In Wednesday’s paper, we ran a story explaining what the new state school assessment model means to students and other citizens of Newton County.

If you missed the story, you can read it at CovNews.com.

Normally, we wouldn’t be jumping up and down about a C+ county school improvement average, but in this case, we are pleased, certainly, but expecting more.

The bottom line on the state scoring system is that every county school has shown improvement over last year; that is a positive achievement.

We have seen signs that Newton’s schools are starting to shed the shackles of being non-performing.

We hope that under the new superintendent, this progress will continue.

The continued improvement of our school system is important to the future growth of the economy in our county.

We congratulate the teachers, students and parents who have worked hard to ensure that these improvements have been made.

We expect nothing less than continued improvement in the education system of Newton County.