Schools are improving, but more work ahead

Area and state schools showed progress on No Child Left Behind report cards, but there is work to do.

The importance of the annual evaluation is hard to overstate.

Most important is the impact on the students. While the evaluation is far from perfect, it gives a general idea of how well we are educating our children. Their future opportunities, and to a large extent their future happiness, are bound tightly to the quality of their instruction.

Our future as a community also depends on the quality of their education. They are tomorrow’s Decatur. Improvements we make today in the quality of their education will continue shaping our community long after we are gone. They represent our best chance at leaving Decatur better than we found it.

Regardless of the accuracy of the evaluation, the No Child Left Behind report card also has a more immediate impact on the area. Every family relocating to the Tennessee Valley has a choice of communities in which to reside. The annual evaluation is the only quantifiable tool that incoming residents have to compare area school systems. With an accelerating population influx resulting from Base Realignment and Closure, Decatur can only hope to benefit if it demonstrates its educational excellence.

It is the nature of the evaluation, as State Superintendent Joe Morton pointed out, that, “Every year it gets harder to meet the goal.”

That is as it should be. We owe it to our children and our community to make sure we are providing the best possible education. We are showing improvement, but we have a long way to go.