Harrison's A Great Place to Raise Kids!

Since moving to Harrison in 2001 I’ve wondered how our schools compared to others both across the state and the nation. From interacting with my kids teachers and talking with my kids I’ve felt that our schools here are some of the best. So instead of just relying on my gut feeling and relaying that to you I decided to do some research.

In order to first give you an idea of the learning standards that are in place in Arkansas here is an excerpt from arkansased.org:

Arkansas Ranks 8th in Nation on the 2008 Annual Quality Counts Report Published by Education Week

• The U.S. Department of Education in 2007 recognized Arkansas as being at the forefront in implementing rigorous learning standards for students. In a study mapping standards for proficiency on the Arkansas Benchmark Exam to the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) standards for fourth and eighth grade literacy and mathematics, Arkansas ranked as high as fourth and consistently ranked in the top 10 for all four tests. In a June 2007 Op-Ed piece, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings wrote: “States that have shown true leadership, such as Arkansas and Massachusetts, can inspire others to act.”

• Arkansas is recognized as a leader in the high school redesign movement, being one of 10 states to receive a $2 million matching grant from the National Governors Association.

• The College Board touts the “Arkansas Model” for the state’s policies regarding Advanced Placement classes. Arkansas requires that all high schools offer AP classes in the four core areas – math, English, science and social studies — by the 2008-2009 school year. The state also pays for AP exams at the end of courses for students. These measures prompted Arkansas to have the largest increase in students taking AP exams in AP history (a 108 percent increase from 2004 to 2005). In 2006, only New Hampshire tied with Arkansas for having the largest increase in students scoring a 3, 4 or 5 on AP exams on the 1-5 scale. Participation rates and the number of students scoring a 3 or higher on AP exams continued to climb in 2007.

• The National Math and Science Initiative awarded Arkansas in August 2007 a $13.2 million, six-year grant to allow schools to implement research-proven training and incentive methods to improve the performance of students in Advanced Placement (AP) and Pre-AP courses so that they are better prepared for college-level work in math, science and engineering. Only seven states received the NMSI grants.

• Arkansas is considered a leader in terms of implementing technology in the education system, being one of the first states to develop individual student identifiers. This process provides a longitudinal tracking system for academic achievement as well as electronic transcripts that follow students through Arkansas public schools into the state’s higher education system. Arkansas was one of 14 states selected to receive a U.S. Department of Education grant ($3.2 million) to further these efforts and was lauded for achieving the majority of the 10 elements the department said were necessary for a quality data system.

Wow! So if I’m reading this correctly the state of Arkansas is a great place to have children enrolled in school right now. So how about some numbers comparing Harrison to the state of Arkansas?



Now that's even more encouraging to me. Hopefully it is to you too. I've pulled these numbers from NORMES Arkansas School Performance Reports which are available to view on the web at http://normessasweb.uark.edu

Here's some more numbers that I've pulled from NORMES: In Harrison there was a lower number of students assaulted: 0.6% compared to the state of Arkansas: 2.8%. Consider some more numbers: Harrison spends $7,270 per child to educate them while the state spends $7,992 all while Harrisons' teachers are paid on average $46,325 vs an average of $44,493 state-wide.

So my kids are safer, our schools spend their money more effectively, and our teachers are better paid. I do believe our teachers and administrators deserve a huge round of applause and our sincere thank-you.