Today’s newspaper features the first installment of The Journal News’ special five-day series, “Our Schools, Our Money,” which examines test scores, property taxes and student achievement in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties. Read it all here.

The project, a joint effort with School Evaluation Services, a unit of Standard and Poor’s, caps months of work by a team of reporters and editors, including myself and other writers, Diana Costello, Randi Weiner and former staff reporter Alice Gomstyn, education editor Lanning Taliaferro and a long list of photographers, graphic artists and copy editors.

The goal of the series is to examine the relationship between the school property taxes residents pay and the achievement of students as measured by state test scores. Read on for more details about the series.

With School Evaluation Services, we gathered median home prices and average property taxes for all 52 K-12 districts in our region and SES developed a new measure of achievement: Performance on State Tests, or POST, a combined pass rate for the 18 exams given in grades three through 12. The information, contained in A Data User’s Guide to School Performance, Home Values and Property Taxes in the Lower Hudson Valley, examines the price residents pay for education and what they get for their money. View the guide and more education data at http://www.schoolmatters.com

The team spent the past six months interviewing hundreds of parents, students, teachers, school administrators, experts, advocates and other sources while visiting schools throughout the Lower Hudson Valley. For our stories, we examined the data in the Data User Guide’s, making sure to take into account the demographic makeup of different districts. We delve into issues of property tax reform, state aid, school budgets, the challenges of educating poor and disabled children, higher education and many other topics.

In the guide and in stories, we offer readers multiple ways to look at education in the region. However, we did not rank districts because there are varying opinions as to what constitutes a quality education and they are all valid. However, using the data provided by School Evaluation Services, The Journal News performed its own analysis to identify “Better Buys” school districts. They are eight districts in our region that had higher test scores than all districts that cost less than they did and several that cost more. They also outperformed the regional average. In short, they represent one common view of value: relatively high student performance on state tests at a relatively low cost. You’ll read about them on Wednesday. That analysis was done independently of School Evaluation Services.

While there appears to be a link between test scores and taxes— the more residents pay the higher scores tend to be — many districts questioned our report. Many said there is no reliable link between taxes and scores because too many factors influence a district’s tax rate. Among them: the availability of commercial property to share the tax burden, state aid and the number of not-for-profits not paying taxes in a district.

Even considering those factors, we’d like to explain why the analysis in is still valid. Despite various influences, the tax rate is the price residents pay for education. Many people already weigh that cost when choosing where to live. They can decide what weight to give all of the factors that affect taxes.

Schools also say using test scores as a gauge of performance doesn’t capture everything they offer students, including college preparation and arts programs as well as extracurricular and enrichment activities. To answer that, I’ll go straight to the Data User’s Guide:

The Guide is designed to help readers compare school districts using “standardized� indicators that are collected and reported the same way in every school district. Standardized information about co-curricular and extracurricular programs is not available across all districts. Still, it is important for readers to understand that schools do not limit their educational programs to the subjects measured by state tests. But the 18 tests used for the Guide do fulfill two critical requirements:
• They are universal. All districts are responsible for helping their students meet State Learning Standards as measured by these 18 tests.
• They are fundamental. School districts may have other learning goals, but they are supplemental to — or at least build upon the prerequisite of — mastering the “basics� of English language arts, math, science and social studies.

Used together, we believe the indicators provide the basis for a valid analysis of price vs. performance, and we think they closely parallel the information many homeowners consider as they look for an affordable place to live and for good schools.

Let us know what you think of our analysis and the series. Comment here or you can e-mail me at dworley@lohud.com. We encourage you to visit this blog every day to share your thoughts and answer daily poll questions about education in the region.