Editor, Gazette Journal:

I am writing this letter prior to Election Day (Tuesday, Nov. 8); however, this will be read post-Election Day. For the individual who was elected to the Mathews County School Board, Congratulations, I look forward to working with you on this publicly elected board.

In one of the letters to the editor last week (“Thoughts on candidates,” Nov. 3 Readers Write), Mathews schools were highlighted surrounding the ratings from Niche, a “ranking and review website.” Niche ranked Mathews as receiving C- in relation to students’ abilities in Reading and Math.

The author stated that in Mathews “less than 40 percent of the kids can read or do math at their grade level.” After reading this letter, I was highly dismayed so I went to the website to learn about their rankings. I found that the site uses opinions as part of their data points. I then went to the recent objective data from the Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning testing this year (20...