Priorities

“Midland is not a choice for us because they have a D-rating. I need my kids to go to something that’s not a D-rated school.”

AND THUS a parent spoke. When it comes down to it, all the lawyering and excuses and budget charts in school board meetings don’t veto a parent’s choice to send her children to a good school. That’s what Arkansas’ accountability (and transparency) laws are all about.

On Thursday came great news from the Arkansas Board of Education. Its members granted three appeals for students living in the Midland School District in Independence County who want to leave poorly performing schools for better ones.

The district rejected the idea, because the district has been losing a significant percentage of students (not to mention the state money that follows each student) to other districts already.

“This year we have lost what would be an entire class of kindergartners to school choice,” the Midland superintendent told the state board. “This is detrimental to Midland Public Schools in relation to our financial position to continue to allow students about the 3 percent cap to be released to other districts.”

It’s hard to hold that statement against the super, who is, after all, trying to keep his small district afloat financially, but even more importantly showed good spirit (and sportsmanship) by saying after the board ruled that he didn’t disagree with the decision. He even said he thought the state board listened to the families and considered the needs of the students. Which is a surprisingly good show among educators when it comes to this topic.

But “lost” an entire class of kindergartners? They weren’t Midland’s kids to lose. Or so parents would insist.

The School Choice Act is doing exactly what lawmakers intended: bringing some sort of accountability to school districts. If they can’t do better than a D grade, then families are going to apply elsewhere. And most parents wouldn’t want their kids in a poorly performing school while educators experiment with different courses of action. Would you want your child acting as a guinea pig?

But there’s another law (or two) at work here: The transparency laws that force schools to 1. test children and 2. make those tests public. And the state must issue grades for each school for parents to see. For if those families in the Midland School District didn’t know the schools were performing at that level, would they ever think to try education elsewhere?

This is how things are supposed to be. The state’s education board deserves a lot of credit. As does the Legislature, which set this in motion years ago.