Believe it or not, New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees and West Elementary School Principal Alice Morrison have much in common.

Brees and his offensive team carefully analyze the defense of their opponents prior to taking the field.

They look at every defensive formation, hone their plays and create a game plan for how to win on Sundays.

Similarly, as Morrison details, she and the others on the West team managed to pull the school from earning an F grade last year to earning a C on this year’s statewide accountability results.

Morrison and others should earn the community’s gratitude for the success. She and others in the Natchez-Adams School District are doing all that they can to meet these government expectations.

By all accounts, the schools are improving. One of the interesting factors, however, was that they achieved success by moving around teachers who had good experience teaching for the test. That would seem to indicate that the non-testing grade students received the less qualified teachers, but perhaps that’s unfair.

Still, though, one must wonder if somehow our children would simply be better off if our education system simply focused on educating children first, then worried about the test scores second.

Of course, that’s a bit like asking Brees to simply have fun and play like he doesn’t care if the Saints win or not.

We’re a “win” driven society, but we fear, at least in some small part, our state and nation’s desire to have “winners” in the classroom may cause us to miss the point of the education game.