The grades are in for the Education Week Quality Counts ratings. They gave Arkansas’s education system a C-, ranking our state 41st in the nation.  We want to explain what that means.

Every year, Education Week reviews the components that make a state’s education system strong through their Quality Counts State Report Card. Education Week intends for this to be used as a nationwide tool for school accountability. Their 2016 grades for each state were based on three areas:

• Chance for success (family income, parent education, parental employment, and linguistic integration)
• K-12 Achievement (preschool enrollment, kindergarten enrollment, elementary reading achievement, middle school math achievement, high school graduation rate, NAEP (national assessment of educational progress) math and reading score changes over time,  advanced placement (AP) scores and changes in scores over time, and young-adult education)
• School Finance (equity, wealth-neutrality, adjusted per-pupil spending, percent of districts spending at or above the U.S. average for per pupil spending, and the share of taxable resources spent on education)

Quality Counts outlines what each of the many indicators mean here. And, according to those metrics, Arkansas still has some work to do to improve its educational quality.

In their state highlight of Arkansas, they cite reasons for Arkansas’s low grade like the following:

• A smaller percentage of students who score proficient on NAEP’s reading and math assessments than most other states
• A larger gap between poorer students and their peers on their NAEP math and reading proficiency scores in comparison to other states
• A high number of families struggling to make ends meet
• A lower percentage of parents working full time than most other states
• The lowest percentage of parents with a college degree than any other state
• The fewest adults with annual incomes at or above the national median
• Slower growth in the percentage of students graduating high school than other states

The Education Week report is useful for Arkansas and other states because it identifies areas that need improvement and gives states a sense of how they compare to one another. However, while useful, it doesn’t provide a comprehensive picture of the education environment in each state.  For example, it doesn’t provide a picture of the historical impact of poverty in states and the challenge it may pose for a given state in efforts to improve educational outcomes.  It doesn’t acknowledge that unique challenges faced by states like Arkansas that have a high number of parents without college degrees. The report focuses more on providing a snapshot of where we are rather than focusing on specific  steps that states have taken in recent years to move the needle.  In this and other ways, the Education Week grade raises concerns  similar to those with state level efforts to grade schools, such as Arkansas’s school grading system.

One other issue concerns NAEP scores. NAEP scores are the only way we can do state-to-state comparisons. But, a problem with NAEP is that it relies on a small pool of students who are randomly selected to take the test each year. While long-terms trends can be determined, the small sample size can make year-over-year comparisons more volatile.

In a prior blog post, we talked about grading systems using a “thermometer” approach versus a “thermostat” approach. This also applies to the Quality Counts Report Card. When we use a thermometer, we show problems related to a test score and poverty; when we use a thermostat, we focus on what we can change to improve educational environments. So, when looking at the Quality Counts report card, remember to see it as a snapshot of information and an opportunity to think about ways we can continue working to improve education in Arkansas.