THE FACTS
- Under court order to desegregate the Little Rock School District (LRSD), Arkansas taxpayers have poured more than 550 million dollars, beyond what the state funding formula and local millage would generate, into the Little Rock School District over the past two decades.
- Over the past five years alone, taxpayers have contributed more than $167 million additional dollars to the school district. And that’s a substantial increase from the previous five years.
- Total payments, above the funding formula and local millage, increased by about 20 percent, comparing the 1999-2004 school years with the 2004-2009 school years.
- The payments have been forced by a court-ordered desegregation plan dating back to 1957.
THE RESULTS
- Despite the substantial investment from taxpayers, the Little Rock School District has failed to deliver results – for our children, for our community, for our future.
- Over the same five-year period, 2004-2009, school performance and student performance has deteriorated substantially.
- Achievement gaps are increasing across the board. Student performance in math and literacy at all grade levels is below par – and the gaps are growing larger every year. More troubling, the achievement gaps are getting more severe when measuring the progress of African-American students and Caucasian students.
- In literacy, the achievement gap between African-Americans and Caucasians has not dropped over the past five years – today that gap measures about 38 percentile points across all grades.
- In mathematics, the achievement gap between African-Americans and Caucasians has dropped only slightly over the past five years – but that gap today still averages about 38 percentile points across all grades.
- Currently, African-American students in the LRSD are performing at about half the levels of the Caucasian students.
While per-student funding has increased, benchmark testing has continued to drop. We should expect – and demand – more from our schools. Our children deserve it, our community deserves it, and our future demands it.
