LRSD sorts campuses for support level
In plan, 25 of 31 with a state grade of D or F will be classified as priority
Little Rock School District leaders on Thursday announced draft plans to organize school campuses into three tiers of academic support based on each school’s recently announced state-applied A-to-F letter grade.
Superintendent Jermall Wright and his staff presented the plan for “priority,” “onwatch” and “autonomous” schools to the School Board at a meeting in which the board approved plans to pilot an assortment of online student tutoring companies at a total cost of about $1.6 million in the second semester of this school year.
The three-tiered system of support for the district schools and the employment of tutoring companies comes at a time when the 21,000-student capital city school system has 25 schools that have state grades of Ds or Fs, six schools with As and Bs, and six schools with Cs.
The letter grades given to schools statewide are based on each school’s Every Student Succeeds Act School Index Score, a numerical score of 1 to 100 that takes into account achievement and growth on ACT Aspire tests, as well as several other factors, including attendance and, if applicable, high school graduation rates.
The Every Student Succeeds Act is a federal law that requires states to hold their
school systems accountable for student learning.
The state of Arkansas requires the ACT Aspire exams to be given each spring to students in grades three through 10 as part of the effort to meet the federal requirements.
In addition to the letter grades, Wright showed data Thursday on how schools with the greatest percentages of students from low-income families had the lowest letter grades — with exceptions of Gibbs Magnet Elementary and Forest Heights STEM Academy for grades kindergarten through eight.
The data also showed that there were achievement gaps in excess of 40 points between white students in the district and other population subgroups, including Black students.
“Is there consensus that we need to reimagine LRSD and possibly do some things differently?” Wright questioned in materials presented to the School Board. “If we keep doing the same thing, we will keep getting the same results: insanity.
“We don’t want to be insane, so we are proposing different ways of doing things in LRSD,” Wright added, introducing what he said was a “very early draft document” of school categories and possible supports and resources that would be provided to campuses in those groups.
He told the board he anticipates a final plan to be ready by the end of January so that changes — including the reorganization of the district’s top administration — can be done in time for the 20232024 school year.
According to the draft, district campuses earning As and Bs will be tier one schools and will operate relatively independently of the broader district. Schools that received Cs will be tier two schools and will be monitored.
The majority of the district campuses — the 25 that earned state Ds and Fs — are to be tier three, or priority, schools and in line to receive the most support and direction from the district for improvement.
Leaders in the tier three, high-need schools, for example, could be required to participate in ongoing training related to management and leading turnaround schools. The schools might have assistant principals and assistant teachers to add support in classrooms. Instructional facilitators and social workers might also be added to the school staff.
Other components included in the draft plan center on providing incentives for student growth and retention incentives to staff. That retention incentive might take the form of multiyear contracts, if allowed by law, that would be tied to large monetary incentives as long as the school is meeting desired objectives in each year, Wright said.
The draft was prepared at least in part on what principals told the district administration what they believe they need for their schools, Wright said.
The tutoring services approved by the School Board on Thursday will begin in January for the 14 elementary schools that asked to participate and all the middle and high schools. Different elementary schools and selected grades within those schools will use different companies for literacy and math tutoring, Melissa Gude, the district’s chief academic officer, told the board.
Ignite! Reading, Carnegie Learning, Amira, and TutorMe are the companies that the schools have selected. TutorMe will provide access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to high school students for help with writing and with preparation for the ACT college entrance exam.
The district will use an additional company — GoSchoolBox — to track the success of each of the tutoring programs at the schools.
Wright said that the successful programs will be scaled up to more students and to more campuses in the fall of 2023.
Board member Ali Noland asked for assurances that the district can afford the programs in the long term.
Wright said the district will be fine for two years because of federal covid-19 relief funding to the district. After two years, the district will know which programs are producing good results, he said, which will make them a priority for continued funding within the district.
Wright told the board he anticipates a final plan to be ready by the end of January so that changes — including the reorganization of the district’s top administration — can be done in time for the 2023-2024 school year.