Testing 1, 2, 3

Deep dives into the copy

AN OPINIONATED thumbs-up to the news side for publishing that list of all the public schools in Arkansas, and their letter grades, in Sunday’s paper. If “news” is what you need and want to know, as they taught us in J-school, then this one was most assuredly in the “need” category, if not the “want.”

The page was blistered with Fs and Ds. We refer you to it.

The good thing about news in newspapers—well, one of the good things— is that the news reporters don’t have to fit everything into a 15-second soundbite. They can take deep dives. And a Sunday paper has the kind of space that allows a skilled reporter like Cynthia Howell to move past the headlines:

■ The 2022 letter grades are the first “report cards” handed out in this fashion since the pandemic. It was hard to gauge how well (or otherwise) the schools were doing when the kids were sent home and the classrooms all but boarded up after covid hit. But now we’re back to near-normal again. And just as kids are taking home As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs, so can the schools.

■ It is clear—and critics were right about this—that shutting down the schools and forcing kids to “learn” remotely via computer and Internet doesn’t work. Generally speaking.

Generally speaking because for a few kids it works fine. And there are programs designed for certain kids to be educated virtually. But for the main population of students, well, the scores tell the story: This year nearly one-third of all schools received a D or F. Three years ago, the percentage of schools receiving Ds or Fs was 19 percent.

And as the pandemic eased and schools slowly started opening last year, the schools began to catch up again. So say the scores from the state-required ACT Aspire exams given in grades three through 10. Which brings us to … .

■ ACT Inc.—the outfit that produces the ACT Aspire tests for Arkansas and the much more famous ACT college entrance test—is discontinuing the Aspire.

In years past, Arkansas officials kept switching the test and test-preparers every few years, and some of us had the feeling that they did so to keep interested parents and pesky newspapers from gathering real apples-to-apples comparisons between the states. But this time, the change in tests doesn’t appear to be anybody’s fault. At least, not anybody in Arkansas.

According to the papers, the state has selected Cambium Assessment Incorporated, or CAI, to develop a replacement test. The new exams will be given starting next year. A friend tells us that Cambium tests millions of students in 26 states and jurisdictions. Which might mean that Arkansas will have better comparisons in the years to come than the Aspire gave us.

We look forward to seeing how Arkansas’ students do on these tests as compared to kids in California and Florida and Minnesota. Not to mention neighboring states like Texas and Louisiana and Missouri.

We also look forward to the day when the newspaper not only publishes the grades for our public schools, but the grades from other states, too. We can then have a debate about what’s really going on.