doubts about the validity of the educational ability ranking,

doubts about the validity of the educational ability ranking, the same doubts Estabrook voiced last year when scores of Rappahannock students on that portion of the SRA (Science Research Associates) tests went down instead of up compared with the previous year. “I’d love to make glowing remarks about how the educational ability of our students is improving but I can’t sing a different tune just because the results are favorable...Less than a half-hour is devoted to the ability portion of the SRA tests. It’s a very, very, very crude form of ability testing,” the superintendent said. “I’m sure that, in terms of ability, SRA tests do no give us a very good indication of where our students stand."

He noted that the tests, both achievement and ability, have a standard error of measurement of roughly 4V-> points at each grade level. “That’s 4'/a points either way, up or down,” he added.

Taking that into consideration, Estabrook said, the important strides made by students in this year's tests come at the fourth grade level in math (up by 17 points) and the eighth grade level in reading (up by ten points), science (eight points) and educational ability (12 points). “Surely, that kind of improvement is significant,” he said.

He attributed the higher test scores to a cooperative effort by the administration and teachers. Estabrook said that the central office - staff has worked with teachers on organizing curriculum. “We're trying to get away from the idea that curriculum is going from the first page to the last page in a text book. Teachers need to look each year at the students in front of them in terms of their needs...More than anything else, we (the central office staff) have tried to remind our teachers to be sensitive to the individual needs of the children." The SRA test results demonstrate that Rappahannock’s teachers "are reaching individual kids," the superintendent added.