuts to things like art and music, media asst, office help. Everyone knows that assistants are on the way out. Dr Grier wants each impacted school to have 1-teach and one asst per 15 kids (K and 1). While my neighborhood school will have 1 teacher 1 asst per 22 and sometimes have to share the asst with another class. We are so overcrowded that there is no room for more classes... oh, that right! The proposal would make us have to but 14 trailers to put at schools to make room for the smaller classes!!! I know that the smaller class rooms is a good idea, but at what cost? The average child is paying the price!

As I'm sure you're aware, today begins a new chapter in the SAT test - no more analogies. So, in tribute to SAT's of years past, I offer the following analogy:

Hand is to Glove
As
_________ is to Guilford County Schools (administration and board)

A. Corruption
B. Dishonesty
C. Unethical behavior
D. All of the Above

Readers of the chalkboard - do you have the right answer???

The students that have taken the test the past few years received their educational foundation in the "pre-Grier" era.

The think it would be interesting to see how the current 6th - 8th graders stack up against the state and the nation in a few years.

I also think it would be interesting to see how the students in his prior district have performed. That would be indicative of how well his 6th - 8th graders did.

Thanks for the info - I am somewhat confused about scores going up. Per the News & Record, 4/30/99 special section explaining the redistricting plan (yes, i am a pack rat), the average SAT score for 1998 was 1,023. Is this a typo?

Good article on private school growth in HP - can the board members connect the dots? I doubt it. Westchester's headmaster hit the nail on the head when he said that parents w/b pulling their kids out before high school so they will have "long term control" over their kids education. I have seen many parents do this (private school)at the elem level to gain spots for ms and hs. Also many moving to another county during elem school -and they are leaving a Blue Ribbon, Honor School of Excellence.

A few things to remember about SAT scores:

Year-to-year comparisons are often inaccurate. Some classes are stronger than others. If a school has an especially strong class (for that school) followed by an exceptionally weak one, you'll see a spike followed by a decline. So look for a school's score trend over time.

Also: SAT scores almost always track out by free-and-reduced lunch numbers because of many different factors. When I wrote these stories in the mid and late 90s, Northwest, Grimsley and Page were always at the top of the heap, and Smith, Andrews and Dudley were at the bottom. The same holds true today. (The same holds true on a national level: When scores are grouped by parental income, scores drop pretty consistently as you go down the income list.)

Finally -- and some of you are going to hate hearing this -- but Grier's fast-track math initiative should pay off with SAT gains. The SAT traditionally hit both Algebra I and geometry hard; the new SAT will include Algebra II. It stands to reason that students who have covered all of their subjects by their junior years should have a good chance to do well on the math section.

Ask and we'll try to find it. It took a little digging, but I came up with that information you requested.

Most students in Tennessee take the ACT, not the SAT. In 1999-2000 (Dr. Grier's last year in Williamson County), the average ACT score was 22.0, compared to a state average of 20.0.

In 2004, Williamson County's average ACT score was 22.1. Tennessee's average score was 20.3.

I don't really know what to make of these scores. Williamson County scores didn't improve, but neither did anyone else in Tennessee. However, W.C.'s scores are and remain above the state average.

And I have to ask: if Guilford's SAT score had been down by 15 points instead of up by 15 points, would you have said, "Oh, it's not Dr. Grier's fault; those kids didn't get the educational foundation in middle school"? Just curious!

Good to hear someone is hanging on to these old newspaper clippings! But that 1,023 score must've been a typo, because it's not right.

Guilford County Schools' average SAT score in 1998 was 986.

Yikes, Bruce. I wonder what our statute of limitations on corrections is.

I'm the guy who screwed up that SAT back in '99. (That's not even the national average -- most likely, it's the score from one of the local schools.) All that I remember is that I had to crank out all the copy in that special section a day after the school board's final vote on the plan.

You guys are the best - thanks for the info.