There is a lot going on in our world of Arkansas education policy! We have a new Secretary of Education, Jacob Oliva, and Governor Sanders signed an executive order focused on literacy, empowerment, accountability, readiness, and safety (LEARNS). We are excited about the opportunity to support the work identified by the Governor, as our mission is to serve as a resource to state lawmakers, educators, administrators, and other leaders, providing them with current national, state, and regional research in education to support them in thoughtful decision-making concerning PreK-20 education in the State of Arkansas.
Please join us for the OEP Conference on February 16th at Heifer International in Little Rock, where we will be discussing current research and future plans for moving Arkansas Education Forward.
Here at OEP, we have produced a bunch of work in the areas included in Arkansas LEARNS, and we wanted to share some OEP resources for easy reference.
Teacher Pipeline: OEP has long been interested in the challenges school district personnel face in hiring high-quality teachers. In partnership with state agencies, we are conducting research to get a better understanding of the barrier facing prospective teachers and the districts seeking them. You can find out more about out work on the teacher pipeline here, here, and here.
Achievement: We discuss concerning achievement results for Arkansas students on a variety of assessments including NAEP, ACT, and ACT Aspire. The Governor’s goal is to have 90% of third graders reading on grade level, which is an ambitious goal as only 35% of 3rd graders were meeting or exceeding grade level literacy standards on ACT Aspire last year. The highest literacy proficiency rate among third grades was 82% in 2012 when completed the Arkansas Benchmark exams. Changes in assessments, like the one we have coming up next Spring, can alter the perception of who is “on grade level”.
Pre-K: Like the Governor, we are interested in early learning opportunities in the state. Last year we held a convening of stakeholders and released a State of Pre-Kindergarten report that identifies successes of and challenges to early childhood education in Arkansas.
Parent Empowerment: We agree with the Governor that parents are an important part of students’ education and conducted a survey to gather parents’ perspectives on education in the state. You can find the report here.
Effective schools: If you know OEP, you know that we are big fans of the value-added growth scores as an indicator of how well schools are educating their students. You can read about differences in growth scores for populations here. Each year, we give OEP Awards to the schools where students demonstrated the greatest gains in learning. Many traditional public schools and open-enrollment charter schools in the state are doing an excellent job helping their students grow their learning.
Career Trajectories: We have been digging into the alignment of the programs, degrees, certificates, and industry-recognized credentials offered by Arkansas K-12, post secondary, and workforce institutions. In our work with the ARdata team, we have developed dashboards that facilitate a deeper understanding of the success of our higher education institutions.
We are excited about the upcoming opportunities to improve education in Arkansas through data-informed policy decisions, and we hope to see you next month at the OEP Conference on February 16th to add your thoughts on current research and future plans for moving Arkansas Education Forward.