Apparently the school board and administration feel compelled to have a quantitative measurement to show us annually how wonderfully they are doing (The Pilot, May 11). This is, of course, nonsense. The need to have criteria to adjust administrative salaries and budgets ever upward overrides reality. The only real measurement is the graduates’ success in higher education and in life.

The real downside of this measurement is that any reasonably smart person can easily rig it for favorable results. Using such things as SAT scores in system measurements makes it easy to bias results. The SAT is to measure an individual student against his or her peers. It is absurd to use it in a measurement of the effectiveness of an entire system –– particularly when not all of the students take the SAT.

This has seemingly resulted in paying some students to take and retake the SAT to raise scores and others to not take it. This is wrong. Where did the money to pay those students come from and who is responsible? Were any laws broken? Those responsible must be appropriately punished. If any school employee is paying them from personal funds, I consider that a total moral lapse, and the responsible individuals and any of their management that condones it should be dismissed.

It is not phony measurements, frequent tests or more computers that will fix the schools. Unfettering some of the really fine teachers who are already in the schools so they can teach is what’s needed. Give them the authority to determine the achievement of each student without being second-guessed by an administrator or a year-end test, and they will produce better citizens, more able to deal with the world, than what’s going on now.

Ralph Newsome

Southern Pines