Last week, when the Oregon Department of Education released the results from last school year’s proficiency testing, the sense of disappointment surrounding the numbers statewide was palpable.

Department of Education officials did their best to put a positive spin on the numbers: Look, they said, the declines in student scores in English language arts, math and science that we saw post-pandemic appear to have leveled off.

And that appears to be true, more or less. But it’s also true that there is a big pandemic gap to be filled, and that’s the case as well in Wallowa County, where the test results generally outperformed the state average. So there’s work to be done in schools across the state.

But let’s be careful about reading too much into one set of test results.

It’s true what educators say about these Smarter Balanced tests: They offer a window — but only one window — into how well our schools are performing. They do not give you a full picture of school performance. (As a completely gratuitous aside, let us note here our objection to the term “Smarter Balanced,” which seems like a name you might give a brand of margarine. But we digress.)

The tests measure how one student performs on one day on one test. If a student is having a bad day on test day in a school district with small class sizes like Wallowa County schools, that could result in a dip in the school’s results. The test is more useful as a gauge to see if a school district has systemic issues it needs to address — for example, a continued decline in math scores may indicate it’s time for a district to overhaul its curriculum.

The Smarter Balanced tests don’t do anything to measure a student’s individual growth, and that’s where educators turn to other tools. The Enterprise School District, for example, has a diagnostic test it gives to students three times a year to get a sense of how that student is progressing, and where additional work is needed. Being attentive to the needs of individual students paves the way for long-term success.

With all that said, though, it is difficult to get cheerful about test results suggesting that fewer than half of students across Oregon aren’t proficient in skills they’ll need to succeed. And it is sobering to see how much ground we lost during the pandemic.

We know that some programs make a difference: Gov. Tina Kotek, for example, called for increasing investments in after-school and summer-learning programs, and evidence suggests those programs can be effective. But the 2023 Legislature failed to fund this year’s summer programs in districts across the state, and some of those programs were scuttled. It puts you in mind of the old adage: The first step in climbing out of a hole is to stop digging.

State lawmakers and officials need to approach all of this with a renewed sense of urgency. They need to talk with educators in their communities — the people on the front lines in our schools — to find out what’s working. They need to make sure those programs have adequate funding. And they need to give educators across the state the leeway to experiment with bold new ideas.

And it’s not just up to educators and officials. Parents and community members have a big role to play in the success of their schools, the heartbeat of our communities. We can do better. Our students need us to do better.