The state Department of Education recommended Wednesday that Arkansas use the ACT-college admissions exam and the related ACT Aspire tests for the coming academic year.
Wednesday's recommendation came after a work session for state Board of Education members to figure out what tests to administer to Arkansas' 460,000 public-school students in the 2015-16 academic year to comply with a federal law that mandates states to test students in math and literacy in third grade through high school.
The board as a whole did not make a decision Wednesday but is to take on the matter at 10 a.m. today in the department's auditorium.
"We can have this argument or this discussion all night," said board Chairman Toyce Newton of Crossett. "The fact remains that we can be at an impasse or we can say which is the least destructive decision. We have got to move forward, and we've got to do it in such a way that we don't cause carnage."
The board and Gov. Asa Hutchinson have been at an impasse regarding the testing issue.
The Republican governor wanted the board to scrap the state's membership in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, an organization of seven states and the District of Columbia that came up with what are known as the PARCC exams.
He wanted students to take the ACT and ACT Aspire tests in the forthcoming year, a recommendation that stemmed from conclusions reached by the Governor's Council on Common Core Review, a 16-member group made up of teachers, administrators, business leaders and students statewide and led by Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin.
Instead, the board -- then made up of appointees from the preceding governor, Mike Beebe -- bucked his call on June 11, voting instead to stay with the PARCC tests.
Some 11 days later, Hutchinson directed the state's education leaders to pull out of the PARCC consortium after just a year. In a letter to state Education Commissioner Johnny Key, Hutchinson said the 2010 memorandum of understanding with PARCC required a new governor to affirm in writing the state's continued commitment to participate in the consortium, which he did not do.
Now the governor has appointed three new board members, all of whom will vote today.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to administer math and literacy tests to students in grades three through high school and to use the results of those tests to evaluate the performance of schools and school districts. The failure to administer tests would place millions of federal education dollars to a state in jeopardy. For Arkansas, about $582 million would be at stake, department officials said.
During Wednesday's three-hour work session, board members voiced their concerns about ACT and ACT Aspire, along with their frustrations with the process -- or to some, the lack thereof.
Education Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne said the governor's Common Core council made a recommendation, but the board has to make the decision. And she said that regarding whether a student succeeds or fails, the state Supreme Court has said in the past, "That's [on] you."
Zook and other board members said they were concerned that ACT Aspire -- the exam for third-graders through high school -- was not aligned with the Common Core State Standards. A majority of the 50 states, including Arkansas, adopted the 2010 standards in math and English/ language arts and then had to find or develop tests based on those standards to comply with federal law.
But Deborah Jones, the department's assistant commissioner of learning services, said the ACT program would work.
"It is, in my opinion, aligned as closely as it needs to be to instruction," Jones said.
ACT Aspire evaluates in regard to "domains," or essentially groups of standards, that are similar to those in the Common Core, she added.
Also Wednesday, department officials broke down the options the board could take: select a testing company or take bids for test providers.
Selecting a testing vendor through a sole-source process -- which would go through Arkansas' Department of Finance and Administration, the governor's office and a state legislative review -- could take six weeks at best, said Greg Rogers, the department's assistant commissioner of fiscal and administrative services.
The request for proposal process would undergo the same course, only after a vendor is chosen, he said. Rogers estimated that it would take four to five months at best.
The board could choose even to sole-source contract with ACT and ACT Aspire for a year, all the while taking bids for the state's testing program. Education Board member R. Brett Williamson of El Dorado said this route was the only way to meet all of the board's criteria.
"Is it anyone's perception that if we do anything but ACT Aspire, that it'll get shot down at that point?" Education Board member Vicki Saviers of Little Rock asked.
"If it was an assessment that looked like PARCC and smelled like PARCC, I would have my doubts," Key said.
Saviers later said she was most concerned about the schools or districts classified in academic distress, meaning fewer than half of the students scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy exams over a three-year period.
"I just want to be sure that the most challenged students in the most impoverished schools, that this is best for these students," said Saviers, who also was concerned about being able to measure the growth in those schools.
If the state adopts another test for the coming school year, it will be the third in three years.
"We have to get to a stable system," said Jones, the assistant education commissioner. "You have to go with a decision that will sustain through future years."
"How do we know?" Saviers asked. "When you're only presented with one solution, it's so hard."
The ideal situation doesn't exist, said Newton, the board chairman.
"If we do one thing, we are violating federal law and policy," she said regarding the need to put a test in place for the state. "If we do something else, it would get to the point that it would not get past legislative review. Where do we meet in the middle? We won't sing 'Kumbaya' tonight, but we might in a couple of months."
Metro on 07/09/2015