Englishman Sir Isaac Newton died just a few years after the French first settled Natchez, but today his wisdom helps us see Natchez’s future.

Newton gave the world volumes of scientific knowledge based on his observations and experiments.

We thought of Newton’s first law of motion — that an object in motion tends to stay in motion until some external force acts on it — this week when pouring over the Natchez-Adams Schools standardized test scores.

Results of the state tests were released to the public this week and showed that Natchez-Adams Schools have good momentum.

In total, Natchez-Adams schools saw improvement over last year’s results in 13 of 17 categories.

That’s nice momentum, something that Newton would appreciate.

And as he suggested, such motion can only be stopped by outside forces acting against it. However, just like a ball that is rolling along, if we all — parents, teachers, administrators and business and civic leaders — make up our minds to keep the ball rolling, then nothing can stop us.

As new superintendent Frederick Hill said after seeing the results, “We still have a lot of improvements to make. What we’ll be looking for next year are higher scores across the district and also to see growth from each student as they progress from each grade.”

We like the momentum shown to date and the commitment by Hill and others to keep that motion going.