Cleveland County, Woodlawn Lead Southeast Arkansas Districts in Results
RISON - Both the Cleveland County and Woodlawn School Districts flexed their academic muscle this year as both ranked among the top performers on the Spring 2022 ACT Aspire tests in the 15-district Southeast Arkan‐sas region.
Each spring, public schools in the state are required to test stu‐dents in the 3rd through 10th grades to see how well they comprehend the material taught during the school year. The stu‐dents are tested in four subject areas: English/language arts, math, reading and science.
Students are scored in one of four ways on the tests: “exceed‐ing, ready, close, or in need of support.” Those who score “ex‐ceeding” or “ready” are consid‐ered to have learned the material and have “passed” the test. A school’s performance is based on the percentage of students who score “exceeding” or “ready” on any one test.
Not only did the Cleveland County and Woodlawn School Districts finish at or near the top in most tests among the South‐east Arkansas districts, they also exceeded the state averages for students scoring “exceeding” or “ready” on most of the tests.
The 15 districts included in the Southeast Arkansas region in‐clude Cleveland County, Wood‐lawn, Crossett, Dermott, De‐ Witt, Drew Central, Dumas, Fordyce, Hamburg, Hermitage, Lake Villlage, McGehee, Monti‐cello, Star City and Warren.
With eight grade levels being tested in four subject areas, there were a total of 32 tests given with the ACT Aspire. Woodlawn ranked first on 14 of those tests while Cleveland was first on five tests.
Overall, both Cleveland County and Woodlawn finished within the Top 3 on 24 of the 32 tests, which tied for the best overall performance of any dis‐trict in the region. The DeWitt School District was third with 21 Top 3 finishes.
When the results of each dis‐trict’s test scores were compared to the state averages, Cleveland County came out on top in the region, exceeding the state aver‐age on 28 of the 32 tests. DeWitt was second with 25 and Wood‐lawn was third with 23.
This was the second consecu‐tive year that the Cleveland County School District has had a strong showing in the region. Dupuy attributed the strong aca‐demic performance to the build‐ing administrators, staff and stu‐dents. “It think it’s a testament to our kids, a testament to our teachers and our community,” he said.
The Cleveland County School District implemented voluntary after-school tutoring for stu‐dents in kindergarten through 6th grade last year as a way to help students who may have fallen behind academically during the COVID pandemic. While it was a voluntary program, Dupuy said several students partici‐pated.
During the summer, the Cleve‐land County School District held its first “summer school camp” to help further make up ground for those who needed it in the elementary grade levels. While it was a summer school, it was set up like a summer camp to include recreational activities tied to learning.
Like the after-school tutoring, Dupuy said the summer school camp was voluntary. Still, h e said the response was so good that they have already decided to do it again next summer.
Dupuy said the school district used about $30,000 from the American Rescue Plan to pay for the summer program. The Amer‐ican Resuce Plan is federal money granted to school dis‐tricts to address issues related to the pandemic. He said the money is used to pay teachers, run school buses and provide meals for those attending the school camp. Hancock said the Woodlawn School District hopes to build on last year’s success by putting an even greater emphasis on track‐ing individual student achieve‐ment throughout the current school year.
Over the summer, the Wood‐lawn School Board approved dismissing students an hour early on Wednesdays to allow teachers time to gather in “pro‐fessional learning communities” to discuss what teaching strate‐ gies are working and which ones are not. Hancock said the idea is to adjust those strategies throughout the year to improve academic achievement.
“If kids aren’t growing (aca‐demically), why didn’t they?,” Hancock said.
By assessing students on a reg‐ular basis, offering enrichment where needed, and adjusting teaching strategies, Hancock said they should see improve‐ment.
“It’s not new, it’s just making sure we all do it,” Hancock said of the concept.
Here is an overview of how each school district did on the tests that were given:
• English - Woodlawn ranked first among the Southeast Arkansas districts in the third, fifth, sixth and ninth grades while Cleveland County was ranked first in the fourth grade. Overall, Cleveland County ranked among the Top 3 in four grade levels while Woodlawn ranked among the Top 3 in six grade levels.
• Math - Woodlawn ranked first in the fifth, sixth and 10th grades while Cleveland County was first in the fourth grade. Woodlawn ranked within the Top 3 at all eight grade levels while Cleveland was among the Top 3 in seven of the eight. Both districts exceeded the state aver‐ages at all eight grade levels.
• Reading - Woodlawn ranked first among sixth, ninth and 10th grades while Cleveland County was first in the fourth and eighth grades. Cleveland County ranked among the Top 3 in six of the eight grade levels while Woodlawn was Top 3 in five of the eight.
• Science - Woodlawn ranked first in the third, fifth, sixth, and ninth grades while Cleveland County was first in the eighth grade. Cleveland County ranked among the Top 3 in seven of the eight grade levels while Wood‐lawn was among the Top 3 in six of the eight.