Complete Coverage

Education Scholars Finding New 'Value' In Student Test Data

By Lynn Olson

Data Driven: An Occasional Series Every year, school administrators at E.A. Cox Middle School in Maury County, Tenn., look for patterns in the state test scores of students assigned to individual teachers. Then they coax and cajole teachers who have been especially effective at raising achievement to teach subjects or grades the school is having trouble with.

"It's kind of been a joke here at Cox that you don't know what you'll be teaching until school starts," says Principal Debbie Steen. "The teachers are just very flexible, and they don't get upset about that. The teachers are very dedicated to finding the best fit for the child."

That approach seems to be paying off. In 2002, the 700-student school outperformed all other middle schools statewide with similar percentages of poor and minority students in the gains students made in mathematics averaged over three years. E.A. Cox's reading gains topped all but one middle school...