Historically, The Front Porch has published the cumulative, average CSAP scores of the three public elementary schools in the Stapleton community. This year, the publication may have gone a little too far in the eyes of many parents. “I think it is important for people in the community to see where students are at as a whole at each school,” said Westerly Creek parent Leah Morningstar. “It can help other parents in making decisions on where they want their child to go to school, and most importantly, gives bragging rights to the parents and people involved with the winning school. But, publishing the actual scores of each student along with their parent’s names, is just a bit intrusive.”
The Front Porch made the request for the CSAP scores and was allowed access to them through the freedom of information act. “I can speak for all of the principals when I say we did not want to give this much information to the paper,” said Swigert Elementary Principal Vogel. “We are doing our best as educators, and we know the students are doing their best as well. There is no need to publish the scores with that level of detail.”
“I am outraged,” said Roberts Elementary parent Autumn Poolman. “There is no need to humiliate anyone, namely me, and that is exactly what they are doing by publishing these scores.” The editor for the Front Porch, Mark Herold did not see the potential issue when they made the decision to publish the scores. “We are a news organization, and are trying to give as much detail to the community as possible,” said Herold. “There was never an intent to embarrass any of the families, however, having your scores published might make people a little more accountable, and therefore, improve scores in the long run.”
Herold said that they will re-evaluate the decision to publish the scores next year. “We will weigh the benefits of publishing versus not. I will say that our online paper has received more hits than ever, and I have to believe these scores are related to that.” Herold went on to say that it is also possible where they would only include the top 20% of scores from each school. ]]>