News Brief
State Releases School-Accountability Reports
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (11/19/12) Burnett, Lisa; Doherty, Katie
School accountability reports for 2012 have been issued by the Arkansas Department of Education, the first under a new system in which student achievement, student growth, and high-school graduation rates are used to gauge performance, and individualized targets apply only to a specific school and its students. Under the old system, schools competed against others in their district and those across the state. Schools are categorized as "exemplary," "achieving," "needs improvement," "needs improvement focus," "needs improvement focus: met one-year exit criteria," "needs improvement priority," or "needs improvement priority: met one-year criteria." "[The system] actually helps us to better distinguish measured success for students and progress for students in our schools across Arkansas," says State Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell. "We need to look at every idea and be more creative in boosting student achievement. We believe as we continue to work with districts in this transition period to improve education, we will see improvements for students in our state."
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