LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A private foundation has handed out F's to nine Arkansas school districts while awarding A's to 17 others, based mostly on students' performances on a standardized test.
A report from the Arkansas Policy Foundation said most of the 245 school districts that existed for the 2007-2008 school year deserved grades of B, C or D, with a majority receiving a B or a C.
The districts were graded largely on scores their ninth-graders earned on the math and reading sections of the Stanford Achievement Test in the spring of 2008.
The Little Rock-based foundation is an advocate for improvements in state tax laws and education.
The nine districts that received F's in the foundation's report, all in east or southeast Arkansas, were Augusta, Dermott, Dollarway, Earle, Forrest City, Helena-West Helena, Hermitage, Hughes and Turrell. All but Dollarway and Hermitage are in the impoverished Mississippi Delta region.
Districts awarded A's were Bentonville, Bismarck, Bryant, Conway, Dardanelle, Fayetteville, Greenwood, Lake Hamilton, Hot Springs Lakeside, Mena, Mountainburg, Parkers Chapel, Pottsville, Salem, Scranton, Searcy and Valley View. Only Valley View is in the Delta region.
All three districts - Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County - in the state's most-populous county received C's.
The foundation report recommended that low-scoring districts be restructured and, if possible families in those districts be offered options. Those options included charter schools - exempted from state education regulations - operated by colleges or universities, and a tax-funded voucher system that would allow parents to transfer their children to better-performing districts.
"Students and parents in failing districts deserve additional options," the foundation recommended.
The Arkansas Policy Foundation has graded the state's public school districts for the past four years. The latest analysis was by Michael Scoles, a faculty member at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway.
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Information from: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, http://www.arkansasonline.com
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