18 state school districts get A’s
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/238774/
Eighteen Arkansas school districts earned A’s or A-minuses, and 14 other systems received failing marks in the latest in a series of Arkansas Policy Foundation studies.
The nonprofit policy foundation, which advocates for improvements in state tax laws and public education, based the letter grades on the results earned by ninth-graders in each of the districts on the spring 2007 Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The Iowa test is a nationally standardized test that compares the achievement levels of Arkansas students with a national sample of students who took the same test.
Greg Kaza, executive director of the Little Rock-based foundation, said the organization has produced the grades for three consecutive years to show that grading and ranking districts can be a way to hold districts and educators responsible for student achievement. He said the effort lays the groundwork for a grading system developed by the state that comes on line next year.
“Early on, back in the ’ 90 s, this was considered to be a very unachievable goal,” Kaza said about grading districts. “And now the state is on the verge of having that occur. We’re simply trying to show that it’s possible to do it, and we’ve done it. We’ve done it for three years and I expect we will do it for a few more years.”
A sample of the districts receiving A’s for their ninth-grade test results included Bentonville, Conway, Lake Hamilton, Caddo Hills, Fayetteville and Mountain Home. A district receiving an A grade is considered to be performing “significantly” higher than average.
Others that received A’s were McCrory, Valley View, Greenwood, Searcy, Viola, Ouachita, Lakeside in Garland County, Melbourne, Mena, Norfork, Lamar and Bergman.
The districts receiving F’s were Forrest City, Strong, Osceola, Blytheville, Dermott, England, Dollarway, Helena-West Helena, Brinkley, Lakeside in Chicot County, Augusta, Lafayette, Earle and Turrell.
Forrest City, Earle and Dermott received similarly low scores in the 2004-05 and 2005-06 ranking studies done by the foundation.
The foundation calls for administrative restructuring and expanded charter school and school choice options in the 41 districts that received grades of D’s and F’s.
“In order for the ninthgraders and all other students in these 41 districts to be able to pursue a lifetime of quality learning, the parents should have the ability to turn to another source / supplier, whether it be charter schools, another public school district, home schooling or a private religious school,” the foundation study said.
A total of 62 districts received B’s. Another 123 earned C’s. And 27 earned D’s. The Dumas School District was not included in the 2006-07 study because students didn’t take the Iowa test. It was scheduled when the city was coping with widespread tornado damage.
Among Pulaski County’s three districts, Little Rock and Pulaski County Special both received C’s, while North Little Rock earned a D for the 2006-07 results.
The Pulaski County Special district ranked 185 th, Little Rock ranked 187 th and North Little Rock ranked 210 th.
The top-ranked district in the state was McCrory, followed by Valley View, Greenwood, Searcy, Viola, Conway, Lake Hamilton, Bentonville and Ouachita.
Top-ranking districts should be called on to explain their successes, Kaza said.
Of the districts that are exceptional, Kaza said that “perhaps they are using some methods that all the districts in the state would benefit by having a better understanding of those methods.”
“I think right now there is a lot of informal sharing of information. Going forward, it is likely there will be researchers, perhaps from our own organization, who will take a look at those best practices and share that information with all the districts.”
The call for more school district accountability and transparency comes at a time when state funding for public education has increased significantly.
That additional funding is part of the state’s response to an Arkansas Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling that declared the state’s public education system to be inequitable, inadequate and, as a result, unconstitutional.
Julie Johnson Thompson, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Education, said the new system is designed to give schools a numerical rating based on the results from Arkansas Benchmark and End-of-Course exams, which are given in grades three through eight and at the conclusion of some high school courses.
“It is a fairly simple formula where you get so much credit for all the students who score at advanced levels and so much credit for all the proficient scores,” Thompson said. “They are weighted scores, basically.”
Act 35 of the special 2003 legislative session on education authorized a state system that would rate schools at levels of 1 through 5, with 5 being “a school of excellence” and a 1 being a school “in need of immediate improvement.”
For all schools that receive an annual performance rate of Level 1 for two consecutive years, the students in the schools will be offered public school choice with transportation provided.
The state’s numerical system goes into full effect in 2009-10.
The foundation’s annual district study is on the verge of change. Arkansas discontinued the use of the Iowa test in the most recent 2007-08 school year and replaced it in the ninth grade with the Stanford Achievement Test, 10 th edition, a standardized test published by a different company.
Kaza said that while the foundation is likely to continue a district ranking system, a decision on its format has not been finalized.
Kaza said the most recent study using the 2007 Iowa test results is to be posted soon to the foundation’s Web site: www. reformarkansas. org.