Nothing tells the grim tale of what Delaware educators think of themselves -- and your children -- more clearly than the process used to establish the standards and performance ratings for school accountability.

The state Department of Education recruited four groups to help Secretary Valerie Woodruff put backbone into the program. There was a business/community group, a parents/school board group, a school administrators group and a teachers group. Each was asked separately to recommend the points that schools would have to attain to meet and exceed standards.

In every category, the teachers and school administrators tried to low-ball, recommending scores well below the other two groups (with one exception) and well below Secretary Woodruff's final decision. This reveals that the attitudes of Delaware educators themselves may be public school improvement's biggest enemies.

The groups represented public education consumers (the business/community and parents/school board groups) and education providers, (teachers and administrators). Each group recommended targets in the three categories to be used to judge school performance.

One category is called "absolute." It measures how well an entire student body performs from test scores. The second is "improvement," which measures how much a school improves from one assessment period to the next. The third is "distributional," which measures the improvement of the lowest achieving students in each school.

Skimpy standards

On a scale of 0 to 125 (the midpoint is 62.5), each group was asked what score should determine where a school met the standard. The business/community group recommended 66. Parents and school board members recommended 62. Teachers said 59 and administrators said 58. Woodruff set it at 61.

They were then asked to establish a score for above-standard school performance. Business/community said 77, parents/school board said 75. Teachers and administrators said 71. Woodruff said 75.

Finally, they were asked to set scores below which a school would automatically be put into the "improvement needed" category and required to follow a remedial program. This time it was a double question: Should there be a minimum score and what should it be?

A hundred percent of the business group said the bottom line should be 53. Forty-two percent of the teachers thought it should be 42. Only 32 percent of the administrators, mostly principals, thought there should be a bottom line and put it at 41. In this case, with school board members showing some influence, 67 per cent of the parents/school board group recommended the lowest cut point, 37. Woodruff set it at 45.

Teachers and administrators also tried unsuccessfully to keep the "improvement" ratings low. When asked how many low-achieving students needed to show improvement to meet standards, teachers said 2 percent. Administrators said 3 percent. Parents said 9 percent, and business, 5 percent. Woodruff said 5 percent, but the state school board overruled her and set it at 8 percent.

The picture is clear. In every category measuring school performance, a majority of the representatives of Delaware teachers and administrators wanted the lowest possible standards. Woodruff anticipated that. She kept educators out of the parent and business/community groups for fear they would pollute those results.

Teachers and administrators have inadvertently answered a vital question: Why did Delaware schools slide and why does the achievement gap persist? It's because too many "professional" educators consistently value school performance less than their clients.