LITTLE ROCK – About a third of Arkansas high school seniors received higher grades than they deserved and 42 schools were labeled as chronic grade inflators in a study presented to a legislative panel Tuesday.

A professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville told legislators his research indicated 33 percent of students graduating from 2002 to 2004 had inflated grades.

UA’s Sean Mulvenon said he had identified 42 schools where, for three consecutive years, more than 50 percent of letter grades did not reflect student performance on standardized tests.

“I find your results very alarming,” said Sen. Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

Rep. Jodie Mahony, D-El Dorado, said he and a few other lawmakers have tried for years to identify the schools “where they are lying to the kids” by incorrectly telling students they are performing well.

Neither Mulvenon nor the state Department of Education provided a copy of the list Tuesday.

According to a Department of Education spokeswoman, Mulvenon said the list resided on his personal computer, which is at his office. The spokeswoman said Mulvenon e-mailed a copy to a former Department of Education official earlier this year and that e-mailed information apparently was unavailable. The spokeswoman said the names of the 42 schools may be available Thursday.

Mulvenon told members of the House and Senate education committees he determined the grade inflation results by comparing grade point averages of graduating seniors with scores on the ACT, a standardized college entrance exam.

He found that 31 percent of college-bound students with a 3.0 GPA or better were required to take remedial courses in college. Of all incoming college students, more than half were forced into remedial courses. Most, he said, fell short in math.

Grade inflation rates were as high as 38 percent in 2002, but fell to 32.8 percent two years ago and 31.3 percent last year, he said.

“There are positives,” said Mulvenon, director of a UA research group that focuses on education. “And we hope these things continue to decline.”

Concerns about grade inflation in Arkansas track back a decade to Gov. Jim Guy Tucker’s administration, when Sen. David Bisbee, R-Rogers, said state leaders discovered then that student report cards were the top indicator to parents about overall school performance. Parents thought schools were doing well because it appeared their children were doing well, he said.

Bisbee said parents would help reform schools if they knew grades were often not the primary measure of student achievement.

“The parents think their schools are doing a good job until their kid gets ready to go to college and then they say, ‘Well, I guess little Johnny or little Suzy doesn’t test very well,’” Bisbee said. “Every parent out there believes their kid doesn’t test very well. We know that’s not true.”

Rep. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said the grade inflation problem starts with teachers, who themselves may have received inflated grades at the college level.

“If quality teachers are not going into the schools from the universities, you’re not going to get quality students going to the universities,” she said.

A former teacher, Rep. Shirley Walters, R-Greenwood, said administrators may be to blame, also. Some school administrators may force teachers to assign higher grades than children deserve because of parental pressure, Walters said.

Mahony asked the education department to develop a plan to assist schools considered chronic grade inflators.

According to Mulvenon’s research, 43.6 percent of grade inflation last year was in schools with fewer than 500 students, 36.4 percent in schools with between 500 and 1000 students and 29 percent in larger schools.

Mulvenon cautioned that criticism of small schools may be unwarranted since there are a greater number of small schools in Arkansas.

By region, schools in southwestern and southeastern Arkansas had grade inflation percentages about 10 to 15 points higher than their counterparts in other areas of the state.

The correlation between size and region notwithstanding, Mulvenon said it appeared school district spending was unrelated to grade inflation concerns. Poor schools were just as likely as wealthy schools to have problems, he said, adding that financial efficiency seems to be a more significant factor.

To get a better picture of college readiness, Mulvenon suggested creation of an index combining a student’s grade point average and ACT score.

His “college readiness index” would use a composite ACT score, divided by nine, and added to a student GPA. If the result was a 6.0 or greater, then students would be seen as “college ready.”

About a quarter of high school graduates in Arkansas last year had a 6.0 or greater on Mulvenon’s index. Of those, 97 percent would not have to take remedial courses.