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Fifth…Or Forty-Ninth? Examining Educational Rankings In Arkansas, Reed Greenwood, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

Media outlets, as well as many leaders across the state, have recently been trumpeting the Natural State’s fifth-place ranking in the latest release of Education Week’s Quality Counts, which assigns letter grades to every state on a menu of education measures, to suggest that Arkansas schools “rank fifth in the country.” On the other hand, the state received a D on the Student Achievement category of Quality Counts and many Arkansans are accustomed to seeing Arkansas ranked at or near the bottom among all states on measures related to education and economic well-being. For example, on measures of college degree …