A class of third-graders at West Fork Elementary School sits at tables of four or five, talking to each other as they figure out the single problem on the page. They know being able to explain how they reached an answer will be more important than getting it right.

The teacher, Leticia Greene, moves quietly from table to table, peering over their shoulders. She occasionally drops to near eye level to help them clear a hurdle in their thought process.

The students have to divide fractions. They are encouraged to think in terms of strategies and to use what they know to answer the question. The idea behind the math process in West Fork is to “see if you can learn something today that may make your life easier tomorrow,” Greene said.

In a traditional third-grade math class, Greene said, students would never have attempted to solve such problems.

“We’re looking for the most efficient way to work the problem, which also means the fastest way,” Greene said.

There was a time when students sat in rows of six or seven desks, faces forward. The teacher wrote on the blackboard, and students emulated her work.

That was then.

Today’s students learn more than their predecessors, and they must master the knowledge at a younger age.

For example, kindergartners should show up at school this month knowing not just their shapes — triangle, circle and square — but those shapes in three-dimensional terms: pyramid, sphere and cube. They also should understand why those shapes are three-dimensional.

Arkansas students are better educated than 20 or 30 years ago, thanks to a series of reforms that started statewide in the 1980s and have moved to an international stage.

The latest reform wave breaks over grades three through eight this fall in a program called Common Core. Arkansas launched Common Core standards a year ago in kindergarten, first and second grades.

Running To Stand Still

Arkansans have become better educated, but so has the rest of the country, said Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research.

“We had to improve just to stand still.”

Studies show a correlation between high education attainment and high wage states. That’s why raising the high school and college graduation rates is important. More companies will come to Arkansas as the work force becomes better educated, Deck said, but “it won’t be in one fell swoop.”

It’s important, educators say, that Arkansas students keep up with students in other states to participate in an ever expanding global market and to be prepared to fill jobs that haven’t even been invented yet.

As for economic growth, the per capita personal income in Arkansas, compared to the per capita personal income in the U.S., has increased just more than 14 percentage points between 1969 and 2009, Deck said.

“We’re not at the same level of prosperity as elsewhere, but we have made a heck of a gain,” she said. “So, we have to run even faster to increase education attainment.”

Raising The Bar

Education reforms of one kind or another have been spilling out of the state Legislature since Bill Clinton was governor in the early 1980s. Those plans included higher, minimum standards for student achievement.

“I was just coming out of college as a teacher in 1983,” said Tom Kimbrell, state education commissioner. The reforms meant a common set of learning standards for every district in the state, he said. Before, every high school had to teach Algebra 1, for example, but there was no requirement for what curriculum a school called Algebra 1.

In 1999, the state created its own accountability system in the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing, Assessment and Accountability Program. It required students to demonstrate proficiency in core academic subjects based on standardized tests. Children who were not proficient faced remedial classes, while schools that failed to perform faced state sanctions.

The tests become known as the Arkansas benchmarks.

The federal government in recent decades hasn’t been far behind in terms of reform movements.

No Child Left Behind, introduced in 2001, stated expectations in more rigid terms and raised accountability a notch or two for schools nationwide. If a school’s students didn’t meet those expectations for knowledge, the school was sanctioned.

“Now we have to take seriously and be accountable for every child,” Kimbrell said. “We can’t hide kids because we have to report all scores by subgroups. We used to be able to mask some students who were underperforming.”

Schools can’t do that any more, primarily because No Child Left Behind required 95 percent of all students be assessed. The state could teach by any standards they set, but students had to meet increasing levels of performance each year.

No Child Left Behind also forced educators to more closely examine what was being taught and how it was being taught, said Reed Greenwood, a professor of education at the University of Arkansas. For example, the curriculum has evolved to include much more student-led learning.

New Wave

For the first time, 46 states and the District of Columbia, have adopted a same set of standards. The Common Core of State Standards is good, educators say, because it requires greater accountability, computer-based annual testing, and students in Gentry will be on the same page with students in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“We will have a commonality of expectations for student learning, a progression of learning we think we have stepped up,” Kimbrell said.

Arkansas already has fairly high standards in math and literacy, he said. He expects to see a rise in the difficulty for students as the expectations of learning move down to earlier grades, especially in math. Third-graders will be expected to multiply and divide within 100, understand fractions as numbers and solve problems of measurement and estimation of intervals of time, liquid volumes and masses of objects — all of which were taught in grades above third until this year. Most all math concepts will be taught at an earlier age.

The Common Core Standards also are benchmarked against other industrialized countries. The business community backs Common Core, said Randy Zook, president and chief executive officer for the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce.

“We absolutely need Common Core ... we have to have it to move ahead,” he said. “It’s no longer enough to outpace West Virginia or Mississippi,” Zook said. “The real competition is from countries like Singapore, Norway or Korea.”

Common Core standards will move to the ninth through 12th grades in the 2013-14 school year.

Classroom Level

Bringing nationally standardized reform to the Northwest Arkansas classroom level has meant a change in style to teacher led rather than teacher driven, said Jill Jackson, a kindergarten teacher at Asbell Elementary School in Fayetteville.

“Even in kindergarten, we’re teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, which are life skills,” Jackson said. “Kindergarten is more than letters, numbers, words and rhyming.”

How do you teach a roomful of 5-year-olds to be critical thinkers?

“Lots of modeling,” Jackson said. “Showing them how to do it, then doing the activity together and then do it on their own.

“Children can do this, even at 5 years old,” she continued. “It’s a new way to thinking.”

The modeling can involve suggesting a problem or situation and asking students to think about the task at hand and how they would handle it. Or it can be showing a child a particular behavior that should be used in a particular situation.

“Kids are engaged actively in their learning,” Springdale Superintendent Jim Rollins said of changes he has seen brought about by the reform movements.

He noted students at Young Elementary School who won the state Legos competition or the students at Springdale High School who work with robotics before and after school, even on weekends.

“We’re always looking for a better way to deliver instruction to get this kind of engagement,” Rollins said. “We’re not just peddling an idea. These kids are working at the highest level. And, these are kids from all backgrounds.”

Greenwood, who served several terms on the Fayetteville School Board and was a member of the state Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education in 2001, noted some discrepancies in the level of improvement in test scores among children in poverty.

“The free and reduced (-price lunch) kids are not performing as well. They are improving, but not as much,” he said.

Individual Results

Parents aren’t quick to jump on any bandwagon that indicates students are better educated today than even a few years ago.

“Every child learns differently,” said Rhonda McDonnell, an active school volunteer for years in Fayetteville. Her three children were stairsteps moving through the Fayetteville School District. The oldest graduated in 2007; the middle child graduated in 2009; the youngest, in 2011.

“They all received good educations,” McDonnell said.

Although four years apart, McDonnell said she didn’t think the youngest was any better educated than the oldest.

“I don’t think the youngest was smarter or learned more than the oldest. The expectations of the family are more important than anything else.”

Another parent with three children, six years apart, Laura Underwood, recalls her oldest son, now a graduate of Baylor University, didn’t have Benchmark testing and the other measures that have come along. His classes also had parties to celebrate different holidays.

Her youngest son, who will be a senior at Fayetteville High School, has been tested every step of the way. As he has progressed through the grades, there have been fewer and fewer fun activities.

“I don’t know where the fun is in school anymore,” Underwood said.

School is more difficult and more stressful on students and teachers these days, but are students better educated?

“I can’t answer yes or no,” she said.