KBMS continues academic struggle

Mr. Buffington,
Perhaps you should consider taking the 8th grade writing test yourself. I doubt you could pass it. Your editorial column, and other articles you "write", which appears in The Jackson Herald are obviously edited heavily by another individual with a much greater command of the English language. As evidence of your inability to write effectively, I point to the Publisher's Blog, which is accessible at the top of this web page. Your musings there are filled with misspellings, dangling prepositions, improper use of punctuation, etc.
You should not be so quick to judge when your own ability is so inadequate.
Furthermore, the most important factor in the success of a student has nothing to do with the teacher in the classroom, the administrator in the office, or the school a child attends. It has to do with the parents of that student, and how involved they are in the education of their child. Additionally it is impossible to judge how far a person has traveled, based solely upon where he now stands. You also must know where he came from. Kings Bridge Middle School has a much higher percentage of children who are from disadvantaged homes than other schools in the county. As a percentage, there are far more parents who are unconcerned about their children's education in the Kings Bridge Middle School area than there are at the other county and city schools. The 8th graders at Kings Bridge Middle School may not have statistics as impressive as other schools, but you should see how far most of them have come! The administration and teachers at that school should be commended for their effort and dedication to the education of each and every student in their school. Nobody else could do a better job, especially Mr. Buffington.

Ok.. so I added an s where I didn't need one and should have placed a couple of commas. I DO NOT WRITE FOR A LIVING! BUFFINGTON DOES! Read his blog, it makes me sound like an English professor!! He is condemning a school for poor performance on a test he couldn't pass himself! And he does no research on a topic before writing about it. He got a few raw numbers and wrote a damning article. If his only desire was to let "the numbers speak for themselves" he would have only published the numbers, and he would have left his biased and ignorant opinion off the page. So here is a very simple research project that ANY first year journalism student could complete in a day. Find a study (there is more than one) which shows the correlation between academic achievement within a school, and the number of children receiving free/reduced lunch. Those number also speak for themselves! The greater the percentage of students receiving free/reduced lunch, the greater the failure rate on standardized tests. KBMS has an extraordinarily high percentage of children receiving free/reduced lunch. Higher than any school in the county. And as for who gets the credit or blame for student success or failure, school administrators get way too much of both. Parents should get the lion's share of credit and blame. Do some homework. Publish any of the credible studies. Let THOSE numbers speak for themselves.