Base Education Reform on the Evidence

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A University of Arkansas researcher says that when it comes to education reform, Arkansas would do well to look at the evidence and experience of neighboring states.

Gary Ritter, assistant professor of education and public policy, urges legislators, school officials and others involved with education reform to look around at other examples of state education reform and its success or failure while trying to create positive change for Arkansas.

"We should be looking at what works and what hasn’t worked for other states, and learning from their successes and their mistakes," he said.

On November 21, 2002, the Arkansas Supreme Court declared the state’s public education system unconstitutional and left state lawmakers with the responsibility to make the necessary changes for reform.

Ritter is optimistic that the state’s political leaders are poised to make comprehensive change.

"Governor Huckabee said as much in a guest commentary in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in which he challenged his fellow lawmakers to do more than 'give a tap of the hammer and a twist of the screwdriver to the issue of education reform,’" he said.

As the legislature begins its debate on how to reform public education in Arkansas, Ritter wants to see policy makers looking to the evidence and investigating effective statewide models for school reform. He cites Kentucky and its renowned Kentucky Educational Reform Act (KERA) of 1990 as one possible example. He has examined the results of more than a decade of education reform in Kentucky and created a Web site to inform people of the results.

"The data show that students in Kentucky clearly perform better than students in Arkansas today," Ritter said. "Further, there are suggestions from the data that Kentucky’s scores have improved since the major KERA educational reform." KERA represented a major overhaul of the state’s education system, involving changes in governance, school programs, accountability, and finance.

Ritter compared the test scores of students in Arkansas and Kentucky on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a standardized test given to a representative sample of students in fourth and eighth grades throughout the nation. Not only did Kentucky students outperform Arkansas students on all components of the examination, but Kentucky students scored above average nationally in both reading and science.

"Kentucky may well be a good model for reform," Ritter said.

However, Ritter urges decision-makers to look at other state models as well to encourage positive changes based upon the experience of other reform plans.

Ritter hopes that the data on Kentucky will help to illuminate the reform debate, and he plans to work with fellow faculty and graduate students to examine the research literature on school district consolidation in the very near future.

"I am disappointed that, in the public debate about school consolidation, for example, I have yet to hear the question: what have been the impacts of school consolidation in the past - in Arkansas and in other states?" he noted.

"It seems to me that our plans with regard to consolidation should be based on the best evidence we have rather than on the conjecture and hyperbole," he continued. "Does consolidation lead to cost savings and improved course offerings? Let’s check the evidence. Or, does consolidation weaken the social fabric of a community and ultimately lead to a lower quality of life for all residents? Again, let’s examine the research on the topic. These are the questions we should be asking, rather than, 'what will happen to the football team?’ or 'will my son lose his starting position on the basketball team?’"

Ritter’s Web site includes links to the Arkansas Department of Education, the Kentucky Department of Education, the state supreme court’s ruling in Lakeview vs. Huckabee, the NAEP Web site, NAEP state profiles for Arkansas and Kentucky, ACT scores for Arkansas and Kentucky, comparisons of Arkansas and Kentucky performance on the NAEP tests and background information on the education reform debate.