As previously reported, two out of five students receiving lottery-funded scholarships lost the scholarship after one year. A demographics study has been conducted to dig further into the details, and it found some items worth mentioning. In short, the report finds that low-income, non-white males were the demographic most likely to lose their scholarships after their first year of college. Click here to read a story about this report from John Lyon of Arkansas News.
My take: This isn’t really about the lottery. It’s about how, as a state, we are not focused on the most important years of a person’s education, and that is kindergarten through 6th grade. These are the most formative years of a student’s life. If a student doesn’t have good study habits and the desire to learn by 6th grade, there isn’t much of a chance that this will change before high school graduation.
The hard truth is that there is widespread failure when it comes to preparing students for college. After 13 years of school, over half of all Arkansas students have to take remedial classes once they enter an institute of higher education. This should not be the case. Academic standards for public schools in Arkansas need to be raised across the board. If this happens, I truly believe that, over time, we will see an uptick in scholarship retention rates for the demographic most likely to lose their scholarships.
