You can find almost any story you want in the latest round of student test scores for the Salem-Keizer School District.

There’s hard-won progress. There’s an overwhelming amount of work ahead to get more of the district’s 38,000 students on track. There’s improvement – at a frustratingly slow pace for many students, parents, taxpayers and educators. And there are large disparities between students along lines of income and race.

The Oregon Department of Education released scores from its spring tests in English reading and writing, science, and math last week.

The numbers are intended to give the public and policymakers one indicator of how schools are performing. Salem Reporter took a deeper look into the numbers to help you make sense of them.

Reading improved for the first time in

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