State awaits details of Sanders’ school-changing bill

We’re still waiting to see Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ school-changing education bill, but we know it will include parental choice, and we’re learning more about what that will look like.

Sanders’ LEARNS plan will include “education freedom accounts” that would provide parents access to the state’s per-pupil foundation funding now going to public schools. For the 2022-23 school year, that amount was $7,413, but it goes up every year based on an adequacy study conducted by the House and Senate Education Committees.

Under Sanders’ upcoming plan, parents could use most of that money for public school alternatives. Arkansas would be like other states that have enacted what generally are called education savings accounts. These can pay for private school tuition and other expenses like technology and tutoring that can be incurred by those families and by homeschoolers.

On the KARK Sunday news show “Capitol View,” Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva gave a preview of the bill. He said participation would be voluntary, but the state wouldn’t just write a blank check. Participating private schools would be vetted and would have to be accredited, and students would be assessed to determine how well they are learning.

“There’s going to be conditions that have to be met and criteria to make sure that if parents are choosing this opportunity, that their children are going to be educated appropriately,” he said.

The assessments – in other words, the testing – will be an important piece. According to Patrick Wolf, PH.D., with the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform, some school choice states – West Virginia, Iowa, Utah and Florida – allow private schools to choose their own standardized test, while Tennessee requires students to take that state’s accountability test. Arizona, where education savings accounts are available to all families, doesn’t have a test.

Oliva said the program will be phased in over three years starting this upcoming school year to provide time to develop systems and rules. The first year, the “most fragile learners” would be prioritized. Those would include students in what he called a ”failure factory” school scoring an “F” on the state’s report card. Other students in this first group would be students with disabilities, English language learners, foster kids, homeless kids, and children of military members. By year three, all students would be eligible.

This has been one of the most controversial elements of the LEARNS plan. Supporters say all parents, regardless of income, should be able to send their children to the school that best meets their needs. Opponents fear the loss of financial and community support for public schools, which will continue to educate most of the state’s half a million students for the foreseeable future.

Regardless of the arguments, this is going to happen. Sanders is the governor. She won big. She believes in this, as do many Republicans, and polls have shown it’s a winning issue.

Other elements of Sanders’ plan will also be transformative. She has said she wants to increase the minimum base salary for teachers from $36,000 to $50,000. How will that be funded, and how will that affect school budgets? She also wants to repeal the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, which protects teachers but also makes it hard for schools to fire bad ones, or even to move a losing football coach to another position.

Also, Sanders says students must be able to read at third grade level before advancing to the fourth grade. That’s important, because third grade reading proficiency is a reliable indicator of future academic success. She has proposed increased investments in pre-k learning and in literacy to help them achieve proficiency.

Only 35% of Arkansas students are reading at grade level now, so as “Capitol View” host Roby Brock asked Oliva, does that mean two-thirds could be held back?

Oliva’s answer was, the goal is to provide students support, and, “If a child’s been retained previously, they’re not going to be retained again.” He said it’s a given that students will go to fourth grade with gaps in their learning, but there will be evidence-based strategies ready to help them.

It sounds like there will be more retention than there is now, but it’s hard to see schools flunking large percentages of their students. That would be a mess.

We’ll see. The bill will be released this week or next, and, even after it’s debated, it likely won’t change much before Sanders signs it into law.

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