Much ado about nothing

Dear editor:

I guess a little PR doesn’t hurt when you are embroiled in controversy.

It’s too bad that the administration of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts had to ruin the credibility of the school to do so.

In Monday’s paper (July 8), you ran a press release from ASMSA Director Corey Alderdice claiming that ASMSA was being “recognized” for the distinction of being an “elite school.” While actually ASMSA and other specialty-type public schools were actually omitted from the rankings because it was unfair to compare them to regular neighborhood schools.

“The Challenge Index list is designed to recognize schools that challenge average students. The top-performing public charter and magnet schools … were excluded from the Challenge Index because, despite their exceptional quality, their standardized test scores indicate they have few or no average students,” said creator of the index Jay Mathews on his website.

We all know that ASMSA draws the better-performing students in the state of Arkansas and so does Mr. Mathews. That is the reason why he believed it was not fair to include ASMSA with other schools in the state of Arkansas.

Since ASMSA is not ranked by The Challenge Index it is difficult to tell if ASMSA is a better performing school than Lakeside or Fountain Lake high schools which do have a ranking in The Challenge Index.

ASMSA administration has received its fair share of criticism lately. It’s too bad that the ASMSA administration has had to resort to spinning a newspaper to try to gain credibility rather than just providing a high-quality, safe and fair public school.

In my opinion, the article was about nothing. Reggie Cowan Hot Springs