Arkansas 12th-graders trailed the national averages in math and reading on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam and most scored below proficient, but state test-takers made statistically significant gains in comparison with 2009 results.
Arkansas and Connecticut were the only two states to makes gains in both subjects. That's out of 13 states for which individual state results are available.
Nationally, 12th-grade achievement on what is also known as The Nation's Report Card remained unchanged between 2009 and 2013, according to data released Wednesday by the federal organizations tasked with carrying out the testing program.
The math and reading tests were given to 92,000 of last year's high school seniors -- drawing a representative sample of students from each state -- during a testing window that stretched from January through March 2013.
In Arkansas, about 4,800 students in about 100 high schools took one or the other of the 90-minute exams, each of which included a combination of multiple-choice and long-answer questions.
Arkansas test-takers earned an average score of 150 on the math section of the test, up from 146 in 2009, the last time the test was given. The national average for public school students was 152.
The average reading score for Arkansas students was 285, up from 280 four years before but below the 287 average for the nation.
The improved 12th-grade results come during a period in which Gov. Mike Beebe and other education policymakers have pushed to strengthen pre-kindergarten-through-12th-grade education, reduce the number of new college students who require remediation and increase the percentage of Arkansans who attain bachelor's degrees.
Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said Wednesday that the improved test results indicate that the state is going in the right direction.
"It's gratifying from the standpoint of the decades-long effort to improve our education system," DeCample said. "We hope to see more of these improvements in the coming years."
Shane Broadway, director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, also noted the emphasis on improving general education and on making greater opportunities available for high school graduates to attain scholarships, such as the 4-year-old, lottery-financed Arkansas Academic Challenge scholarships available to thousands of students and an expanded number of Governor's Distinguished Scholarships.
"There is now something more at the end for them in terms of opportunity," Broadway said about high school students and the state scholarships. "They know that if they can do certain things, college is a possibility for them when it was not a few years ago."
Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said Wednesday that "there is always room for improvement" but he was pleased with the state results, including improvements made by students in different racial and ethnic groups.
In particular the achievement gap in math narrowed between white and black Arkansas test-takers in 2013. Black students had an average score that was 26 points lower than white students, narrower than the 33-point gap in 2009.
The assessment results are reported both by scale scores and by achievement levels. In regard to achievement levels, 33 percent of Arkansas test-takers scored at a proficient or better level on the National Assessment reading test, compared to 30 percent of state test-takers in 2009. Nationally, 36 percent scored at proficient or better on the 2013 exam.
A proficient-level score is an indication that a student is successful with challenging content material.
Thirty-nine percent of Arkansas test-takers in reading scored at a basic level, and 28 percent scored at a below-basic level.
In math, 17 percent -- or fewer than one in five Arkansas test-takers -- scored at a proficient level, which was up from 15 percent four years before. A total of 36 percent scored at a below-basic level, which was an improvement from 41 percent in 2009. Forty-six percent scored at the basic level in 2013, a category that was at 43 percent in 2009.
Nationally, 24 percent -- or almost one in four students -- scored at proficient or better on the math test, 36 percent scored at a below-basic level, and 39 percent scored at a basic level.
In math, male Arkansas students improved by six points between 2009 and 2013, black students improved by nine points, Hispanic students by seven points and white students improved by three points, all according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Assessment Governing Board.
In reading, the high school senior male test-takers improved by seven points in Arkansas and white students improved by five points over 2009 results, all considered statistically significant.
The Arkansas Department of Education staff attributes the state increases to teacher commitment to student learning, rigorous standards, a system of accountability for student learning and the use of data to gauge what students know and need to be taught, Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the agency, said Wednesday.
Pam Byrd, the state's National Assessment of Educational Progress coordinator, was elated by the gains and called them the fruit of teachers' hard work.
"There are a lot of different projects in place, and you probably can't point a finger at any one of them," Byrd said. "The combination of all of them, you hope, had an effect."
She described the results from the academically challenging national assessment as "data-rich" and "wonderful information" for use by state policymakers, researchers and grant-writers, as well as by educators.
Gary Ritter, director of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville's Office for Education Policy and one of the researchers likely to use the data, also welcomed the results.
Ritter speculated that students who benefited academically from earlier improvement efforts in the elementary and middle grades have moved into the high school grades.
That's been reflected in the performance of incoming college freshmen.
The state Department of Higher Education reported in January that 43.2 percent of the high school graduating Class of 2013 attending the state's public colleges required remediation, the lowest percentage since 1988, when the state began requiring college freshmen to meet placement standards.
Ritter also complimented Arkansas' willingness to be one of 13 states to volunteer to be singled out in the reporting of the results.
"I view it as a good sign that we are participating so that we can gauge our improvement against the nation."
That pilot program by the National Assessment Governing Board required more Arkansas students to take the test than would have been required if Arkansas was just part of the national sample of students.
The others that participated included Connecticut, which pushed its above-average results in 2009 to even higher scores in both math and reading in 2013. Idaho and West Virginia also posted higher math scores in 2013 than in 2009.
Other participating states were Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Florida and Tennessee.
Other data gleaned from the National Assessment report:
• White students, who made up 66 percent of the tested students in Arkansas, earned an average score of 156 in math and 292 in reading. Forty-four percent scores at proficient or better in reading, as did 24 percent in math.
• Black students, who made up 21 percent of the sample of tested students, earned an average score of 130 in math 263 in reading. Thirteen percent scored at proficient or better in reading, as did 3 percent in math.
• Hispanic students made up 9 percent of the testing pool, score an average and 143 in math and 278 in reading. Twenty-four percent of the students scored at proficient or better in reading, as did 10 percent in math.
A section on 05/08/2014