As a teacher, parent, and research scientist, I view school test scores from several perspectives. I understand what a test is designed to measure, what the numbers can tell us, and what they cannot.
Kent County’s latest test results deserve our attention, but they need context.
The data include good news. Students and educators have made progress in important areas. There is also no reason to pretend that the progress is sufficient. Some of our students are still not meeting the standards we expect, particularly in mathematics. We should be honest about both things at the same time: our students have improved, and we need to improve further.
Breathe. Our students are people.
Before we turn a percentage into a headline, we should remember who is behind the number. In fourth grade, I would have dreaded a test on long division. I probably would have bombed it. Today, I have two master’s degrees and work as a research scientist. In first grade, I was a slow reader; my parents and I were dragged through the horrors of Hooked on Phonics. I eventually became a researcher at Harvard Law School and read 10 books a year in a book club. So my early struggles helped me be a lifelong learner–the definition of what we teachers refer to as “productive struggle.”
The point isn’t that tests do not matter. They do matter, and we should have them. The point is that a test taken on one morning by one child does not tell us everything that child will become.
Our scholars are developing human beings, not test-taking machines. They learn at different rates, discover different strengths, encounter different obstacles, and sometimes surprise us.
A test score is not a child’s destiny. Kent County’s students are giving us plenty of evidence that there is much more to their education than a standardized assessment.
The High School Classes of 2025 and 2026 earned more than $3 million in college scholarships and earned 147 AP credits, saving their parents more money on college tuition. As someone that’s taught AP classes, scoring highly is no easy task and before we dismiss our scholars, I challenge you to take a look at those exams. Our students pursue advanced coursework, college credits, career and technical education, apprenticeships and other pathways into college and careers. Those are outcomes not captured by a single test score.
Context matters.
There is a larger national story here.
The modern era of high-stakes school accountability did not begin with COVID. No Child Left Behind, enacted in 2001, dramatically expanded the federal role in school accountability and required states to measure student achievement. Then COVID disrupted schooling on a scale few of us had experienced before. We all remember.
Our recovery has been real, but uneven. We have not returned to where educators and families hoped we would be by now. Our work is not finished, but that does not mean improvement has not happened.
There is another piece of context we cannot ignore: poverty has a profound relationship with educational outcomes. Children do not arrive at school with identical circumstances. Housing instability, food insecurity, limited access to health care, transportation problems, and other barriers outside the classroom can make learning substantially harder. Research consistently finds that students facing concentrated poverty encounter greater barriers to academic success.
However, poverty does not determine a child’s future. It means schools need to recognize the barriers that can interfere with learning and respond to them. This is where Kent County has an important advantage: we already have a community-school model.
All five KCPS schools are designated Community Schools, with resources designed to connect students and families with supports beyond the classroom. Those supports can include health services, mental-health resources, family engagement, tutoring, youth development, and other wraparound services. KCPS’s own strategic plan identifies community-school resources as part of its approach to interventions and enrichment.
The research behind this approach is encouraging, as a review of more than 140 studies found that well-implemented community schools can improve student and school outcomes, particularly in high-poverty schools, by addressing barriers to learning and strengthening family and community partnerships.
So when we talk about improving test scores, we should not limit the conversation to what happens between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. We should be asking four basic questions: whether students are attending school consistently, whether families can access the services they need, whether students have the academic and emotional support necessary to learn, and whether our schools are connected to the broader community. These are part of the conditions that make academic achievement possible.
We need standardized testing because public education uses public money, and taxpayers deserve evidence that students are learning. Tests give educators useful data to meet scholars where they are currently. I’m a data nerd and will never turn down useful information, but when one measure becomes the only measure, we develop tunnel vision.
A child who struggles to read but eventually finds confidence in the classroom matters. So does the student who discovers a talent through an afterschool program, the teenager who earns college credit before graduation, and the graduate who earns a scholarship. These are all measures of growth and achievement, even if they never appear in a standardized test score. Ultimately, our schools are preparing young people not simply to perform on an assessment, but to become capable, curious, and responsible members of their communities. Those successes happen in Kent County classrooms every day.
As a teacher, I know how many of those victories never appear on a spreadsheet. As a researcher, I know the importance of measuring outcomes carefully. And as a parent, I know that behind every data point is a child whose education cannot be reduced to a number.
One of the most important things we can do as a school community is get better at communicating the full picture, and as a candidate for the Board of Education, I want to have those conversations with our community. Vote on November 3rd, and let’s move the conversation forward.
Zeke Falcon is a parent of a school-aged child, educator, and he is a candidate for the Kent County Board of Education.
6 Responses
Kent’s 2025–26 MCAP results: English proficiency 43.2 percent, 19th of 24 districts, against a state average of 51.7 percent. Math 14.6 percent, down from 16.3 percent, against a state average of 27.1 percent. Eighth-grade science was 14 percent. Fifth-grade science was the real gain, to 38.4 percent. Queen Anne’s, next door, was at 57.9 percent in English and 31.7 percent in math.
Mr. Falcon is right about one narrow point. A single morning’s test is not a child’s destiny. His own story — slow reader, weak at long division, later two master’s degrees — is a fair reminder not to write off a nine-year-old.
That is not what these scores are. A district number is not one child. It is the share of children who can read and do math at the level the state says the grade requires. In Kent, about 57 percent are not proficient in English. About 85 percent are not proficient in math. Math went backward this year. Calling that “productive struggle” renames failure.
The $3 million in scholarships and 147 AP credits do not answer that. Those figures describe the students who are already succeeding. They say nothing about the majority who are not meeting the standard. A system can produce a strong top and still be failing most of the children in it.
Poverty is a real barrier. It is also the explanation every low-performing district reaches for. Kent already designates all five schools as community schools. Wraparound services are the current policy, not a new idea. If attendance, tutoring, health, and family supports were going to close an 85 percent math gap, we would be seeing it in the math line. We are not.
Taxpayers are not asking for tunnel vision. They are asking why fewer than one in six students is proficient in math, and what the Board will change in curriculum, instruction, and use of time. “Tests are not destiny” is a comfort. It is not a plan.
But notwithstanding these values, all these students will be systematically advanced to the next grade and ultimately will “graduate” with a diploma in their hands. Accordingly the situation of high school graduates without skills useful in the workplace or in getting into another learning alternative will continue.
Dont forget Maryland continues to lower the bar for achievement every year despite throwing $10.2 billion at Blueprint for Maryland. Despite lowering proficiency targets in English Language Arts and Math , students still fail to meet the grade. Kent County isnt even close to achieving competency. Graduation rates improve, not because of achievement but because they lower the standards. Stop kidding ourselves, poverty or not.Allegany County, the poorest county in the state far outperformed Kent County in achievement. Major curriculum change is necessary/teacher qualifications need to change/ stop woke agenda… apparently the kids dont know how to use pronouns properly… not for gender identification but for proper grammar skills
It seems to me that strategies for proactive intervention to address reading and math deficiencies needs to be the priority. Bickering and finger pointing is toxic and does not benefit our children. Support teachers and the school administrators, support families, and support the public library. Make teaching and learning the priority with school-based assessment to track progress. State based standardized testing provides useful metrics but cannot replace internal progress measurement.
Lead with peace.
I would love to see Kent County’s ranking among similar rural counties. Zeke, thank you for pursuing this
in the face of those who disparage public schools, many of them sent children to Catholic Schools. There
is a difference, obviously. I definitely would not rank Catholic schools over public or private schools. both are different models and different students. Catholic Schools are private “light”. Not the best usually, i feel.
I attended a public schools from K to 3. iI was in the slow reading group. My family moved to Italy for three years and being so isolated I turned to books. This was the 1960s. Books became my friend while my parents travelled, while I had no TV, and I became the avid reader I still am. The library copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis is still in my possession….stolen in 1969 from the school because I could not part with it. I read it and then read it again.
What I am suggesting is instilling a spark. Creating an interest that literature and other ideas can ignite in a child’s mind. Maybe not only literature, but the sciences. Let teaching be creative and let the child lead.
Our three went to boarding schools that suited their needs, not ours. but we were heavily involved and understood the curriculum for each. Every child is different. A public school that understands differences, embracing learning styles will produce exceptional learners.
The key is to meet each child where they are, not to try and convert them to what one expects .
Kent County Public Schools ranks near the bottom among Maryland rural counties #20 out of 24 with a school rating of 4.9 out of 10. Neighboring Queen Annes is #6. Just for the record , I did send two of the 3 kids of mine to public school here .. until I realized the “dumbing down era” was inhibitory to achievement. This was even before it got worse with woke mandates in public school like “gender identification”.Yes I agree bring back more about literature and math, changed curriculum/more discipline/ better pay for teachers with better qualifications. A new school alone is not going to do it. Properly used AI would offer a tremendous opportunity for change.. need some visionaries/ not obstructionists based on dislike for one man