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-Editorials
Underachieving
It was startling Sunday morning to pick up the Richmond paper and find Rappahannock on the front page labelled as having one ot the state’s 10 underachieving school systems. Jt was somewhat reassuring to follow the story to the inside pages arid discover that this label was based only on a measure of attendance. The state collects statistics from the schools on the percentage of students who miss 10 or fewer days of school per year. It was on this measure that Rappahannock was judged as underachieving. And even this measure was not an absolute one. The study called attention to those school systems which differed markedly from expectations based on the wealth of the locality as measured by median household income and the percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced price school lunches. ■ It was almost equally startling to find Rappahannock listed as having a median household income signicantly higher than the state average. According to the Richmond Times Dispatch figures for median household income were estimates made by the Center for Public Science of the University of Virginia and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. • However, the state Department of Education uses statistics on median adjusted gross income provided by the Department of Taxation that show Rappahannock as having a lower median income than the state as a whole.
One wonders how Rappahannock County could have a below average median adjusted gross income and a higher than average median household income. Of course those are not the same thing, but it would be reasonable to expect the county to be on the same side of average on both measures.
Poor attendance figures are cause for concern. Unsatisfactory results on standardized achievement tests should cause even more concern even though they were not singled out in the report. ■ The county’s first elected School Board will face many challenges. There is much that needs improving and dollars will be increasingly tight. The members do not need to be further alarmed by incomplete reports in the press based on questionable statistics.
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