Office for Education Policy People

OEP Database for Status and Growth of Arkansas Elementary and Middle Schools- 2007-08

In April 2009, the Arkansas Department of Education released the Arkansas School Performance Report, a yearly report on academic achievement in all of Arkansas’ schools. The Report is available online at the Arkansas Department of Education web site, at http://arkansased.org/

A new feature on this year's Arkansas School Performance Report is an academic improvement rating, or a "Gains Rating," for all elementary and middle schools (mandated by Act 35 of 2004). This measure is an index representing the academic growth of a school’s students. The Gains Model uses students’ scores on Arkansas’ benchmark exams over a two-year period to determine growth. In the past, school observers have been forced to draw conclusions about school performance based on only year-end student scores. Of course, the weakness in such a strategy is that it pays no attention to where students started or how much they learned in a given year. As a result, we applaud the Arkansas Department of Education for publishing this invaluable information related to student improvement.

Along with more information comes the risk of confusion over which school "rating" is the right one. Of course, no rating is the right one. Rather, each rating provides different but important information. For example, the rating provided in the NCLB AYP measure is a year-end status measure, which provides information about the percentage of students who are performing at proficient levels; the improvement rating asks and answers a different question regarding the growth of students during a given year. Each rating is important, and it is useful to look at each when drawing conclusions about school effectiveness and student performance.

In that vein, in order to assist parents and school officials in looking at these multiple ratings, we have collected several different school performance measures published by the Arkansas Department of Education, and organized them within a single datasheet. It is our hope that visitors to this website will be able to review several important school measures in a user-friendly format.


2007-08 School Performance Database

Database Description

LEA ID Number

- Numeric school identifier

School Name

- School name

District

- District name

% Free & Reduced Lunch 2007-08

- % of students in the school with free and reduced lunch status
Students Enrolled 2007-08

- Number of students enrolled in a given school; provided by the ADE

ADE School Gain Index 2007-08

- ADE provided index scores that reflect student growth in a given school

ADE Gain Rating

- ADE provided category that reflects overall level of improvement; higher numbers reflect higher levels of improvement

% Prof. & Adv. Math 2006-07

- Percentage of students scoring in the proficient or advanced range in math in the 2006-07 school year

% Prof. & Adv. Math 2007-08

- Percentage of students scoring in the proficient or advanced range in math in the 2007-08 school year

% Prof. & Adv. Lit. 2006-07

- Percentage of students scoring in the proficient or advanced range in literacy in the 2006-07 school year

% Prof. & Adv. Lit. 2007-08

- Percentage of students scoring in the proficient or advanced range in literacy in the 2007-08 school year

AYP Status 2007-08
- SI denotes that a school is on the improvement list, as well as the corresponding year, MS reflects a school that meets standards; a school must meet AYP standards for two consecutive years to be removed from the school improvement list