Arkansas' first- and second-graders earned math and literacy scores right around the national average on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills this spring -- which was the last time Arkansas students will take the tests.
Second-graders scored at the 50th percentile in vocabulary, the 54th percentile in language and in math and topped out at the 56th percentile in reading.
The Iowa tests are nationally standardized tests that compare the achievement of Arkansas students to a national sample of students who took the same tests. The 50th percentile is considered the national average.
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About 37,500 Arkansas second-graders took the tests this school year, as did about 37,000 first-graders. The first-graders scored on average at the 47th percentile in vocabulary and in language, the 50th percentile in math, and the 51st percentile in reading.
The 2016 school-by-school and district-by-district results for the state's youngest standardized test-takers were posted this week on the Arkansas Department of Education's website.
Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the department, said Wednesday that the Iowa test reports are what agency leaders were expecting this year -- results that are about the same or a little better than the 2015 results.
That is in contrast to the dips that occurred across the board in the results between the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years.
A new form of the tests was administered in the 2014-15 school year to better measure student mastery of the Common Core State Standards in math and literacy. The common standards were adopted by more than 40 states, including Arkansas, in 2010 and implemented over the next few years. The new form resulted in lower student achievement in the 2014-15.
"In giving the same form [of the test] this year, we would expect to see the scores increase or remain steady, which we did," Friedman said.
The 2016 first- and second-grade Iowa test results come in the midst of multiyear, widespread changes in state requirements for the testing of Arkansas' public school students at most grades.
Arkansas students in grades three through 10 took the new ACT Aspire exams in math, literacy and science this spring, and results will be reported later this year. The ACT Aspire tests replace the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, tests given in 2015 and the Augmented Arkansas Benchmark and End of Course exams given for many years before that.
The state is currently inviting testing companies to make proposals on a new system to replace the once-a-year Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. State Education Department leaders are asking vendors for a new system in which first- and second-graders would be tested as many as three times over the course of the school year, starting with the coming 2016-17 school year, Friedman said Wednesday.
The periodic or interim testing of the younger pupils "will give teachers real-time feedback on their students," she said.
State Education Department leaders want the new testing program to be based on Arkansas' newly revised education standards and it should fit into classroom time and be part of the overall instruction program, Friedman said.
The new interim assessments would be required for pupils in first and second grades but also available for use with kindergarten pupils.
The state's 2016 Iowa test results are very similar to the results for Arkansas test-takers in 2015, with the greatest differences being in vocabulary.
First-graders in 2016 showed a 2-point improvement over first-grade test-takers in the previous school year, going from the 45th to the 47th percentile. Second-graders also improved in vocabulary over second-graders in 2015, raising the average from the 47th to the 50th percentile.
Results for first-grade reading and language arts each reflected a one-point drop in 2016 as compared to 2015. First-graders in 2016 scored at the 51st percentile in reading compared to the 52nd percentile in 2015. First-graders scored at the 47th percentile in language this spring.
The Iowa test results in the Little Rock School District -- which is operating under state control because of chronic low achievement at five of its 48 schools -- out-paced the state in terms of increases in 2016 compared to 2015. Despite the district's gains, district pupils on average continued to score below the state and national averages in both grades except in the second grade "math total" category, where the Little Rock district pupils scored at the 54th percentile, above the national average.
The statewide "math total" score was at the 62nd percentile. The state reported the "total math" score -- which includes a math computation subtest score -- for 2016 but didn't report that score in 2015 for the schools and districts.
The improved Iowa test results in the state's largest district are the result of "hard work" by faculty members and "sticking to your knitting" Little Rock Superintendent Baker Kurrus told state education leaders recently.
The academic-distress status of a school is determined by three years of scores on the tests for third-through-10th-graders -- not the Iowa tests. But the improvements on the Iowa test could be an early indication of test results for the upper grades that will be reported later this year.
Little Rock first-graders scored at the 43rd percentile on the Iowa vocabulary test, the 48th percentile in reading, and the 41st percentile in both language and in math. Little Rock first-graders scored at the 44th percentile on the "math total" category that includes the score for computational skills.
The district's second-graders scored at the 49th percentile in reading, and 45th percentile in vocabulary, language and math. If the results of the computation subtest are combined with the math test, Little Rock second-graders scored at the 54th percentile in 2016.
Score results vary widely among the many Little Rock district schools. Second-grade reading results, for example, ranged from the 17th percentile at Franklin Elementary to the 80th percentile at Gibbs Elementary.
North Little Rock School District first-graders scored at the 39th percentile in vocabulary, 46th percentile in reading, 44th percentile in language and 42nd percentile in math. Second-graders scored at the 39th percentile in vocabulary, 45th percentile in reading, 42nd in language and 40th percentile in math.
Pulaski County Special School District first-graders scored at the 43rd percentile in vocabulary, 49th percentile in reading, 42nd in language, and 43rd in math. Second-graders in the districts scored at the 46th percentile in vocabulary, 53rd percentile in reading, 46th percentile in language arts and at the 53rd percentile in math. In the total math category, the district's second-graders scored at the 60th percentile.
Central Arkansas is home to several independently operated charter schools. One of the largest is the eSTEM Public Charter Schools system. First-graders at that school scored at the 50th percentile in vocabulary, 53rd percentile in reading, 44th percentile in language and the 61st percentile in math. Second-graders scored at the 67th percentile in vocabulary, 72nd percentile in reading, 61st percentile in language, and at the 65th percentile in math. In the total math category, which includes the computation subtest, the second-graders scored at the 71st percentile.
Metro on 06/16/2016