For Arkansas test-takers, 'ready' just OK; half of state’s students face improvement plans this fall

Stacy Smith (right), the Arkansas Department of Education's assistant commissioner for learning services, is shown with  Debbie Jones, left, and  Johnny Key, center.
Stacy Smith (right), the Arkansas Department of Education's assistant commissioner for learning services, is shown with Debbie Jones, left, and Johnny Key, center.

Arkansas students met or exceeded "ready" levels on state-required ACT Aspire exams this spring at rates that were often comparable to or better than the national averages in the subject areas tested.

[RESULTS: Search ACT Aspire results in Arkansas by school, district and more]

Still, more than half of the Arkansas test-takers will find themselves working with individual academic improvement plans -- for building up their deficient skills -- shortly after classes resume next month because they did not reach proficient achievement levels on the tests, Arkansas Department of Education leaders have said.

The individual academic improvement plans are a long-standing consequence for less-than-proficient results on Arkansas-required exams. Those exams have changed from the Benchmark and End-of-Course tests last given in 2014, to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career, or PARCC, tests given in 2015, to the new Aspire exams given this spring.

Forty-eight percent of the state's 292,532 test-takers met or exceeded "ready" levels on the English/languages arts portions of the Aspire tests, which includes reading and writing. But 52 percent of those test-takers will require remediation in the literacy category in the 2016-17 school year, as will 57 percent of the Aspire math test-takers. The students needing the remediation, or individualized improvement plans, scored at levels classified as "needing support" or "close to meeting expectations."

After the PARCC tests given in the spring of 2015, about 70 percent of Arkansas students required academic improvement plans.

Stacy Smith, the Arkansas Department of Education's assistant commissioner for learning services, said Arkansas' education standards and its testing program remain rigorous despite all of the exams changes -- and not all students have risen to the challenges presented by the tests.

"I'm not bothered that we are recognizing that we are not where we need to be in Arkansas in education, and that we have a lot of work to do," Smith recently told the state Board of Education about the Aspire results. "I'm comfortable with these [Aspire cutoff proficiency] scores, and I'm comfortable with us saying ... we still have a large number of students who need individualized academic improvement plans."

The online Aspire tests are given in grades three through 10. The test is a relatively new product of ACT Inc., the maker of the long-used ACT college entrance exam. The Aspire tests were developed working backward from what 11th- or 12th-graders need to know to be able to earn B or C grades in a corresponding freshman college course.

While 43 percent of Arkansas math test-takers scored at "ready" levels on the test this spring, 38 percent of students did so on the science test, 39 percent on the reading test and 31 percent on the writing test. Students scored the best on the English test, with 68 percent scoring at prepared levels.

Students scoring at or above the desired achievement levels for their grades "are on target to meet the corresponding ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in grade 11," said Hope Allen, testing specialist at the Arkansas Department of Education.

"If a third-grader scores at readiness level, we aren't saying they are college and career ready at that point, " Allen said, "but we are saying they are ready to move to the next level of study and, if they continue in this progress, they should meet their readiness benchmarks on ACT in grade 11. There is that progression to the final assessment."

The achievement levels on the Aspire tests in English, reading, writing, math and science vary widely from district to district and school to school.

The Haas Hall Academy charter campuses in Fayetteville and Bentonville led all schools and districts in student achievement on the Aspire tests, according to databases created by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville's Office for Education Policy. Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, which is another charter school in Bentonville, ranked third, followed by Valley View School District in Jonesboro.

The Office for Education Policy used grade-by-grade percentages of students scoring at "ready" or better to calculate and report a weighted average for each school and each district by subject area, making it easier to compare schools and districts.

The Arkansas Department of Education and the Office of Education Policy also reported results for a combination of tests. Results labeled as English/language arts are a combination of the English, reading and writing tests. Results labeled as STEM, which stands for Science Technology Engineering Mathematics, reflect student performance on the math and science tests.

In Pulaski County, the state's most populous county, achievement levels in the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts were below statewide achievement levels, with the Pulaski County Special district getting the closest to the state levels.

Central Arkansas' independently operated charter schools ran the gamut with some like Academics Plus, eSTEM, LISA Academy and Quest Middle School of West Little Rock performing well. Others such as SIATech Little Rock and Premier High School of Little Rock, both of which are dropout recovery schools, reported the lowest percentages of students at the "ready" level.

The Office for Education Policy data show higher percentages of students in Northwest Arkansas meeting the "ready" and better levels on the tests than percentages of students in other regions of the state. The central region had the second-highest performance, followed by northeast Arkansas, southwest Arkansas and then the southeast part of the state.

"What you are seeing is this connection with socioeconomic status," Gary Ritter, director and founder of the Office for Education Policy, said Friday about the regional differences. "The higher-wealth areas nearly always have higher raw test scores than the poorer areas."

Ritter said the regional differences seen in the Aspire exam results are consistent with the patterns on the previous PARCC and Benchmark/End-of-Course tests in earlier years.

"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," Ritter said. "Everyone keeps trying -- we try to put policies in place. We give more money to the districts with more kids [who qualify for free and reduced-price school meals because of low family income], but I don't know that we know what to do with the money."

The Office of Education Policy annually compiles a list of districts that "beat the odds," because they have relatively high student achievement even though well over 50 percent of their students come from low income families. Salem, Clinton and Bismarck school districts are examples of that, according to the Education Policy office.

Research shows that the quality of the teacher in a class really matters, Ritter also said Friday about reasons for varying regional test results. School district leaders in relatively affluent communities typically "have piles of applications" from which to choose new teachers. In contrast leaders in economically struggling districts have far fewer applications from which to select high quality teachers.

"They are struggling to find teachers to teach their kids," he said, which prompts those districts to reach out to organizations such as Teach for America and Arkansas Teacher Corps, that train recent college graduates in fields other than education to work in classrooms for a period of a few years.

Some individual schools within the Pulaski County districts excelled. Forest Park and Don Roberts elementaries, as well as the Forest Heights STEM Academy in the state-controlled Little Rock district, and Baker, Chenal and College Station elementaries in the Pulaski County Special district, are examples of that. But some of the other schools in the three districts showed that students struggled.

Dennis Glasgow, Little Rock's associate superintendent for accountability, compared the district's achievement levels with the state levels. The gap in performance between the district and state on the Aspire test is smaller than it was on the former Benchmark and End-of-Course exams, he said.

Glasgow also said the district had significant numbers of students achieving at the "close to meeting expectations" levels. Working with those students and getting them and all other students in the district more familiar with taking computerized tests will result in higher achievement levels.

The district has begun to revise its "curriculum maps," which identify what and when skills are to be taught during the school year, he said. And the district will use Aspire's interim assessments throughout the year to monitor student progress before the final Aspire exams are given next spring. That was started late in the school year last year.

"I think we are on the right track," Glasgow said. "I'm not ecstatic about the results, but I'm not down in the dumps."

The Arkansas Board of Education voted to take over the Little Rock district in January 2015 -- dismissing the elected school board and putting the superintendent under state supervision -- because six of 48 schools were labeled by the state as academically distressed. Fewer than half of the students scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy tests over three years. Baseline Elementary has since dropped off that list. J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools and Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools remain on the list.

State and district leaders won't know until later this year how the 2016 Aspire results at those schools affected the academic distress status, Glasgow said. The percentages of students scoring at ready levels in math at the three high schools were in single digits.

The Little Rock district, in which 81 percent of students qualify for subsidized school meals, ranked 193rd among 255 districts and charter schools in regard to math and science achievement on the Aspire, and 199th out of 255 in English/ language arts on the Aspire exams, according to the Office for Education Policy. North Little Rock ranked 202 in the state in regard to both literacy and math/science.

The Pulaski County Special district ranked 171st in literacy and 179th in science and math.

Academics Plus Charter Schools, which operates campuses in Maumelle and will open a campus this year in the Scott community, ranked 10th in the state in science/math on the Aspire exams and 29th in English/language arts out of 255.

The eSTEM Public Charter Schools ranked 13th in the state on English/language arts and 46th in math/science. The LISA Academy charter system ranked 12th in English/language arts and 26th on science/math. The newer Quest Middle School of Little Rock ranked fifth in the state in English/language arts and 64th in the state in math/science achievement on the Aspire.

Rob McGill, executive director of Academics Plus, and John Bacon, chief executive officer of eSTEM, both said last week that the Aspire results for their schools were considerably better than the PARCC results in the previous year.

"Our goal is to be best," McGill said about the rankings of districts by test results.

He also said the Academics Plus schools performed 20 and 30 points better than on the PARCC exams. Asked about the differences, he cited the different tests but also the school required high school students who scored below proficient on the PARCC exam last year to take an additional Math Foundations course in addition to their regular math course for their grade, such as algebra or geometry. In this new school year a Language Arts Foundations class is being added to the school's course requirements for lower achieving students, he said.

Bacon said his eSTEM staff has worked hard to base instruction on what have been changing sets of state education standards -- first the Common Core State Standards adopted in 2010 and now the revised Arkansas education standards.

"The biggest piece for us is just making sure our curriculum is aligned," Bacon said. "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," he added. "We are excited about that challenge."

A Section on 07/31/2016

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Pulaski County 2016 Aspire results

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Information about The Highest performing school districts and charter schools in Arkansas

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Information about Arkansas and national Aspire test results

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