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Arkansas committee hears adequacy report showing low proficiency despite high graduation rates
Summary
Bureau staff told the Senate Education Committee that Arkansas students score below national averages on NAEP and AP pass rates lag the nation; members pressed DESE for disaggregated comparisons and asked for follow-up on causes of the gap between roughly one-third proficiency and an 88.5% graduation rate.
A state adequacy report presented to the Senate Education Committee on June 7 summarized Arkansas student achievement across multiple measures and drew urgent questions from lawmakers about policy choices and equity.
The Bureau of Legislative Research and audit staff opened with national and state comparisons. Adrienne Beck said Arkansas was below the national average on 2019 NAEP reading and math for fourth and eighth grades — examples cited included roughly 27% of eighth graders at or above proficient in math and about 33% at-or-above proficiency in fourth-grade math — and noted NAEP is a sampled national measure, not directly interchangeable with state assessments. The bureau also reported that 45% of AP exams scored 3 or higher in Arkansas in 2020 versus 64% nationally and that the class of 2021’s ACT composite averaged about 19 in Arkansas compared with about 20.3 nationally. "Our overall graduation rate in Arkansas for 2021 was 88.5 percent for all students," staff added.
Why those numbers…
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