Editor,
In his opening comments at the town hall meeting, the Doctor Mr. Randall Barrett revealed an email I had sent him stating that the meeting could be the most important meeting of the Gentry School District in 20 years. I will own up to that statement and, if you attended, you should be able to see there are great opportunities to improve on the last 20 years. That situation is finally being addressed. Here is the reasoning I use for making that comment.
ACT scores are the primary source of data used by schools of higher education to accept students, organizations offering grants and scholarships, and lending institutions for making decisions on accepting a student's applications and financing their education.
Here are the ACT scores for Gentry High School for your comparison (National and State ACT Profile Reports and State Average Composite Score):
• Arkansas 20.4
• Gentry 20.5
• Mass. 24.3
• National 21
Remember these are average scores. That means 50 percent are above these scores and 50 percent are below. Since Arkansas has about 258 school districts, about 129 schools are doing better than Gentry. And the superintendent and school board want you to believe this district is doing "Pretty Good"? Really?
As you can readily see, Gentry ACT scores are 1/10th of 1 percent above the Arkansas state average, 2.38 percent below the national average, and 15.63 percent lower than Massachusetts.
In addition to Gentry's less-than-stellar ACT scores, according to the Department of Education's "District 2014 Performance" spreadsheet, Gentry "Needs Improving" in Literacy, Math, Graduation Rate and Overall Status.
In his closing statements, Dr. Barrett indicated he thought Gentry is doing pretty good. I suppose 50 percent is good enough for government work, but that certainly will not get the job done in industry.
Al Lemke
Gentry
Editorial on 04/29/2015