Of course, a great deal of activity on this blog will focus on the nuts and bolts of schools — tests, teachers, and even tiffs about school buildings. As mid-riff watchers are well aware, we have talked a bunch about the Fayetteville millage over the past week. 

For me, a mere academic, the local story is not as interesting as news across the Natural State.  And, since a lot of the recent back and forth has been controversial, let me engineer a change of pace and steer clear of controversy … I simply want to start your weekend off with some good news and talk about a report from a UA Research Unit — the Office for Education Policy (OEP).  The report, Highlighting Top Achieving Arkansas Schools, is by no means a fancy statistical analysis or a complicated study.  Instead, this OEP report merely recognizes the excellent performance of many students and schools throughout the state, thus reminding us of the true work of schools (teach kids stuff) and reminding us that our Arkansas schools may be doing better than many of us think. 

For example, the first section of the report highlights the top 20 elementary and middle schools across the entire state in both Math and Literacy.  In many of these schools, more than 90% of the school’s students are scoring at advanced or proficient on the state’s exams.  Topping the list of elementary schools was the Vilonia Academy of Technology for math (100% of its students earned score of proficient or advanced) and the Park Magnet School in Hot Springs for literacy.  For middle schools, the Vilonia Academy of Service Learning and Technology led the state in math scores while the Umpire High School in Wickes and the Lisa Academy Middle School topped the state on the literacy exam.

Is this just a list of the state’s most advantaged schools?  Sure, on these lists, we find some of the usual suspects — wealthy schools in the Conways, Bentonvilles, Bryants, and Fayettevilles of the state — posting very high numbers.  But we also see so-called poor schools in the top spots on these lists, emphasizing the fact that AR schools and teachers are able to effectively educate rich and poor students alike.

This is what is so compelling about the second section of the OEP report, just released this week, which focuses exclusively on high achievement in high-poverty schools.  On these pages, we find schools like Eudora Elementary in Lakeside, Richland Elementary in West Memphis, Noble Lower Elementary in Hamburg, and Bragg Elementary in West Memphis – each of these schools are populated entirely with students eligible for free and reduced lunches.  In other words, these kids are poor.  In the face of such poverty, more than 90% of the students in these schools scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Arkansas Benchmark Math exam.  On the literacy exams, on which only 70% of the state’s elementary students achieve at proficient or advanced levels, three of our state’s poorest schools boasted scores easily besting the state average.  Each of these three schools serve students that are all poor according to our free lunch measure, yet more than 85% the elementary students in Richland Elementary in West Memphis, Noble Lower Elementary in Hamburg, and Portland Elementary in Hamburg scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Arkansas Benchmark Literacy exam.

On the exams given to middle school students, which are more challenging to students in the entire state, students in the aforementioned Umpire High School  performed exceptionally well.  While all of the students at Umpire High are eligible for free and reduced lunches, 93% of the school’s middle level students scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Math and Literacy Exams. 

Before you scoff at these results, let’s be clear … these exams are not simple!  If you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself at the details on the Arkansas Department of Education website.  Check out questions 1 thru 10 on the eighth grade math exam (send in all the correct answers and you win a prize!).   To do so, you’ll need to brush up on your knowledge of probability, compute the volume of a pyramid, and figure out how to interpret a box and whisker plot.  Good Luck!

If that’s too hard for you, you may want to take a look at some of the 5th grade elementary level math questions.  Here’s an example test item from page 12:

Question:  Josh purchased 4 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and 2 ties that can be combined to create several new outfits.  If an outfit consists of 1 shirt, 1 pair of pants, and 1 tie, how many different outfit combinations can Josh choose?  Show all your work and/or explain your answer.

Perhaps you were able to do this fifth grade question, but I imagine the 8th grade questions gave you some trouble.  Nevertheless, there is a valuable lesson to be learned (or at least reinforced) here, and it has nothing to do with probability, volume, or box and whisker plots.   Rather, this OEP report provides a stark and simple reminder that all kids, regardless of socioeconomic environment or financial poverty, can learn and achieve at high levels.  Let’s congratulate the teachers at these Arkansas “beating the odds” schools for working hard to help their students not view poverty as an excuse, but rather as a mere hurdle on the way to academic success.