Let’s pretend for a moment that the state test results released Thursday showed that District 51 students were among the highest-achieving in Colorado.

Would that help or hurt the district’s attempts to get voters to back a bond issue and mill-levy override? The needs haven’t changed. There are still abundant structural deficiencies, shabby interiors, outdated books and an insufficient number of computers and tablets for the district to reach peak performance.

It’s a safe bet that many property owners would say, “the schools are doing just fine; why should we pay more?” Which is the exact opposite of the twisted cart-before-the-horse logic we often hear – that people would be happy to pay more when D51 does a better job with existing resources.

The fact is, D51 students scored considerably below the Colorado average in math and language arts. As The Sentinel’s Katie Langford reported, results of the PARCC tests taken in the spring aren’t much better than the previous year’s scores.

Read more at The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.