Area schools have plenty to brag about
Several Northwest Arkansas colleges and universities offer residents a chance to expand their education without interrupting their careers
Northwest Arkansas has a number of bragging rights when it comes to education.
Top test scores, great attendance and low dropout rates are some of the achievements of area schools.
Benton and Washington counties have 17 public school districts, including one charter school. They range in size from the 254-student Winslow School District to the 13,132-student Springdale School District, according to unofficial enrollment tallies reported Aug. 18, 2003.
The Arkansas General Assembly approved a school-choice law this spring that requires all of the state's 308 school districts to accept students who don't live in their boundaries.
But the new regulation, Act 1272, doesn't require districts to accept those students if it means adding buildings or teachers. Several of the region's school boards passed guidelines for complying with the law that state they won't accept transfers when their enrollment reaches 85 percent of existing building capacity.
That's why few, if any, students living outside the boundaries of Bentonville, Fayetteville, Rogers and Springdale are approved each year to attend those districts, which struggle to keep up with growing enrollments.
School district boundaries don't follow municipal lines, so school officials urge home buyers on cities' edges to pull property tax records before buying a house to make sure they know which school districts their kids will attend.
A quick way to compare Arkansas districts and individual schools is to download their Report Cards, which are lists of statistics released each year by the state. Those are available at www.as-is.org/reportcard.
At the time of this guide's publication, the 2001-02 Report Cards were most current.
The following districts topped others on individual indicators from the performance reports:
- Bentonville and the Benton County School of the Arts shared the region's top proficiency rate in a single subject on the Arkansas Benchmark Exam, which measures what students know and should be able to do in grades four, six and eight. The district and charter school shared a 85 percent proficiency rate in fourth-grade literacy.
- The Benton County School of the Arts scored the highest in a single grade on the Stanford Achievement Test, which Arkansas has traditionally required of all fifth-, seventh- and 10th-graders. That school's fifth-graders scored at the 72nd percentile compared to children around the nation.
- Elkins had the highest attendance rate, 95.5 percent.
- Greenland and Lincoln shared the lowest dropout rate, 0.2 percent, which factors all dropouts in grades seven through 12.
- Greenland had the lowest college remediation rate, 20 percent. That figure measures the rate of freshmen entering Arkansas colleges or universities who are required to take at least one remedial class.
- Fayetteville had the highest percentage of teachers who hold master's degrees, 48 percent.
- Fayetteville spent the most per pupil, $7,044.
- Springdale's average teacher salary of $43,959 topped the average pay among all Arkansas districts during the 2002-03 school year.
