Demographic Changes in the Arkansas Public Schools: A Five Year Comparison

This report provides a glimpse into the changes in public school demographics in Arkansas at the state, county and district level over a five-year period. This report compares enrollment information from the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2012 based on data obtained from the Arkansas Department of Education website during the summer of 2013 (Arkansas Department of Education, Data Center)

Outstanding Educational Performance Awards: Highlighting High-Achieving Arkansas Schools, 2013

The GPA measure, we believe, is a better representation of student achievement on statewide standardized exams. In this report, we are presenting a list of the top 25 schools in each area. In some cases, these top 25 lists will contain more than 25 schools as some schools\u27 GPA scores will be identical. This is not a new phenomenon, as we also exceeded 25 schools in previous reports when using the percent proficient and advanced metric as an indicator for student achievement; however, there are fewer ties using the more precise GPA measure. After we present our overall snapshot of high-performing schools, we will release subsequent reports every few weeks focusing on different subsets of schools. For example, in section two of the OEP Awards AER, we will feature schools that are beating the odds (that is, schools that have high levels of student achievement while serving a high percentage of low-income students). In the following weeks, we will focus on high-performing elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in the various regions across the state. Finally, we will conclude our report by focusing on the schools with the greatest improvement in test scores

Graduation Rates in Arkansas

In April 2014, the National Center for Education Statistics published a national report on state-level graduation rates in 2010-11 and 2011-12. The news was positive for the nation, as the national rate reached 80% for the first time, and for Arkansas, as students in the Natural State boasted higher than average rates in both years. While the statewide news was good, Arkansans may well be interested in the graduation rates of particular schools across the state

Comparisons of Student Perceptions of Teacher\u27s Performance in the Classroom: Using Parametric Anchoring Vignette Methods for Improving Comparability

Self-reports are an indispensable source of information in education research but might be affected by reference group bias if the frame of reference (i.e. implicit standards), used to answer the questions, differs across students. The anchoring vignettes method was introduced, in other areas of social science, precisely to correct for this source of bias. However, studies that make use of this approach in education are rare and more research is needed to study its potential. This paper uses data from PISA 2012 to investigate the use of the parametric model of the anchoring vignettes method to correct for differential implicit standards in cross-country comparisons of student’s perceptions of an important dimension of teacher quality: teacher’s classroom management. Our results show significant heterogeneity in implicit standards across countries. We also show how correlations between countries’ average teacher classroom management levels and external variables can be improved substantially when heterogeneity in implicit standards is adjusted for. We conclude that the anchoring vignettes method shows a good potential to enhance the validity and comparability of self-reported measures in education