Education in Arkansas explained

Education in Arkansas covers the history and current status of education at all levels, public and private, and related policies.

See also: List of colleges and universities in Arkansas, List of high schools in Arkansas and List of school districts in Arkansas.

Current status

Arkansas has 1,064 state-funded kindergartens, elementary, junior and senior high schools.[1]

The state supports a network of public universities and colleges, including two major university systems: Arkansas State University System and University of Arkansas System. The University of Arkansas, flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System in Fayetteville was ranked #63 among public schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.[2] Other public institutions include University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Arkansas Tech University, Henderson State University, Southern Arkansas University, and University of Central Arkansas across the state. It is also home to 11 private colleges and universities including Hendrix College, one of the nation's top 100 liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. News & World Report.[3]

History

Slavery was abolished in 1865, and for the first time schooling was made possible for Blacks. From the end of the Reconstruction era in the 1870s down to the 1940s, the state and local governments gave far less money to all-black public schools compared to the favored white public schools. However many private schools for Blacks were funded by Northern philanthropy well into the 20th century. Support came from the American Missionary Association;[4] the Peabody Education Fund; the Jeanes Fund (also known as the Negro Rural School Fund); the Slater Fund; the Rosenwald Fund; the Southern Education Foundation; and the General Education Board, which was massively funded by the Rockefeller family.[5] [6]

In the 1920s the state required all children to attend public schools. The school year was set at 131 days, although some areas were unable to meet that requirement.[7] [8]

The most famous episode came in 1957-1958, when "Little Rock Nine" Black students were sent by the school board to integrate Little Rock Central High School. Their enrollment was followed by the "Little Rock Crisis" in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower who sent in the Army. In 1958 Faubus closed the school.[9] [10]

Educational attainment

Arkansas is one of the least educated U.S. states. It ranks near the bottom in terms of percentage of the population with a high school or college degree. The state's educational system has a history of underfunding, low teachers' salaries and political meddling in the curriculum.[11]

Educational statistics during the early days are fragmentary and unreliable. Many counties did not submit full reports to the secretary of state, who did double duty as commissioner of common schools. But the percentage of whites over 20 years old who were illiterate was given as:

1840, 21%

1850, 25%

1860, 17%[12]

In 2010 Arkansas students earned an average score of 20.3 on the ACT exam, just below the national average of 21. These results were expected due to the large increase in the number of students taking the exam since the establishment of the Academic Challenge Scholarship.[13] Top high schools receiving recognition from the U.S. News & World Report are spread across the state, including Haas Hall Academy in Fayetteville, KIPP Delta Collegiate in Helena-West Helena, Bentonville, Rogers, Rogers Heritage, Valley Springs, Searcy, and McCrory.[14] A total of 81 Arkansas high schools were ranked by the U.S. News & World Report in 2012.[15]

Arkansas ranks as the 32nd smartest state on the Morgan Quitno Smartest State Award, 44th in percentage of residents with at least a high school diploma, and 48th in percentage of bachelor's degree attainment.[16] [17] Arkansas has been making strides in education reform. Education Week has praised the state, ranking Arkansas in the top 10 of their Quality Counts Education Rankings every year since 2009 while scoring it in the top5 during 2012 and 2013.[18] [19] [20] Arkansas specifically received an A in Transition and Policy Making for progress in this area consisting of early-childhood education, college readiness, and career readiness.[21] Governor Mike Beebe has made improving education a major issue through his attempts to spend more on education.[22] Through reforms, the state is a leader in requiring curricula designed to prepare students for postsecondary education, rewarding teachers for student achievement, and providing incentives for principals who work in lower-tier schools.[23]

Generally prohibited in the Western world at large, school corporal punishment is not unusual in recent Arkansas experience, with 20,083 public school students paddled at least one time, according to government data for the 2011–12 school year. The rate of corporal punishment in public schools is higher only in Mississippi.[24]

Funding

As an organized territory, and later in the early days of statehood, education was funded by the sales of federally controlled public lands. This system was inadequate and prone to local graft. In an 1854 message to the legislature, Governor Elias N. Conway said, "We have a common-school law intended as a system to establish common schools in all part of the state; but for the want of adequate means there are very few in operation under this law." At the time, only about a quarter of children were enrolled in school. By the beginning of the American Civil War, the state had only twenty-five publicly funded common schools.[25]

In 1864 the chairman of the committee on education of the state legislature stated that the state government has:

mismanaged and squandered to a great extent the appropriations or donations made by the United States [federal government] to this State for school purposes. We have had over 1,000 acres of land appropriated in this state to purposes of education, but under the management of our public functionaries it has amounted to almost nothing.[26]

In 1867, the state legislature was still controlled by ex-Confederates. It passed a Common Schools Law that allowed public funded but limited schools to white children.

The 1868 legislature banned former Confederates and passed a more wide-ranging law detailing funding and administrative issues and allowing black children to attend school. In furtherance of this, the postwar 1868 state constitution was the first to permit a personal-property tax to fund the lands and buildings for public schools. With the 1868 elections, the first county school commissioners took office.[27]

In 2014, the state spent $9,616 per student, compared with a national average of about $11,000 putting Arkansas in nineteenth place.[28]

Higher education

According to ERIC (1970), the story begins in 1871 with the founding of Arkansas Industrial University, a land-grant school renamed as the University of Arkansas. The Branch Normal College for Blacks began in 1873; it became Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College in 1927, and University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1972. From time to time several schools began as agricultural high schools, junior colleges or normal institutes (for training elementary teachers). Most expanded to their present status. The early ones were small and had very small budgets, and little or no state oversight.

Timeline

See also

Notes

  1. Web site: Arkansas K-12 Profile: 2016–2017. Arkansas State Board of Education. August 27, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170121061736/https://adedatabeta.arkansas.gov/ARK12. January 21, 2017. dead.
  2. Web site: College Ranking Lists . Top Public Schools . U.S. News & World Report . 2014 . January 26, 2014 .
  3. National Liberal Arts College Rankings . U.S. News & World Report . 2012 . September 3, 2012 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20160821213346/http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges . August 21, 2016 .
  4. Joe M. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890 (1986).
  5. Stephanie Deutsch, You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South (Northwestern University Press, 2015).
  6. James Christopher Carbaugh, "The philanthropic confluence of the General Education Board and the Jeanes, Slater, and Rosenwald Funds: African-American education in South Carolina, 1900-1930" (PhD dissertation, Clemson University, 1997;  ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 9833440.)
  7. Book: Holley. Marc J. Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
  8. William Oscar Wilson, History of Public School Education in Arkansas: 1900–1918 (University of Chicago, Department of Education, 1918)p. 5.
  9. Little Rock Revisited: Desegregation to Resegregation . 10.2307/2294663 . 2294663 . Branton . Wiley A. . The Journal of Negro Education . 1983 . 52 . 3 . 250–269 .
  10. Numan V. Bartley, "Looking Back at Little Rock," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 25#2 (1966), pp. 101–16. online
  11. Web site: Holley. Marc J. Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Education Reform. University of Arkansas. August 27, 2017.
  12. Wilson, (1918) p.16.
  13. Web site: Arkansas's ACT score slips in 2010 . August 18, 2010 . Arkansas Public School Resource Center . September 3, 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130117082700/http://www.apsrc.net/Newsletter/NewsletterDisplay.asp?p1=133&p2=Y&Sort= . January 17, 2013 . dead . mdy-all .
  14. Best High Schools in Arkansas . U.S. News & World Report . 2012 . September 3, 2012 .
  15. Arkansas High Schools . U.S. News & World Report . 2012 . September 3, 2012 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120830033733/http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/arkansas/rankings . August 30, 2012 .
  16. Web site: 2006–2007 Smartest State Award . Morgan Quitno Press . September 3, 2012 .
  17. Web site: Educational Attainment, American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates . 2010 . https://archive.today/20200212212928/http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_S1501&prodType=table . dead . February 12, 2020 . United States Census Bureau . 2010 United States Census . September 3, 2012 .
  18. Web site: Quality Counts 2009—State Report Cards—Education Week. edweek.org. January 8, 2009.
  19. Web site: Quality counts . https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.edweek.org/media/qualitycounts2012_release.pdf . 2022-10-09 . live . 2012 . edweek.org .
  20. News: Qua;ity counts . https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.edweek.org/media/QualityCounts2013_Release.pdf . 2022-10-09 . live . 2013 . Education Week .
  21. News: Amy M. . Hightower . States Show Spotty Progress on Education Gauges . Education Week . 32 . 16 . 42, 44 . June 23, 2015 .
  22. News: Lawsuit may go way of Lake View district . Blagg . Brenda . Dewitt Era-Enterprise . April 12, 2007 . 4A . DeWitt, Arkansas .
  23. Web site: The states with the best and worst schools . January 30, 2013 . Yahoo . Sauter . Michael . Weigley . Samuel . February 1, 2013 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130202160339/http://homes.yahoo.com/news/where-the-best-and-worst-schools-are-021737613.html . February 2, 2013 . dead .
  24. Web site: Corporal punishment in US schools . World Corporal Punishment Research . Farrell . Colin . February 2016. April 4, 2016.
  25. William Oscar Wilson, History of Public School Education in Arkansas: 1900–1918 (University of Chicago, Department of Education, 1918) pp. 3, 8.
  26. Wilson, (1918) p. 5.
  27. Wilson, (1918) p.4.
  28. Web site: Education Spending Per Student by State. February 9, 2012. Governing. August 27, 2017.
  29. Wilson (1918) passim.

Further reading

Race

External links

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Education in Arkansas".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.