The Public Education system is ever evolving and changing. Adequate and equitable opportunities are critical to all our children. AACF works to ensure this opportunity by encouraging parent engagement at all levels of education, supporting community involvement and seeing that public schools address issues of health, after school programs, social services, and other family needs.

Publications

ARRA Funding for Education in Arkansas: A Jump Start for Moving from Adequacy to Excellence (June 2009)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provides an unprecedented opportunity for Arkansas school districts to target more resources to research-proven strategies for closing educational achievement gaps.

Improve Parents' Access to Public School Information (March 2009)

Arkansas has done a great deal to improve data collection and fiscal and academic accountability requirements for public schools in recent years. However, the system has been ineffective in broadly disseminating much of this information to parents, or to researchers and taxpayers. Effective communication between schools and parents is critical to ensuring children’s academic success. But it’s hard for parents to get involved if they have difficulty gaining access to basic information about their children’s schools. We need to make it easier for parents to obtain information about their children’s schools and to get involved. We also need to make it easier for researchers and taxpayers to hold our public schools accountable and help them improve. Transparency will lead to improved accountability, and greater accountability will lead to overall improvement in our public schools.

Education in the Post-Lake View Era: What is Arkansas Doing to Close the Achievement Gap? (February 2008)

This examination of what Arkansas has done in recent years to improve its education system and how that has affected the education achievement gap among students finds that while many improvements have been made, the state still has a long way to go. Several suggestions are offered in the report for taking our education system in this direction; however, it proposes that a concerted effort will be needed on behalf of policymakers, parents and citizens to make these changes happen.
Full Report

Executive Summary

Full Report: Spanish version

Executive Summary: Spanish version