Learn from Dixon's success

The first thing Utah's public school districts should do is study Dixon Middle School in Provo and see how they're doing it.

Students at Dixon, as this newspaper reported earlier this week, consistently score much higher than the state average on eighth-grade math in the Utah Criterion Referenced Tests. And they do this despite the fact that about 55 percent of Dixon's students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and a quarter of them are ethnic minorities — including some who come from homes where English is not the primary language.

In the United States, education traditionally has been considered an issue best handled on the state and local levels. Under such a system, the best educators can work their unique methods to produce results, and others can learn from and copy those ideas that work best.

But for that to happen, those other educators have to look at success elsewhere the right way. It can't be threatening to them. It ought to be empowering.

A Heritage Foundation study nearly a decade ago found that the nation's best performing principals and teachers were having a difficult time struggling against administrations that resented their success. For instance, a principal at an inner-city school in Atlanta, Alfonso Jessie, had found a way to consistently teach students so they could perform far above the national average in reading. Yet he faced nothing but hostility from his peers and bosses. We hope things have changed since then.

At Dixon, teachers describe rules that require students to take lecture notes and turn them in for grading. They give students regular review tests that cover the entire year's curriculum. They require students to explain all the steps they take to solve math problems. The teachers themselves have to be proficient in algebra and geometry, and they share their successful strategies with each other.

The natural human inclination is for teachers at other schools to feel competitive and to resent such a consistent performance. A better idea would be for all other middle schools in the state to study Dixon and see whether any of its ideas would work for them.

Dixon's teachers and students should be commended for their consistently strong math scores. Their performance ought to lift the entire state.