Education notebook

UA office releases its school grades Scholarships hit $20M at ASMSA

UA office releases

its school grades

The Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville last week posted education "report cards" for traditional school districts and charter schools in Pulaski County and in Northwest Arkansas.

The report cards are intended to "provide an easy-to-understand overview of how students in the area schools performed in the 2021-22 school year," the last year for which complete data is available.

The reports look at the data both broadly and on an individual campus basis.

The findings? "Northwest Arkansas students demonstrated greater growth in achievement and earned higher scores on the ACT Aspire than students in the state overall. Schools in NWA also have higher School Quality and Student Success scores than other schools across the state," according to the report's introduction for the 15 districts and 11 open-enrollment charter schools.

Haas Hall Academy charter schools and the Bentonville School District received several top rankings in the northwest part of the state. Rogers School District was lauded for school performance in a system in which more than 50% of students are from low-income families.

For Pulaski County, the education researchers concluded that "students are demonstrating similar growth in achievement to students in the state overall. However, students in Pulaski County schools demonstrated lower academic achievement, School Quality and Student Success scores, and graduation rates than students in the state overall."

The highest overall performers in Pulaski County were Friendship Aspire charter school for academic growth, Academics Plus charter school system for achievement and school quality, and eStem Charter High School for graduation rate.

The Pulaski County Special School District was the highest overall performing system among the Pulaski County's four traditional school districts.

The Office for Education Policy report cards are available for public viewing here: https://oep.uark.edu/updated-2022-report-cards/.

Scholarships hit

$20M at ASMSA

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts' Class of 2023 earned about $20 million in scholarship offers.

The total was announced during the school's 29th annual commencement ceremony, which honored the Class of 2023 on May 20, at Bank OZK Arena at the Hot Springs Convention Center.

The graduates from the public, residential high school totaled 77 students from 31 Arkansas counties.

Jean Lacefield, who formerly served in upper management in Frito Lay Inc. and PepsiCo Inc. and is chair of Arkansans for the Arts, was the commencement speaker. Rose Brown of Donaldson, Ai'Yanna Tombs of North Little Rock and Talana Small of White Hall -- all members of the Class of 2023 -- also spoke during the ceremony.

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