Just as the new Maine Educational Assessment tests are a challenge to students, using the bounty of results from the tests in a useful and informative way will challenge teachers and parents. More than in any year previously, the MEA is worthwhile only if communities look beyond the numerical scores and into the details of their students’ strengths and weaknesses.

Comparisons are obvious — school committee members check out their district’s reading, writing and math scores to see whether they outperformed neighbors. The reward to the higher scorers, of course, is bragging rights. But the danger is complacency. Maine students won’t face competition at college or for jobs just from students in a nearby town. They need the opportunity to succeed against a standard that would challenge any student in the world.

Maine’s Learning Results are an attempt to set world-class standards, and the MEA is designed to determine how well students are measuring up to them. The Learning Results will not be fully in place for a few more years, and certainly both will undergo further modification as experience teaches what works and what does not, but no matter where they eventually lead, the information they provide about Maine students is extremely valuable right now.

For the first time, the MEAs will provide parents with detailed information about their child’s performance in reading, math, science and technology and social studies. These reports include explanations of the subject areas and how they were scored, as well as a student’s score compared with the average school, district and state scores. All student writing will be returned to the schools on a CD-ROM for review. With the new information, the MEA, which has always been a valuable yardstick, becomes an even better method for measuring not only how one school is doing compared with the rest, but how well an individual student is doing against the statewide standard.

And, bragging rights aside, that should help all students improve.