This spring Arkansas learned that its students were keeping pace with the national average in their basic classroom skills. Or even exceeding the scores recorded in other states in some areas. As the tests keep improving, from Benchmark to End of Course exams, so do its students.
But the Jeffersonian ideal of an equality of opportunity producing an aristocracy of merit still proves elusive. A closer look at the results of these tests reveals that more than half of the kids who took them still proved deficient. And they'll need individual attention (as even the best students do) to improve their scholastic performance.
But the state's Department of Education could show more concern about the gap between our kids' promise and their performance. The brass tried to explain that Arkansas' testing program was a rigorous one, then somebody unfortunately said that (1) the state has a lot of work to do, but (2) don't be bothered by the fact that half the kids are still deficient in some areas. Our considered editorial opinion: let's be bothered. Until this state has both a rigorous testing schedule and our students are leaving the rest of the nation behind. That might take a while, but it should be the goal, yes?
Happily, the most revolutionary improvement in public education in this era--the creation of charter schools--continues to spread in this state. Especially in Northwest and Central Arkansas. Leading the pack when it came to these test scores were the Haas Hall Academic campuses in Fayetteville and Bentonville, followed closely by the Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy in Bentonville. (Labor Omnia Vincit!) and the Valley View School District in Jonesboro. Closer to the center of the state in populous Pulaski County, the county's Special School District came closest to meeting standards in the rest of the state, but it still didn't meet statewide achievement levels.
How explain the disparity? Gary Ritter, who directs the Office of Education Policy, an outfit he founded, offered this explanation: "What you are seeing is this connection with socio-economic status. The higher-wealth areas nearly always have higher raw test scores than the poorer areas." Which figures.
"We have not in Arkansas nor anywhere across the U.S. figured out a way to teach economically disadvantaged kids to the level that we should. Everyone keeps trying--we try to put policies in place. We give more money to the districts with more kids [on free lunch programs and such] but I don't know that we know what to do with the money."
But some schools know what to do with their money, as their students' test scores attest. Schools like eStem in Little Rock and Academics Plus in Maumelle. To quote its executive director, Rob McGill: "Our goal is to be best," and every year it gets closer and closer to achieving its aim.
The secret of good teaching is no by-the-book plan but the teachers themselves. A great teacher is priceless, a poor one worthless. To quote eStem's CEO John Bacon: "Our teachers are working so hard, but we want to make sure they are teaching the right content so our students can be successful. It really paid off this year. We also know that last year was a base-line year so our expectations will grow from here. We are excited about that challenge." And should be. Excitement is another unquantifiable quality that great teachers have, and, here's hoping, pass on to their students--the future of this or any other state.
It is particularly encouraging to see the classical tongues make inroads, however modest, against the tide of mediocrity that engulfs moribund systems of public education. To quote one scholar: "The modern revolt against centering the school curriculum around the study of Latin and Greek is understandable enough, but deplorably mistaken . . . . Anybody who has spent many hours in his youth translating into and out of two languages so syntactically and rhetorically different from his own learns something about his mother tongue which I do not think can be learned in any other way. It inculcates the habit, whenever one uses a word, of automatically asking, 'What is its exact meaning?' "
In this election year, as the national choices boil down to worse and worser, let us return to the past, for that would be true progress. And hold candidates to the highest standards of an educated public--rather than reward them for appealing to our lowest impulses.
Editorial on 08/03/2016