State Plates
The Arkansas Education Plate
In Arkansas, education plates turn on attainment — the credentials a population carries. This plate places Black Arkansas in the national education geography: the benchmarks below are the published national attainment figures for Black adults, and Arkansas's distribution figures — 490,000 Black residents, 15 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The attainment ladder reads locally in Arkansas: the state rows below give the population whose schooling this national pattern frames. For Black adults aged 25 and over, the Census Bureau's surveys record a population that has reached near-parity in high school completion while remaining well behind national rates in college completion: about 89 percent hold a high school diploma or higher, and about 25 percent — one in four — hold a bachelor's degree or higher. An atlas benchmark earns its place by locating Arkansas, never by ranking it.
The attainment ladder reads locally in Arkansas: the state rows below give the population whose schooling this national pattern frames. At the first step, high school completion, Black adults stand at about 89 percent, close to the national figure of about 90 percent — a convergence that is historically recent and remarkable, given that as late as the mid-twentieth century a majority of Black adults had not completed high school. At the third step, the bachelor's degree, the Black figure of about 25 percent separates from the national figure of about 36 percent and the non-Hispanic White figure of about 39 percent. The point of the benchmark is position: where Arkansas stands, stated before anything is made of it.
In Arkansas, that national attainment pattern meets a state school and college system of its own, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Placed alongside the other groups the Census Bureau reports, the bachelor's-degree ordering reads: Asian adults at roughly 57 percent, non-Hispanic White adults at 39 percent, all adults at 36 percent, Black adults at 25 percent, and Hispanic adults at about 21 percent. Held against the national ladder, Arkansas's own rows say where its attainment stands.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Arkansas; the benchmark rows are the published national attainment record, labeled as benchmarks. In Arkansas, attainment is a stock built over decades, so the national pattern changes slowly — and the size of the state's Black adult population is what turns that pattern into local classrooms, colleges, and workforces.
The Population Behind the Plate
For Arkansas, the national attainment figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Arkansas holds about 490,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in six of its people, with Black alone at about 453,000, or 15 percent. Two sides frame the comparison here: the national ladder, and the attainment recorded in Arkansas.
In Arkansas, that national attainment pattern meets a state school and college system of its own, and the table below fixes the population it describes. The eastern tier of counties along the Mississippi — Chicot, Desha, Phillips, Lee, St. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how Arkansas's households stand.
In Arkansas, attainment is cumulative: every graduating class adds to it, and nothing subtracts except time. That is why education plates reward patience — the national Black attainment record has risen across every measured generation, and a state like Arkansas, holding 490,000 Black residents, holds its share of that rising stock in its own schools and campuses. The table's benchmark row for Arkansas states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis.
For The Arkansas Education Plate, the method is the atlas's own: named sources, published figures, and a table that carries what the map cannot. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 15%; Black share, alone or in combination: 16.3%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 490,000. The plate is whole when its table and its text are read together, as they are meant to be.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of Arkansas: Black residents, alone or in combination: 490,000; United States benchmark — of Black adults hold a high school diploma or higher: 89%. The measures above and these together fix the population of Arkansas as this plate describes it — its size, its share, its standing nationally — and the text that surrounds them interprets them without rounding or extension beyond the source.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 15% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 16.3% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 490,000 |
| United States benchmark — of Black adults hold a high school diploma or higher | 89% |
| United States benchmark — of Black adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher | 1 in 4 |
Source: National Center for Education Statistics; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey educational attainment tables. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.