Tell me about NWA schools (Little Rock, Fayetteville: best schools, college, assessment)

[head_nut]

We are considering moving from Iowa to Arkansas. Some friends of ours moved to Siloam Springs and we've been to visit them and have fallen in love with it! Iowa has some of the best schools around with several schools in my area having students with perfect scores on ACTs and/or SATs. Anyone know how the Arkansas schools (or NWA) schools stack up nationally? My husband is real reluctant to move because we have such good schools in Iowa.

[DC at the Ridge]

Northwest Arkansas schools are very highly regarded. Fayetteville High School has been cited in several national rankings.

[Sneezyone]

I'm afraid I cannot share DC's confidence in NWA schools. Are they among some of the best in this state? Yes. Would they measure up in IA? No.

A quick peek at 2008 NAEP results (National Assessment of Ed. Progress) shows AR slightly behind the national curve with IA about 10 pts ahead of it in 4th and 8th grade reading and math.

I looked at SAT scores as both states only test the cream of the crop (5% in AR and 3% in IA). It wasn't pretty. IA's mean scores were 603R 612M 582W and 1797 combined. AR's means were 575R 567M 559W and 1701 combined. So you say they test a smaller proportion of their kids in IA? That's true but so what? Tennessee (among others) tests 11% of their grads and still has higher mean scores than AR. So then I looked at the ACT which is more egalitarian and administered to more students. Same story tho. IA tests 60% and has a 22.4 mean score. AR tests 74% and has a 20.6 mean score. ETA, the national average was 43% participation and 21.1 scale score for 2008.

Having said that, if you move your child here as a high school soph they'd have a much better shot at National Merit honors (and scholarships) just by virtue of their academic head start! There's some good news for ya! If I were you, I'd plant my feet in IA cement and not move til the kids graduate.

http://www.act.org/news/data/08/states.html
PolicyBlog: SAT Scores by State

[DC at the Ridge]

No one questions that comparing Arkansas to Iowa will find Arkansas lagging behind. However, the question was about Northwest Arkansas schools. Comparing average Arkansas to Iowa test scores is overlooking that Northwest Arkansas schools are consistently ranked as some of the best schools in the state. Rogers, Bentonville and Fayetteville schools have all received high marks in how they compare to schools nationally.

I can't think of a single year out of the past twenty when these schools haven't had National Merit Scholarships awarded to each of them. The schools all score above the national average on the Benchmark exams and other standardized tests.

As a graduate of Rogers High School who went to college out of state, my education easily stacked up against high school graduates from Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, California, and so on.

[Sneezyone]

National merit scholarships are awarded to each state's students in proportion to their share of the ntl. population so every state will have finalists and semi-finalists regardless of how those students scores compare nationally (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/...7-post662.html). That doesn't mean that the scholars in AR (yes, many come from NWA) have the same mean scores as those in other states; they don't. PSAT/NMSQT scores are also determined in 10th grade and don't take into account the learning (or lack therof) that occurs in the final two years of school. The NAEP results, also, don't lie and really give a sense of what's going on in the K-8 pipeline. Are test scores everything, no. But they can tell us a lot. I already conceded that NWA schools are great by AR standards but they would not be fab by IA standards.

ETA, I also looked at the state of AR's own data for SAT-10 scores (3-8 reading and math) and the best scores didn't necessarily come from NWA schools. Fayetteville did well as did Bentonville, but Vilonia, Melbourne and a few others did as well if not better. A look at the actual data reveals some interesting things.

[DC at the Ridge]

Originally Posted by Sneezyone

National merit scholarships are awarded to each state's students in proportion to their share of the ntl. population so every state will have finalists and semi-finalists regardless of how those students scores compare nationally (College Discussion - View Single Post - National Merit Cutoff). That doesn't mean that the scholars in AR (yes, many come from NWA) have the same mean scores as those in other states; they don't. The NAEP results, also, don't lie and really give a sense of what's going on in the K-8 pipeline. Are test scores everything, no. But they can tell us a lot. I already conceded that NWA schools are great by AR standards but they would not be fab by IA standards.

The national merit methodology you describe is accurate. But if you look at where the national merit scholars are coming from within a state, you can identify the best schools. In Arkansas, the schools in the northwest corner and around Little Rock by and large produce the merit scholars. And as one of those scholars, my scores were just as high as the other merit scholars who attended the private college in Minnesota I went to. And my perfect ACT scores were no less perfect because I was an Arkansas student.

[ridicter]

Sneezyone, clearly Iowa has an overall better educational system. The PSAT cutoffs this year--204 in Arkansas and 210 in Iowa--reflect that. However, Arkansas has a huge polarity that Iowa doesn't have. The schools in central Arkansas and northwest Arkansas are much better than the rest of the state, which is rural and poor. The delta and timberland regions bring the average down. So, you could be a National Merit Scholar in Arkansas at some 6 points lower than you could in Iowa (204,5,6,7,8,9), and they will almost always be from the central and the northwest regions of the state, which yes, are comparable to Iowa.

DC, did you go to Carleton by any chance? Or St. Olaf. I almost went to Carleton, but decided to go elsewhere...

[Sneezyone]

I'm confused as to why you're attacking statistics with anecdtotes. Within every sample there will be people at the very high and low ends of the scale, that is why we compare averages.

[Sneezyone]

Originally Posted by ridicter

Sneezyone, clearly Iowa has an overall better educational system. The PSAT cutoffs this year--204 in Arkansas and 210 in Iowa--reflect that. However, Arkansas has a huge polarity that Iowa doesn't have. The schools in central Arkansas and northwest Arkansas are much better than the rest of the state, which is rural and poor. The delta and timberland regions bring the average down. So, you could be a National Merit Scholar in Arkansas at some 6 points lower than you could in Iowa (204,5,6,7,8,9), and they will almost always be from the central and the northwest regions of the state, which yes, are comparable to Iowa.

DC, did you go to Carleton by any chance? Or St. Olaf. I almost went to Carleton, but decided to go elsewhere...

I hear what you're saying, but I did go and look at the state's own test scores to see which schools produced the highest scorers and, suprisingly, some of the schools on that list were not the usual suspects. Take a look for yourself. http://arkansased.org/testing/test_scores.html (broken link)

[DC at the Ridge]

Originally Posted by Sneezyone

I'm confused as to why you're attacking statistics with anecdtotes. Within every sample there will be people at the very high and low ends of the scale, that is why we compare averages.

Because the OP didn't ask for a comparison of Arkansas average to Iowa average, they wanted information on Northwest Arkansas schools?