Friendship tested

Outrageous and shameful priorities

COULD we be forgiven—ever be forgiven—for thinking there’s a reason to the madness of changing education tests so frequently in this state? It’s amazing that the ACT Aspire test has survived three years.

It can be advantageous, for some, to change tests for Arkansas’ school children as often as possible. That way, it’s harder to compare progress year to year, and accountability is more difficult. If that sounds cynical, Gentle Reader, we’re happy you don’t misunderstand.

Arkansas’ education establishment changed from the PARCC test to the ACT Aspire three years ago, and we were all told the ACT Aspire was a better test, and other states would soon be using it. At the time, only Alabama did. Now even that state has given it up.

So comparing Arkansas kids to students in other states is difficult at best. But at least, with three years of Aspire tests in the can, we can compare Arkansas students to . . . Arkansas students. For now.

But folks, it still ain’t good.

Your friendly statewide newspaper, with some help from friends, broke down the Aspire tests over the last few years. The results were not encouraging. Most students in this state are not reading at grade level. But things get worse:

In looking at some of the individual schools, “most students” means almost everybody.

For examples: In 2018, only 11.11 percent of third-graders at Baseline Elementary in Little Rock were reading at grade level. At Bale, only 7.25 percent of fifth-graders. At Chicot, only 10.71 percent of fifth-graders. And we’re not even through the Cs yet.

School after school in Little Rock show weakness in reading. And the old saying is, if you can’t learn to read, you can’t read to learn. How approach a math word problem, or a science lab, without the ability to read? It’s a spiral. A downhill one.

Here we are, more than three years after the state took over Little Rock’s school district, and some schools have less than 10 percent of its students passing simple reading tests. It should be a shame. But that would only happen if more adults could feel shame.

TAKE A DRIVE down Roosevelt, and then Asher, and look for the first school zone in the 25th Street area. That would be the old Garland School, closed for years now. But a charter outfit called Friendship Aspire Academy obtained it, and plans to open it next year to 160 kids. (Thank you, Walton Family Foundation, for all your work—and money—that you’ve provided to these schools.)

Anybody driving by the old Garland School would recognize that somebody’s been hard at work to get it ready for classes. They’re pouring money (and concrete) into it. The AC unit looks brand-new, as do the windows. Thursday morning, one could see heavy equipment out front, but that equipment was idle. The work is mostly indoors now as finishers put the last touches on the place. It’s going to look good. It’s going to be like new. It’s going to be open next year.

Yes, the folks at Friendship have been hard at work—not to siphon off the most advantaged kids in the best ZIP codes, but hard at work to open this school in the most challenging of areas. And, when another charter outfit dropped plans for a school a few months ago, Friendship tried to open its new digs a year early.

The state put the brakes on it by dragging out the approval process. There’s no other way to explain it. Educators, pols, and others with a vested interest in the status forever quo did enough complaining that another year will be lost to these students.

A perfectly good school will sit idle now, for a full year, in a challenging part of the city, where poor and minority kids really could use options for education. All because certain adults in the education and political establishments in Little Rock don’t like charter schools horning in on their action. Again, it would be shameful if those adults could feel shame.

THE PROBLEM doesn’t often start at the top, but the top is a good place to look for leadership. Governor Hutchinson is in the middle of a re-election campaign just now, but we’d ask him to take a few minutes to read over some of these numbers coming out of Little Rock’s elementary schools. And not just elementary schools. (See www.arkansasonline. com/2018act)

The troubles of Little Rock’s schools were plopped in his lap, no doubt. But they are his problems now. His legacy, at least when it comes to Arkansas’ largest school district, will be made in the next few years.

Will it be one in which 11.11 percent reading levels are acceptable?

Or otherwise?