Rules to accredit schools revised; journalism mandate tossed

The state Board of Education’s rules revising state standards for accrediting schools and school districts cleared the Legislative Council on Friday with some opposition from supporters of journalism classes.

The new rules no longer require high schools to offer a journalism course. Those fighting that provision failed in their attempt to force a separate vote to send the rules back to the state board.

The Legislative Council voted 25 to 14 to reject a motion by Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, who said he wants the state Board of Education’s rules to continue to require high schools to offer a journalism class.

The new standards continue to call for each high school to offer a minimum of 38 courses but no longer specify particular courses, just the broad subject areas such as English, math and social studies. Similarly the revised accreditation standards do not list specific courses required for graduation but say that students must acquire “a minimum of 22 units of credit for graduation as determined by the state Board of Education.”

Stacy Smith, the agency’s assistant commissioner of learning services, told the board last month the changes make the process of accreditation simpler and lift the burden of districts having to offer courses for which they don’t have teachers, which puts school systems in danger of being put on probation.

Smith said making sure the state has a viable system for online teaching and learning will ensure all students have access to courses not enumerated in the standards, such as journalism, which she said schools have been required to provide despite the fact that only about 4 percent of students are actually taking it.

But Lowery said Friday that he viewed no longer requiring high schools to offer a journalism course as another loophole or waiver by state government.

“This is not an issue of whether we have a lot of students who want to become journalists,” he told his fellow lawmakers on the Legislative Council.

“We need to be preparing our students to be consumers of information, and probably more so than any generation, we need our students to be better citizens, better consumers, better equipped to recognize fake news. … Those

kind of things can be taught in a journalism course,” Lowery said.

Rep. Andy Mayberry, R-East End, said he wouldn’t have likely chosen journalism for a degree at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia if Sheridan High School didn’t offer a class in journalism to expose him to that field of work.

“Many of the basic principles of journalism are things that you can apply regardless of what your career path is,” he said. “It teaches discernment, facts from opinion, an ability to be able to emphasize what the most important elements of a story are and put those in the beginning.”

“Here within the Legislature, I think that those are things, skills, that make for a good legislator, as it does it many other career fields,” Mayberry said. “We need to do whatever we can to encourage more people to look at it as a trade and as a profession. … This is another area of checks and balances because those ladies and gentlemen lined up on the press row over there

are our checks for us. They are checks for government.”

But Senate Education Committee Chairman Jane English, R-North Little Rock, said the state’s current standards date back to the 1980s and she wants to allow school districts to decide whether they teach a journalism class or not.

“Hopefully, all the things that we talked about here are things all of our students would learn by the time that they leave high school,” she said.

Regarding English’s remarks, state Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville, said, “Amen.”

“This is one opportunity where we can take a mandate off,” he said.

“There is nothing in here that prohibits the teaching of journalism and I think it is … probably something that really should be taught and the local school board and superintendent should take that into consideration and find ways to do it and they have and they do most of the time,” Ballinger said.

“But I think it is incumbent on us to provide as much as flexibility to local school districts. Let them be free locally and get us out of their business as much as possible,” he said.