School District 51 is seriously considering asking voters this fall for money to build new schools.

Voters might very well ask District 51 how new schools are going to help student performance.

Data released last week show that ever since voters OK’d a $109 million bond issue four years ago, third-grade reading scores have done nothing but decline.

Third-grade reading scores as measured by CSAP dropped to their lowest level in 10 years. The scores reached a high of 77 percent proficient in 2004. Since then they have dropped to 73 percent in 2005, to 71 percent in 2006, to 70 percent in 2007, and to 65 percent this year.

That’s hardly something the district can tout when it begins a bond-issue campaign.

Said Andy Laase, the district’s assistant director of elementary education: “We have to reverse that trend line. We’re not serving the kids at the level we want to. Even if that line stabilizes, that’s not enough.”

We’ll certainly agree with that. And we’ll be the first to admit that there’s no magic bullet out there to take care of the problem. The district has a daunting challenge.

We will suggest that significant problems with student achievement should be dealt with at the very highest levels of the district. Student performance does, after all, go to the core mission of District 51.

Yet one seldom hears top administrators or board members discuss the problem. Former board members Jim Gebhart and Dan Robinson both raised that issue. They told fellow board members and top administrators that District 51 for too many years has worried more about spin than performance. But it appears nobody in the district to date has taken that criticism to heart.

They should. It’s certain to be a part of any bond issue campaign and the district has an obligation to show voters just how new buildings are going to increase student learning.