The View from the OEP Blog
Do Four-Day School Weeks Help Retain Teachers?
Districts in Arkansas are increasingly moving towards four-day school week calendar with hopes of improving teacher retention and recruitment. This blog post summarizes a new working paper that examines how effective the strategy is and provides some guidance for policymakers.
Arkansas School Funding Equity
by Josh B. McGee This is the third in a series of posts on Arkansas school funding. In previous posts we discussed: How Arkansas's school funding formula works and a bit about it's history; and How...
New Report Highlights Promising Strategies to Address Teacher Shortage in Arkansas
Last week, the national education policy nonprofit TNTP released a report on recent efforts to strengthen the Arkansas teacher pipeline. Click here to check out the report titled “Moving Up:...
How does Arkansas School Spending Compare Nationally?
by Josh B. McGee Last week’s blog discussed the sources of Arkansas school funding and some of the basics about how the state’s funding formula works. As a quick review, Arkansas has a student-based...
Funding Arkansas’s Schools
by Josh McGee Today’s blog is the first in a series about Arkansas school funding. Our goal is to provide straightforward, data-driven explanations of things like: How the Arkansas K-12 funding...
4 Day Town Hall and Grades for Growth
Our apologies for all the emails this morning…We have been adding content to the website and it automatically lets you know. We are figuring it out. Four Day School Week Virtual Town Hall Tomorrow!...
2022-23 Freshman Success Reports
This blog is written with Sarah Morris, a Graduate Researcher in OEP and former junior high teacher. Yesterday, we emailed the district-level third annual Freshman Success Reports (FSR) to...
Arkansas Teacher Retention for the 2023-24 School Year
Today's blog was written by Andrew Camp, Gema Zamarro, and Josh McGee. It summarizes the results of our recent research brief on teacher retention. Teacher retention declined in recent years....
Join us February 7th!
Wow…. So much has changed in the Arkansas Education landscape over the last year! Please join us in Little Rock on February 7th at our conference Educate to Elevate: A Year of Change and Growth for...
Teacher Salaries Under the Arkansas LEARNS Act
Today's blog was written by Gema Zamarro, Andrew Camp, Josh McGee, Taylor Wilson, and Miranda Vernon. It summarizes the results of our recent research brief on salary changes under the Arkansas...
New Map! EFA-Approved Private Schools
There are 94 private schools in Arkansas that are eligible to accept funds from the state's new Education Freedom Accounts (EFA). Families who choose to participate in this program have about $6,700...
OEP Growth Awards for Gifted and Talented!
Academic Growth (a.k.a. Value-Added or VAM) is a measure of how much students' scores on state assessments in English Language Arts and Math improved over the school year compared to similar...
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University of Arkansas