The Steamboat Pilot & Today

The sports analogy about the Atlanta Braves was the most stinging part. I wrote:

"Is Atlanta a great franchise or a notorious underachiever? The answer, according to the media, is both. So, too, is the Steamboat Springs School District."

Read that and it comes across as suggesting that I think the district is a notorious underachiever. Bad choice of words on my part.

The point I was trying to hammer home in the column is that the school district is at the very top of CSAP scores year in and year out, ranking among the best districts in the state and making it very difficult to go much higher. Yet we in the media always want to break down the scores and hone in on what wasn't accomplished rather than what was.

I used a bad analogy — sports and public school standardized testing are not the same thing. I do not believe the district is a notorious underachiever — in fact, I think the opposite is true. Sadly, my column was not more clear on that point, and in this business you live with the words you write, not only what you meant them to say but what people read them to say.

Scott Stanford, Editor
sstanford@steamboatpilot.com

(970) 871-4221/(970) 291-9278