By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ method of determining whether schools inflate students’ grades is flawed, a researcher who has studied grade inflation in the state told a panel examining the issue today.
“The present methodology isn’t really congruent with what you’re trying to do, at least currently,” University of Arkansas researcher Sean Mulvenon said during the first meeting of a new legislative subcommittee on grade inflation.
The state Department of Education has been releasing lists of schools identified as grade inflaters since 2003, but the issue has gained heightened prominence since the Legislature decided last year to link grade inflation to eligibility requirements for lottery-funded scholarships.
Starting in 2011, students graduating from grade-inflation schools must have at least a 2.5 grade-point average and score at least a 19 on the ACT or pass their end-of-course exams to qualify for lottery-funded scholarships.
For students at non-grade-inflation schools, a 2.5 GPA or a 19 on the ACT is enough to qualify — a standard that applies to all students this year, the first year the scholarships will be awarded.
An Arkansas school is considered to inflate grades if 20 percent or more of its students in grades 9-12 make As or Bs in algebra or geometry but do not pass corresponding end-of-course exams.
Fifty-two of the state’s nearly 300 public high schools were identified as grade inflaters for the 2008-09 school year.
One of the problems with the method is that it looks at the overall performance of a school, but the lottery scholarships are awarded to individuals, said Mulvenon, director of the University of Arkansas’ National Office for Research on Measurement and Evaluation Systems.
“If the student was good and did what they were supposed to do, is that the student’s fault (if a school inflates grades)?” he said.
Also, a student’s scores on just the algebra and geometry exams are not representative of the student’s overall performance, Mulvenon said. The Education Department didn’t always use that standard, he noted.
After the Legislature passed a law in 2001 requiring identification of schools that inflate grades, the Education Department developed a method that compared students’ ACT scores to their GPAs.
But in 2005, the Legislature passed a law that replaced the department’s method with the current system. Mulvenon said the list of grade-inflation schools subsequently decreased, but he did not know whether the decrease resulted from the change in method or from schools’ efforts to address grade inflation.
Lawmakers made the change even though colleges use ACT scores, not end-of-course exams, to determine whether students are college-ready or must take remedial courses, Mulvenon said. Arkansas colleges require new students to take remedial courses if they score below a 19 on the ACT.
“When we were setting up the lottery scholarship, why did we choose to go with multiple indicators such as GPA or the ACT score?” asked Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett, chairman of the Senate Education Committee. “Why didn’t we go with the ACT score only? That way, we would have done away with this whole discussion about the grade-inflation issue.”
Jeffress co-chairs the subcommittee with Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, the House Education Committee chairman.
Abernathy said lawmakers wanted to give students every possible opportunity to qualify for the scholarships.
Rep. Garry Smith, D-Camden, said using multiple indicators benefits students who have good GPAs but are not good test takers.
Sen. Mary Anne Salmon, D-North Little Rock, said some students take algebra or geometry in grades 7 or 8, and those students tend to be academically advanced.
“If you tested in North Little Rock 7-12, you would get much better results than you do 9-12,” she said.
The subcommittee plans to meet monthly and may recommend legislation for the 2011 session.
