Arkansas Department of Education

About: Arkansas Department of Education is a government organization based out in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: School choice & Voucher. The organization has 37 authors who have published 112 publications receiving 1325 citations. The organization is also known as: ADE.

Assessing Christian Learning: Vocation, Practices, and Investment

Abstract: This paper describes a new initiative co-funded by the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin University and Cardus. The initiative builds upon past Cardus work on assessing Christian school outcomes as well as the Kuyers Institute’s work on Christian pedagogical practices. The project has developed a new online assessment tool to help Christian secondary schools assess the Christian formation that they seek to offer their students and review their own educational practices. This tool, the Practicing Faith Survey, will be piloted in an initial cluster of schools in 2020. It asks students to self-report on their investment in faith-informed practices that are integral to the student role and uses their responses both to provide formative individual feedback and to offer schools aggregate data on this form of student investment. Here we will unpack some key ideas that have informed our work, focusing in turn on questions concerning faith, vocation, and practices.

Building CS Teaching Capacity: Comparing Strategies for Achieving Large Scale Impact

Abstract: Many states are taking up the President's challenge to provide CS for All. One of the most significant barriers to realizing this goal is the lack of trained and certified CS teachers. Building teacher capacity on a large scale is a challenge each of these panelists has tackled in their own region. Panelists will discuss the pros and cons of targeting in-service vs. pre-service teachers, online vs. face-to-face training, carrots vs. sticks, top down vs. bottom up strategies, and long-term vs. short term solutions to building capacity across an entire state or metropolitan area. Panelists represent CS for All efforts from Texas, New York City, and Arkansas.

The Play's the Thing: Experimentally Examining the Social and Cognitive Effects of School Field Trips to Live Theater Performances

Abstract: Field trips to see theater performances are a long-standing educational practice, however, there is little systematic evidence demonstrating educational benefits. This article describes the results of five random assignment experiments spanning two years where school groups were assigned by lottery to attend a live theater performance, or for some groups, watch a movie-version of the same story. We find significant educational benefits from seeing live theater, including higher levels of tolerance, social perspective taking, and stronger command of the plot and vocabulary of those plays. Students randomly assigned to watch a movie did not experience these benefits. Our findings also suggest that theater field trips may cultivate the desire among students to frequent the theater in the future.

A Good Investment: The Updated Productivity of Public Charter Schools in Eight U.S. Cities

Abstract: In 2015-16, the United states spent over $660 billion on its public education system in hopes of providing children with greater opportunities to excel academically and to improve their life trajectories. While public education dollars have risen at a relatively fast pace historically, future challenges, including underfunded pension liabilities, suggest policymakers should economize wherever possible. Meanwhile, the number of public charter schools has increased exponentially. from 1991 to 2018, charter school legislation passed in 44 states and the nation’s capital, and student enrollment in charters increased to around 3.2 million. Since educational resources are limited, we examine which types of schooling offer society the biggest “bang for the buck.” both cost- effectiveness and return-on-investment analyses (ROI) compare the productivity of different organizations providing a similar service – in this case, public education. cost-effectiveness is “the efficacy of a program in achieving given intervention outcomes in relation to the program costs.” We examine the differences in cost-effectiveness and ROI for public charter schools and traditional public schools (TPS) in eight major U.S. cities: Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, New York City, San Antonio, and the District of Columbia. We determine how much money is invested in public charter schools and TPS, what levels of student achievement are attained across the two public school sectors, and how much economic payoff our society can expect to receive as a result of the educational investments in each sector. this report is an update to our first study examining these differences across the United states at the city level.

Falling Below the Line: Minimum Subgroup Size and Special Education Enrollment

Abstract: The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) brought high-stakes accountability testing into every American public school with the goal of 100 percent proficiency for all students. Making annual yearly progress (AYP) toward this proficiency goal for the total student population as well as at-risk subgroups was required in order for schools to avoid possible sanctions, such as school restructuring. In implementing NCLB, states had flexibility to determine the minimum size of these subgroups as to provide statistical reliability and accountability for as many schools as possible. If a school did not meet the state’s minimum subgroup size, the proficiency of the students in the group were not calculated as part of AYP. The subjectivity of identification along with the lack of reliability in test score results makes manipulating the subgroup of students with disabilities possible and advantageous to schools. Using data from over 1,000 Arkansas schools for the years 2004-05 to 2013-14, school-level fixed effects analyses show that falling below the minimum subgroup cutoff of 40 is associated with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in students with disabilities at the school. For every student a school is above the cutoff, there is an increase of 0.09 percentage points in special education enrollment. Possible implications are discussed.