June 28, 2006

BY HEATHER WECSLER

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

The growing percentage of low-income students and other population shifts in Arkansas' public schools present a challenge to education leaders in meeting the state's educational goals, ac­cording to a Southern Regional Education Board report

The board, which concluded its annual two-day meeting Tuesday, released a report on Arkansas' prog­-
ress in meeting such educational goals as availability of early child­ hood programs and compliance
with the federal No Child Left Be­hind Act of 200L Most of the data, such as the state's results on the Na­-
tional Assessment of Educational Progress, have been issued before. But the report also tracks demo­
graphic changes in the state.

According to the report, the
percentage of the state's students
who are low-income— defined as
students who qualify for the Na-
tional School Lunch Program—has
climbed from 39 percent of Arkan­-
sas students in 1990 to 56 percent in
2004. In that year, 251,000 students
were approved for the school lunch
program  in Arkansas

Ken James, the state education commissioner and a member of the board who attended the meet­ing, said the state is already trying to address the number of students living in poverty by supporting pre-kindergarten programs and funneling state funds toward dis­tricts with high percentages of low-income students.

"We're doing our best to level
the playing field for those stu­-
dents who are coming to us with
poverty and other contributing
factors," James said. "That's go­
ing to pay dividends, and I think
already is when you look at our
fourth-grade Benchmark scores
for the last few years."       

  Based on the current popula- 'tion of first-graders, the report also predicts that over the next 12 years the proportion of Hispanic graduating high school seniors in the state will grow from 5 percent

To 27 percent The report projects that the percentage of white and black seniors will drop. The over­all student population is expected to slightly decrease from about 452,000 students in 2006 to about 447,000 in 2012.

Such trends will make improv­ing student test scores and gradu­ation rates tougher for Arkansas, the board said. The board — a nonprofit nonpartisan organiza­tion based in Atlanta — advises state educators and policy-mak­ers on how to improve education. Its 16 member states extend from Texas in the southwest to Dela­ware in the northeast.

Benny Gooden, the superin­tendent of the 13,400-student Fort Smith School District, said in 20 years he has seen the Hispanic population of his school system grow from less than one-half of 1 percent to about 21 percent.

He said those students fre­quently arrive on campus without good language skills.

"They also typically don't have good preschool experienc­es to prepare them for school," Gooden said.

The report says Hispanic eighth-graders in Arkansas who scored at or above basic level in math on the National Assessment of Education­al Progress trailed white students by 19 percentage points in 2005. Black eighth-graders trailed their white counterparts by 45 percent­age points in 2005. But the report also says in Arkansas, the high school graduation rates for black students and Hispanic males ex­ceed the national average. And the state's overall graduation rate of 77 percent exceeds the national aver­age in 2003 of 74 percent

Sea Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, who also attended the Southern Regional Education Board meet­ing, said he believes Arkansas has taken important steps in address­ing its demographic challenges.

"Our future is something we can change," he said. "But it re­quires choices for school improve­ment to be made today."