LANSING -- "Great. Great."

Those were the words Friday from Lansing School District Superintendent T.C. Wallace.

Through the chaos of enormous cuts to their budgets, our local school districts fared pretty well on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, or MEAP.

"We've shown continuous improvement across the board for the last three years," Wallace said as he looked over the results.

The same cheer from Jackson Public Schools spokeswoman A'Lynne Robinson: "We had several jumps that ranged in our scoring from a 1 percent increase to a 25 percent increase," she said.

In Lansing, scores on reading were the highlight -- they saw a jump at every grade except for fourth.

Math was a bit less positive, with grades 6-8 all seeing a decrease compared with scores in 2008.

Jackson, meanwhile, jumped almost across the board -- gains school district officials there attribute to focusing more on under-achieving students, like moving them from detention rooms to so-called "tutor rooms," instead.

"We take our data -- we look at a student and say, 'Where are they struggling?'" Robinson said.

The question, then, is how per-pupil cuts will impact those efforts. Officials say that comes down to keeping good data on their students -- the better their information, the easier it'll be to tackle problem areas.

"No excuses," Wallace said. "If you continue to do what's good for kids despite the economic conditions and time, the achievement will be there."

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TO SEE HOW YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT SCORED, GO TO www.michigan.gov/mde