School districts’ plans to tackle woes approved

The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday unanimously but reluctantly approved plans from 28 school districts for raising student achievement at campuses previously labeled as “focus” or “priority” schools or in “academic distress.”

The newly approved plans are for schools throughout the state, including one or more campuses in each of the four Pulaski County school districts, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Springdale, Texarkana, El Dorado, Hope, Dollarway and Helena-West Helena.

Similar plans — made up of goals and strategies to achieve the goals — from an additional 29 school districts will be presented to the Education Board for approval in January.

Act 930 of 2017 requires districts with schools labeled under the state’s previous school accountability system to work with the Arkansas Department of Education to develop “transitional support plans” that will move the districts and campuses into the state’s new accountability system.

That new system contained in Act 930 and in the state’s plan for complying with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, calls for the state to provide support to the districts in their efforts to help their schools raise student achievement.

That’s in contrast to the past system in which the state Education Department intervened directly in individual schools that had chronically low scores on state tests or had large achievement gaps between groups of students on the state tests.

Under the new system the lowest performing schools and schools with large achievement gaps are classified as needing Level 5 intensive support, rather than being labeled academic distress, priority or focus schools.

SOME APPREHENSION

Education Board Chairman Jay Barth of Little Rock said that some of the transitional support plans “have great specificity and others of them are pretty vague,” making him apprehensive about approving them.

“It does gives me some worry in terms of the amount of power transitioning back to the local districts to take a lead on this if that human capacity is not present,” Barth said before the vote, noting that the federal and state laws give a lot of decision-making back to school districts to take care of their schools.

“It’s worrisome whether they will get it right,” he said about the districts, “and whether we as the state are going to be able to really track whether they are making progress.”

Education Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne said she was “very disappointed” in the plans, having expected detailed descriptions of needs and strategies — such as addressing the lack of student reading skills in upper grades by evaluating instruction in the first, second and third grades, or placing principals in schools where their skills can best serve high-need students or more effective use of summer school.

Zook said she wanted taxpayers and school district patrons to know that “these reports are not what it will take” to improve achievement in a state where only 37 percent of third-graders are reading at proficient levels.

Education Commissioner Johnny Key and Mike Hernandez, who is state superintendent of coordinated support services, said the district plans are a work in progress.

Key said that the transition plans are not an end point but are meant to start new conversations and cause districts to take on the role of responsibility for schools, including the decision-making on how grant money will be used improvement.

He said the past accountability system hasn’t worked.

The school districts with the newly approved transitional support plans include Ashdown, Augusta, Blytheville, Camden-Fairview, Cedarville, Covenant Keepers Charter School, Decatur, Deer Mt Judea, Dermott, Dollarway, El Dorado, Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Greenland, Hackett, Helena-West Helena, Hope, and Jacksonville/North Pulaski.

The others making up the total of 28 are Lead Hill, Lee County, Little Rock, Marvell Elaine, Mulberry, North Little Rock, Pulaski County Special, Springdale, Strong-Huttig, and Texarkana.