LITTLE ROCK — TO A LOT of Arkies, De Queen is that quiet little town just south of the Ozarks, a rest stop between Texarkana and Mena. If you’re in South Arkansas, and you’re going to Oklahoma for a game or something, you might have to stop there for gas. Or maybe pick up that pack of hot dogs you forgot while you were packing for a day trip to Lake Greeson.
For those who live in De Queen, though, it’s home-sweet-home. And y’all can have Little Rock, the mountains and Lake Greeson. (Why go all the way to Greeson when you’ve got three lakes of your own right here-De Queen, Dierks and Gillham?)
Besides, you might be surprised to learn, folks in De Queen have another reason not to be jealous of bigger cities, maybe the best: the education it offers its kids. Specifically, at a little jewel of a school out on Treating Plant Road called De Queen Elementary. You might be surprised because, if you just looked at the school’s socioeconomic demographics, to use a 25-cent phrase, you might not expect what you’d find there.
Let’s run down the usual list of excuses for low expectations in public education: De Queen Elementary has a high number of Hispanic kids-about 65 percent of its student population.
Check.
Eight in 10 of its students there come from poor families.
Check.
The school district doesn’t exactly have a rich tax base. In fact, the school district has the second-lowest property-tax rate in the state.
Check.
All of which should only set the stage for still another news story about teachers throwing their hands up in the air, and the usual complaints about there not being enough money to offer kids a Quality Education. Or even a decent one. After all, you can’t expect kids like that, in districts like that, to actually learn, can you?
Actually, you can.
Uncheck.
A FEW weeks back, De Queen Elementary was given a national award of some note. And reporters descended on the place to find out why. How can a poor school district, despite all the stereotypes Americans have bought into, compile a record so impressive? A record that includes this kind of data:
More than 93 percent of the kids at De Queen Elementary scored at the Proficient and Advanced levels on the state’s math and literacy tests.
And there’s virtually no difference when you break down the numbers by race, first language or household income.
To top it off, teachers at De Queen Elementary rave about the support they’re getting from parents and the district.
All of that just doesn’t fit the stereotype of a poor school district. People in De Queen apparently don’t know what bad schools they’re supposed to have-because in De Queen Elementary they seem to have one of the very best.
How about that? Gosh, maybe it’s not De Queen but the stereotype that’s wrong.
And maybe the rest of the state needs to find out what’s going on in De Queen, and emulate it. Soonest. If not sooner.
If you dig into the particulars, you’ll find that teachers at De Queen Elementary follow a system called Direct Instruction. According to dispatches, DI has teachers follow a step-by-step script with small classes comprised of students with similar strengths and weaknesses. Then they take those students through reading exercises that are laid out in detail.
DI has been around for years. And it has its critics. You can imagine the reaction to DI. Follow a script? The same playbook for all students?
As if kids in De Queen, Ark., could be taught in the same language as kids in, say, Baltimore? Which is the city a professor invented DI for. According to the story in the paper, even corrections are scripted in this program.
Wouldn’t scripts handcuff the best teachers? Or maybe provide a crutch for the weakest ones? Isn’t it all much too strict, too demanding, too planned out?
Maybe. That’s what the critics say. But the results are hard to argue with.
This kind of scripted education program isn’t supposed to work, according to the kind of educantists who prefer a lot less structure, a lot more “freedom.” But at De Queen Elementary, DI seems to be working. Very well. Parents are excited. Teachers are excited. The kids are learning. Just look at the test scores.
Any gap between the scores racked up by the Hispanic kids and the others is pretty much non-existent at De Queen Elementary. And that’s not because the native English speakers scored poorly. All the kids seem to be doing remarkably well if the test scores are a reliable indication-and they are.
How argue with success?
WHAT’S going on in De Queen is another example of a lesson too often ignored: Just spending money doesn’t guarantee a good education. Money has its uses, no doubt. Just ask anybody who doesn’t have any. But money isn’t everything. Often enough it doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to educational achievement. Just look at the public schools in Washington, D.C., or New York City. They may be among the highest per-pupil spenders in the country-but not necessarily among the highest achieving.
De Queen’s school district spent $9,283 per student last year, which puts it right in the middle of the state’s 240-some-odd school districts. Yet the elementary school succeeds where other schools do not.
Then consider the example of Little Rock. Its school district is an example to beware, not emulate. Last we noticed, that school district spent $12,825 per student per year. And yet Little Rock has some of the lowest-achieving schools in Arkansas. The state Department of Education ranks eight schools in Little Rock in the bottom 5 percent in the state when it comes to the quality of education they offer students. Another 10 schools in the Little Rock district were downgraded because of their low graduation rates-or because of socioeconomic gaps between different groups of students.
Why is De Queen Elementary pulling ahead of so many other schools in the state? Part of the answer may be this Direct Instruction business. But we’d suspect there are other factors, too. Like a good principal, happy teachers, and in general an environment of high expectations, not low stereotypes.
Editorial, Pages 12 on 01/08/2013