Report Provides Education Measures

There is more good news on the local education front.

Students in 17 public school districts in Benton and Washington counties are performing better on standardized tests than they did fi ve years ago.

That’s the finding of the Oftce for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, which has released an education report card for the region. The Northwest Arkansas Council partnered with the UA oft ce to produce the 2013 Northwest Arkansas Education Report Card.

This is a collection of public information about each school district, including how they tested in math and literacy in the 2012-13 school year compared to performance fi ve years earlier in the 2007-08 school year.

That overall change is the headline. Average literacy scores jumped from 69 percent to 81 percent while mathematics scores went up from 74 percent to 78 percent in the fi ve-year period.

The numbers being compared are the percentages of students who tested at proficient and advanced levels on Arkansas Benchmark exams that third- and eighth-graders take annually.

These are averages among the districts. But the 16-page report card breaks down the numbers for eachof the school districts in Benton and Washington counties, examining scores on Benchmark exams, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and high school end-ofcourse exams.

The Northwest Arkansas Report Card is posted online at www.oft cefor educationpolicy.org. The site also off ers other research data on Arkansas education.

To say the least, keeping up with changes in education in this state and elsewhere is dift cult. Standards and tests change in the highly competitive environment. But researchers pulled together pertinent data to date, sorting out for anyone interested a wide variety of statistics on each of the districts.

Beyond those math and literacy scores, among the most interesting elements of the report are the demographic comparisons and high school graduation rates.

District enrollments range from a low of 319 to a high of 20,141 in the twocounties, with the numbers of gifted and talented students or those requiring special education making up no less than 4 percent nor more than 15 percent in any of the districts.

The numbers of homeless students is usually 1 or 2 percent but goes as high as 9 percent in the Gentry district. Students enrolled for federal free and reduced-price lunches range as high as 82 percent in Decatur schools. At least 40 percent of the students in 13 of the 17 Northwest Arkansas districts are on the free lunch program.

How are those statistics for a region that is supposed to be so prosperous? They do compare favorably with the statewide average that shows 61 percent of students qualifying for free lunches. Nevertheless, six of the 17 local districts (Decatur, Gentry, Greenland, Lincoln, Rogers and Springdale) hit or exceeded the statewide average.

The point here is that Northwest Arkansas has its share of poverty and the resultant educational challenges. That and many other elements factor into how successful the districts can be in educating their students, which leads to the matter of graduation rates.

As the report itself notes, there is no perfect measure of success but graduation rates show a district’s “standards for fi nishing.”

How did the Northwest Arkansas districts fare?

Some did better, some worse than the statewide average of 84.1 percent in school year 2011-12.

The best performance came from Farmington School District at 94.8 percent. Elkins was next highest with a 94.2 percent graduation rate and Pea Ridge followed with 91.4 percent.

The rest of the region’s districts graduated less than 90 percent and were closer to the statewide average.

Here are their scores: Bentonville, 85.2 percent;

Decatur, 80 percent;

Fayetteville, 86.8 percent;

Gentry, 83.3 percent;

Gravette, 87.6 percent;

Greenland, 88.4 percent;

Lincoln, 87.9 percent;

Prairie Grove, 88.2 percent;

Rogers, 82.7 percent; Siloam Springs, 88.1 percent;

Springdale, 82 percent; and West Fork, 88 percent.

Improving graduation rates is a major goal of local districts, institutions of higher learning and other education proponents in the region.

That’s as it should be.

And progress on these test scores should encourage more students to stay in school and en route to a high school diploma.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.

Opinion, Pages 10 on 01/05/2014

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