Every person, at every level, can work toward that vision in his or her own context. See if there are any kids not participating. Despite a highly transient population, attendance is over 99 percent here. And Fernangeles parents move heaven and earth to keep their children in this school, which recently doubled the number of fourth graders in the highest quartile for reading. When the gas man comes to fix the stove, their children serve as translators.
Nothing is more important.
You may care about only part of what is tested, about it all, or about very little of it. If you want to make decisions about what or how to teach a particular child, don't go to a test designed to determine eligibility for a diploma-use an assessment designed for your purposes. Depending on your questions about student learning, one or another of these kinds of information may be right for you. Look at the questions it includes-they can greatly influence the kinds of scores it yields for students in particular circumstances. Only the best of tests provide a level of detail that can signal ways the system could do better by kids.