4 schools win accreditation appeals

Drew Central, Wynne lose bids, stay on probation list

Correction: Spradling Elementary School in the Fort Smith School District has been assigned the status of “accredited” by the state Department of Education. This article listed an incorrect status for the school. As a result of the change for Spradling, there are 29 schools or districts with the accreditation status of “probation.”

The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday granted the appeals of four school districts that had challenged the probation status tags given to them for violations of state accreditation standards related to high school course offerings.

While the Arkadelphia, Cross County, Lavaca and Malvern high schools will either be accredited or accredited with a citation for teachers not yet licensed in a subject they are teaching, the Drew Central and Wynne school districts lost their appeals to the board.

The high schools in those two districts will be listed as accredited-probation for the coming year, as will 28 other districts or schools that did not appeal. Three of those are on probation for a second consecutive year.

Probation is not a label the districts and superintendents want.

"In my leadership as a building principal and a superintendent, I've got a perfect record, and I'm just asking the board's mercy today," Drew Central Superintendent Billy Williams said about what he called a technical error regarding the offering of a Spanish II course.

Lavaca Superintendent Steve Rose said the probation label hurts a school district's reputation in the age of school district choice.

"I'm in a very competitive part of the state," Rose said. "We fight to keep students. We have a great school. When you have that negative connotation of probation, it's hard."

The first-year probation label puts a school in a treacherous position.

If the school should violate the same or even a different standard in the coming year and be placed on probation for two consecutive years, the state board is legally mandated to take one of nearly a dozen actions against the district or school. The penalties range from a statement of assurance that all violations are corrected to a state takeover.

College-bound students who graduate from such high schools won't be directly affected because colleges generally consider such schools accredited for the purposes of admitting the students.

Three school districts or schools are classified as being on probation for the second consecutive year as a result of the Education Board's vote Thursday on the annual school accreditation status report.

Lee County School District, Horatio High School and Rison High School in the Cleveland County School District are labeled as being on probation for the second consecutive year. The districts, which did not appeal to the state Education Board on Thursday, will be the subject of board action in July.

Lee County is already classified as being academically and fiscally distressed, and the state took over its operation and dismissed its school board earlier this year.

The reasons for the second year of probation were not detailed in the report to the state Education Board on Thursday. Violations of standards can include failure to teach required courses, employment of people who do not have a state teaching license and exceeding maximum student-to-teacher ratios.

Probation status is carried into the coming school year even if a district corrects a problem right away, Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said. That creates a sense of urgency in making corrections and ensuring that standards are met, he said.

Board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock said that there must be consequences for failing to meet the standards, even if the violations are remedied right away.

"If you can correct a violation after it is brought to your attention and you don't suffer any consequences, then this whole thing is just meaningless," Ledbetter said. "We could do just do away with this process. But I don't think we want to do that as a policy. The idea behind this is that the districts are supposed to meet the standards."

At issue in each case presented to the board Thursday was whether the school met state requirements to offer and teach the minimum 38 courses required by the state.

Early in the school year, Drew Central High School had scheduled only a half-credit, one-semester course of Spanish II, violating the standard that requires teaching two full units of the same foreign language. The school corrected it by teaching a double period of Spanish II so that students could receive one credit for one semester of work.

Wynne High was put on probation for failing to schedule and teach six required math courses as part of the 38 courses that all districts are required to teach. The district added the necessary sixth math course in the second semester, but it was not appropriately scheduled at the beginning of the year.

Additionally, the district taught an Advanced Placement calculus course that could have been counted toward the six courses, but the district failed to send timely notice to the Education Department of that substitution as required by the standards.

Arkadelphia won its appeal, although it failed to teach a regular required physics class when all students chose instead to take Advanced Placement physics. However, the school retained a teacher and the regular physics course in its schedule.

Lavaca won its appeal after the superintendent explained that staffing changes resulted in a lack of notice to the state that an Advanced Placement course had been substituted for a required math course.

Malvern High also failed to send notice of its substituting an Advanced Placement math course for a state-required course. That school also had a teacher on staff to teach any other math course should a student require it.

Cross County High won its appeal when the board concluded that a required government class was taught but miscoded in paperwork.

Schools now on first-year probation are: Cutter-Morning Star High, Dermott High, Drew Central High, Spradling Elementary in Fort Smith, Genoa Central High, Hampton High, Hazen High, William J. Clinton Primary School in Hope, Hope High, Mildred Jackson Elementary and Hughes High in Hughes, Kirby High, Lincoln High, Hamilton Learning Academy and Watson Primary schools in Little Rock, Maynard High, McGehee High, Mount Ida Elementary, Norphlet High, Paris High, Jack Robey Junior High in Pine Bluff, Rector High, Murfreesboro High, Park Avenue Elementary, Meekins Middle and Stuttgart High all in the Stuttgart district, and Wynne High.

Metro on 06/13/2014

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