New York City's recent troubles with the testing of its elementary students, and the problems the city has had with the accuracy of testing data, illustrates once again the risks of placing too much emphasis on test scores.

In a week when the Roslyn Public Schools honored five high school seniors on being named semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program, and in a year when Roslyn's fourth graders achieved the highest scores in Nassau County on the state's new English Language Arts (ELA 4) assessment, it may seem inconsistent to call into question the validity of test results.

However, my purpose is not to find fault with testing in general, but to remind parents and others who are interested in the continued excellence of our schools that test scores are only one part of a much bigger picture. Standardized testing may provide a convenient means of measuring how well schools are performing, but it is only one measure among many and should never be relied on too heavily.

Clearly, there are many factors that constitute a successful school and many ways to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers and administrators. A school's tone, the sense of security that children enjoy in the building, the degree of participation of youngsters in activities such as athletics, music and art and the level of communication that exists among staff, students and parents are all at least as important as the results on test scores. A school that has all of these elements in place but poor test scores is no more a failing school than one in which the reverse is true. Academics are our first, but not our only priority.

I suspect that most parents and educators alike would agree with this point of view. Who would want their children to attend a school with excellent classroom instruction but no extracurricular activities? Or, on the other hand, who would want a school with a popular football team but below average SAT scores? Naturally, we would all like the best of all worlds for our children, but those who work with students every day and have firsthand knowledge of the complexity of running a school would be the last ones to judge a school's performance on the basis of only one element of an entire educational program.

The ELA 4 offers an excellent example of how test scores can be easily misunderstood and misused. School districts knew the tests would receive a great deal of attention in the news media because the commissioner of education had previously placed unexpected emphasis on the former third-grade reading test that the ELA 4 has now replaced. Once that old exam, which had long been used as a diagnostic tool for identifying students in need of remediation in reading, had been transformed into a litmus test on overall school performance, it came as no surprise that the new fourth grade test would be given prominence, as well.

An under-informed public can be forgiven for placing undue importance on test scores that are trumpeted by the New York State and New York City and highlighted in the newspapers, but educational leaders ought to know better. If a school is underperforming in a variety of ways, that may provide a legitimate basis for concern. But a school that does a lot of things well but falls short on one particular test - and one that has just been administered for the very first time - is another matter entirely.

It will take a few years before the results of the commissioner's ambitious effort to raise standards are known. In the meantime, we cannot afford to allow test scores to dominate our thinking about schools. This intense focus on test scores obscures the many real and important issues that face education today - keeping pace with rising enrollment in programs and facilities, confronting the challenge posed by charter schools, and establishing a more generous and more reliable system of state aid, among others.

I am always the first to admit to our staff and parents that we can always do better. However, before we make test scores the sole measure of how well our schools are doing, let us first consider the many extraordinary things that educators do for children each and every day. By all means, keep an eye on the scores, but don't forget to keep the other one focused clearly on the big picture.