State expands role in PB schools

Academic-distress panel hears of teacher turnover

T.C. Wallace (center), interim Pine Bluff school superintendent, talks with Elbert Harvey (left) and Richard Wilde of the state Department of Education’s school improvement office Friday during a meeting in Little Rock on academically troubled schools in Pine Bluff.
T.C. Wallace (center), interim Pine Bluff school superintendent, talks with Elbert Harvey (left) and Richard Wilde of the state Department of Education’s school improvement office Friday during a meeting in Little Rock on academically troubled schools in Pine Bluff.

The Arkansas Board of Education's academic-distress committee on Friday directed state school improvement specialists to expand their work in individual Pine Bluff schools to include district leaders in efforts to advance student achievement.

photo

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Pine Bluff School Board President Harold Jackson (left) and interim Superintendent T.C. Wallace listen to testimony Friday as the state Board of Education’s academic-distress committee discusses ways to improve the district’s struggling schools.

The state committee members -- who questioned whether it was time for "emergency surgery" in the district -- asked for an update in two months on the 4,300-student school system, which is operating with an interim superintendent, a declining enrollment and four schools that are labeled as academically distressed or priority schools because of chronically low student achievement.

The schools are Oak Park Elementary, Belair Middle, Jack Robey Junior High and Pine Bluff High, and they are among the nine schools plus a pre-kindergarten center and an alternative school that operated in the district this past year. Academically distressed schools are those in which fewer than half of students scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy exams over three years. Priority schools are among the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools on state tests.

Richard Wilde, school improvement unit manager for the Arkansas Department of Education, told the academic-distress committee that state specialists saw more improvements at the Pine Bluff campuses in this just-ended school year than they had seen in the previous two years.

Wilde credited a University of Virginia school improvement model for the gains. Alesia Smith, the district's own school improvement specialist who has been trained in the model, described for the board the different employee training done this school year and the use of student data to drive instruction and student learning.

"But on one hand we are saying that there is progress at the schools," Wilde told the state committee. "On the other hand we are saying the district appears to be unstable -- unstable in terms of leadership and turnover, all of which was magnified as we approached the end of the year," Wilde said.

The Pine Bluff School Board dismissed its superintendent, Linda Watson, earlier this year, and hired T.C. Wallace in March as an interim district chief. Education Department staff members said that "multiple" other personnel have left or are planning to leave the district.

"As we pursued the discussion of who was making the decisions related to the school improvement efforts, such as will there be external providers and what's the need -- that was for the most part being driven by district-level decisions rather than by need assessments at the building," Wilde said.

He said the specialists could find no evidence over the course of the school year of school and district leaders talking with each other about improvement initiatives.

The district had a couple of written plans for school improvement, but nobody was following those plans, Wilde said. He also said that the state specialists had trouble identifying who was supposed to be doing what job, largely because of the turnover in staff. Without stability in the staffing, it will be difficult to sustain improvement efforts, he added.

"We see the district as being adequately staffed, but there are not systems in place so there could be communications back and forth and so decisions can be made in an efficient and effective matter," he said in asking the state board to grant authority to Education Department school improvement specialists to work directly with the School Board.

He also recommended that the school improvement staff prepare monthly monitoring reports to the state Education Board on the improvement efforts initiated by the different school improvement consultants and models in the district.

In addition to the University of Virginia model and the district's own school improvement specialist, the district also employed the Elbow to Elbow, Evans Newton Inc. and From the Heart International Education Services firms. The Education Department report on the district cited a local newspaper report that the district had spent more than $600,000 in a year on outside consultants.

Wilde said school campus leaders didn't seem to be "buying in" to the services from the consultants and the district is not holding the consultants accountable for accomplishing goals.

"This is a system issue, and we don't see systems being put in place," he said.

Wallace, the interim superintendent, told the state committee that as a newcomer to Pine Bluff he sees Wilde's recommendations as "absolutely essential."

"I support them, and I appreciate your support. If we are going to turn this around, there has to be some things put in place," Wallace said, adding that there is a disconnect between middle management and the schools that need to be resolved.

"This will help us bridge that gap," he said.

Diane Zook of Melbourne, an Education Board member and member of the academic-distress committee, said that the state Department of Education can provide much of the same professional assistance to districts as the consultants at no cost to the districts.

Toyce Newton of Crossett, also a member of the board and the committee, wondered out loud about the level of action the state Education Board needs to take in the Pine Bluff situation.

"I'm trying to determine ... how radical interventions need to be compared to other areas that we are in," Newton said, adding that she didn't expect an answer from Wilde. "Is it emergency surgery? What is the intervention from the state Education Board? Where are we on the continuum?"

Friday's presentation on student achievement from the Pine Bluff School District and the Arkansas Department of Education's School Improvement Unit is one of a series of reports the Education Board committee has received in the past year on schools and districts identified by the state as academically troubled based on standardized test results. It was the first time the Pine Bluff district met with the committee.

The state Board of Education -- largely based on the work of the committee -- has voted in the past year to take control of the Lee County and Little Rock school districts because of poor student achievement.

The Lee County district is being returned to local control.

The Little Rock district was put under state control and its locally elected School Board dismissed in January because six of the district's 48 schools are labeled by the state as academically distressed.

The Education Board's academic committee met with the Little Rock board at least a couple of times over a few months before the Education Board's 5-4 vote Jan. 28 to assume control of the system.

Dismissed Little Rock School Board members and district voters are suing state officials to regain local control of the district. The case is pending in the Arkansas Supreme Court.

In the meantime, some opponents to the takeover periodically show up at state Board of Education meetings wearing red shirts and carrying signs calling for the return of the elected School Board. The group on Thursday picketed the home of Education Board member and academic-distress committee Chairman Vicki Saviers. Saviers was hosting a publicly announced dinner/work session for the Education Board.

Jim Ross, one of the displaced Little Rock School Board members suing the state leaders over the takeover, said in an interview Friday that it was "very frustrating" that the Education Board committee did not act more definitively on the Pine Bluff system.

"The board continues to be arbitrary, and they have no real set of standards that they are consistently following," Ross said. "Given what they did yesterday with basically overturning the will of the governor [on the different matter of selecting a statewide student testing program], they are a dictatorial board with absolutely no accountability."

He said the appointed board members "have way too much power" and "I hope the Legislature will call a special session and rein them in.

"Pine Bluff is in trouble," Ross continued. "They need help. Little Rock's in trouble. We needed help, but it needed to be done in a way in which we were all working together."

A Section on 06/13/2015

Upcoming Events