I don't want to be too harsh, but doesn't some of the reaction to last week's big test-score news seem like whining?

For at least several years, the state has been dumbing down the standardized tests that students take. This year, the state did two things: It toughened the tests a bit, and it changed the scoring. To be considered "proficient" in English and math, children have to do better on the tests than they used to.

The toughening makes sense. Previously, the questions changed very little from one year to the next - and since teachers could see last year's questions, it wasn't hard to make sure that students were reasonably well prepared for this year's test.

Reasonably well prepared - which took shockingly little. As a result, students whose parents thought they were doing just fine could graduate and not be able to do basic college-level work.

With the tougher tests and grading this year, test scores across the state dropped. In almost every district in the state, students' achievement looks worse this year than it has for the past few years.

Predictably, scores are worst in the state's urban school districts, where concentrated poverty poses an almost insurmountable challenge to teachers.

More troubling: the test-score decline is worst in the urban districts.

I'm not going out on much of a limb to speculate that there are two reasons for that disparity:

1) In general, the districts with the highest scores are the wealthier suburban districts. That's not because their schools and teachers are better. It's because many of the children in those schools come from well-educated parents who surround them with intellectual stimulation from Day 1. Those children enter school far ahead of their poorer, urban peers. (And see Tim Macaluso's blog on what happens to students during the summer, posted on our website.)

2) Schools everywhere - but particularly in urban districts - are under intense pressure to get the scores up. (Don't expect this to get any better, by the way, as initiatives like Race to the Top continue.) It's not surprising, then, that some teachers drill children on what they might expect on those tests.

What is surprising, to me, at least, is the reaction to the tougher tests.

Some educators are insisting that it isn't "fair" to change the scoring. In a letter to the Democrat and Chronicle last week, for instance, a teacher said that changing the passing requirements after the students took the test was like changing the rules for what counts as a touchdown after the end of a game.

That's a bad comparison. The state didn't change the questions and answers after the students took the test; it simply made the passing grade more legitimate.

Here's what we all have to come to grips with: our children haven't been doing as well in school as they should have - or as well as we thought. That's particularly true in Rochester, where the latest numbers are appalling: the district's average "proficiency" rate in English was 25 percent.

Rather than whine, we ought to use the new test scores as the most dramatic evidence yet of the crisis in our urban schools.

Yes, we have to make sure that standardized tests don't corrupt education - don't result in simply teaching to the test, for instance.

Just as important, though, we need to draw the right lesson from these new scores, and respond the right way. And the right way isn't to blame teachers (although we have to make sure that all teachers are highly qualified, well trained high performers). The right way, the only way to respond is to attack - at long last - the concentrated poverty that is overwhelming children and teachers alike.

I've preached this sermon before: we have to have something like the Harlem Children's Zone - with widespread community involvement and participation by every community leader. That will be expensive.

But nothing else will work. And it's not nearly as expensive as losing thousands of our children.