More than a quarter of Northwest Arkansas' public schools received an A on this year's school report cards, which were released to the public Wednesday by the state Department of Education.
The report cards provide several pages of data related to each school's test scores, demographics, teacher quality and more. The report cards also assign a letter grade to each school in the same manner a student receives grades. Those letter grades of A-F correspond with certain ranges of points the schools receive on a scale of 0 to 300.
The following is a breakdown of how many schools in each Benton and Washington county school district received each letter grade.
School District A B C D F
Bentonville 5 7 6 0 0
Decatur 0 0 0 2 0
Elkins 0 2 2 0 0
Farmington 1 3 1 0 0
Fayetteville 4 7 2 1 0
Gentry 0 1 3 0 0
Gravette 2 1 1 0 0
Greenland 0 2 0 1 0
Lincoln 2 1 0 0 0
Pea Ridge 0 4 0 0 0
Prairie Grove 0 0 4 0 0
Rogers 7 7 8 0 0
Siloam Springs 1 1 3 1 0
Springdale 9 8 8 2 0
West Fork 0 1 1 1 0
Charter schools
Arkansas Arts Academy 1 0 1 0 0
Haas Hall Academy 1 0 0 0 0
Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy 1 0 0 0 0
Northwest Arkansas 34 45 40 8 0
State 162 322 365 158 43
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School report cards may be accessed online at adesrc.arkansas.gov.
Report cards have been issued for Arkansas schools annually for years, but this is the first year the state has used the letter-grade system. The Arkansas Legislature passed a law in 2013 requiring the state to implement that system.
Reports are available by school district and by school building online at adesrc.arkansas.gov. Individual school reports may be found by clicking on the appropriate school district, which will provide a list of schools in that district.
Statewide, 162 schools -- 17 percent of the total -- received an A. Another 322 received Bs, 365 received Cs, 158 received Ds, and 43 received Fs.
In Benton and Washington counties, 34 schools (26.7 percent) received an A, 45 received Bs, 40 received Cs and eight received Ds. None received an F.
The Springdale School District, the largest district in Northwest Arkansas, had the most A-rated schools in the region with nine. It also had two of the region's eight D-rated schools: Jones Elementary School and Lakeside Junior High School.
The grades take into account several measures, including student performances on statewide math and literacy tests and whether the schools are meeting yearly student performance goals. The grades also reflect if schools are meeting their graduation goals for all students and those considered part of at-risk groups, as well as the size of the achievement gap between all students and at-risk students.
Randy Barrett, superintendent of the Gentry School District, said the letter grades are a valid evaluation tool, but it's only one way of viewing the schools.
Gentry High School received a B, but the district's other three schools received Cs. One would probably perceive Gentry to be only an average school district judging by those grades, Barrett said.
"I'm not saying we're great, and I've never said we're the best," Barrett said. "But I think we're better than average."
People need to review the entire report card before they can more fully understand how a school is performing, Barrett said.
Other Northwest Arkansas school superintendents agreed.
"Take it with a grain of salt," said Paul Hewitt, superintendent of Fayetteville schools. "Look at your school through your lens and your student's lens and judge the schools based upon that. Just use (the report card) as one tool to look at your child's school."
Hewitt noted the state has different methods of judging school quality. The Arkansas School Recognition and Reward Program, for example, gives millions of dollars each year to schools identified among the top 20 percent in the state based on student performance, student academic growth and graduation rate.
Fayetteville's Holcomb Elementary School received an A on its report card, but somehow missed out on Recognition and Reward money, Hewitt said. Holcomb also was classified as "needs improvement" this year under the Arkansas Elementary Secondary Education Act classification system.
"You tell me how to make sense of this," Hewitt said.
Sarah McKenzie, executive director of the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, agreed the school grades are just one indicator of quality. The grades shouldn't define the schools, she said.
"I think that's why the state department chose to put the grade deeper in the report card, because they didn't want to overplay the importance of those letter grades," McKenzie said.
She believes the letter-grade system is better than the Elementary Secondary Education Act system, which designated 94 percent of schools in some level of "needs improvement" status. The new system includes a weighted model of test score evaluations, so it rewards schools for higher levels of proficiency on state tests, she said.
"I think my favorite new piece is the measure of the achievement gap and graduation gap between those students deemed at-risk and those who are not," McKenzie said of the report card. "That's a valuable piece of information, how schools are serving all students."
She said the public shouldn't assume "C" schools are doing poorly.
"With 'B' and 'C' schools, little differences can make big impacts on their scores," McKenzie said. "'D' and 'F' schools should not come as a surprise, necessarily. I think those are schools that have historically had troubles with student achievement."
The Pea Ridge School District received Bs for each of its four schools. Rick Neal, superintendent, said he's pleased with the grades.
"It gives us something to shoot for," Neal said. "Is it the perfect system? No. I don't think it gives a true evaluation. There are so many other variables. I don't think it catches everything that makes our district successful."
Dave Perozek can be reached at dperozek@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWADaveP.
A Section on 04/16/2015