Little Rock education panel told task is blurry

Schools’ conflicts rife, 2 letters say

Baker Kurrus, (right) superintendent for the Little Rock School District, and Johnny Key,  Commissioner of Education for the Arkansas Department of Education, during a press conference at the Arkansas Department of Education.
Baker Kurrus, (right) superintendent for the Little Rock School District, and Johnny Key, Commissioner of Education for the Arkansas Department of Education, during a press conference at the Arkansas Department of Education.

A state-appointed committee of Little Rock-area community members is facing tough issues and conflicting views right off the bat.

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FILE— Then-Pulaski County Special School District Superintendent Jerry Guess is seen in this 2016 file photo.

The Little Rock Area Public Education Stakeholders Group -- appointed by state education leaders to address issues of collaboration and cooperation among south Pulaski County's traditional schools and charter schools -- will meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday in the Arkansas Department of Education's auditorium, 4 Capitol Mall.

Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus, invited to make a presentation to the group on his next to last day on the job, sent a letter in advance to the group. In it, he urged group members to refrain from making a detailed analysis of "specific potential collaborations," until the group, state Education Commissioner Johnny Key, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the state Board of Education "have clearly articulated the policies which drive their decisions."

Kurrus referred in his letter to the Education Board's March 31 votes to allow the expansion of the eStem and LISA Academy charter-school systems by almost 3,000 seats. The larger charter-school systems, he has said, have the potential to attract higher-achieving, more affluent students from the Little Rock district and leave the district with a greater proportion of difficult-to-educate students and fewer financial resources to do it.

"The major decisions in favor of charter school expansion have already been made," Kurrus wrote in the letter in which he also questioned the charter school rent payments to nonpublic entities. "The idea of a committee to provide advice about 'collaboration and coordination' to a changing state Board of Education after the major decisions have been made, requires frank and honest explanation," he said.

Pulaski County Special School District Superintendent Jerry Guess, who is also scheduled to address the group Wednesday, similarly sent a letter in advance. In it, he wrote that there are "major failings in school structure" that prevent the state from fulfilling its constitutional responsibility to provide an equitable and adequate public education system for all students.

"It is impossible for the State to fund two parallel school systems which by their nature will segregate students into two groups -- one group with the most difficult to educate; the other with the students easiest to educate," Guess wrote about the establishment of publicly funded charter schools that are operated independently of traditional school districts.

Additionally, the state is delegating its responsibility to operate constitutionally compliant schools to school boards that "are incapable of meeting" that obligation, Guess said, adding that there is a substantial shortage of competent and qualified school administrators.

"In a nutshell, Arkansas has more standard and charter districts than it has people qualified to lead those schools," Guess wrote.

The stakeholder group's agenda for Wednesday includes not only presentations from the superintendents of the Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts, but also information from the director of the University of Arkansas' Office of Innovation for Education, and from state Department of Education legal, school accountability and charter school staff.

School-by-school achievement data plotted on graphs and bar charts, charter school history and demographics, education terminology, and different definitions of a quality school have been prepared and submitted to the seven-member committee in advance of the Wednesday session, its second meeting. A 2015 study of school district boundaries within Pulaski County is also included in the information forwarded to the group.

Leaders of charter school systems in south Pulaski County were invited to address the group this week but those presentations have been postponed until the stakeholder group's July 25 meeting.

Scott Smith, director of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center that supports rural and charter schools, said Friday that he asked for an extension on those presentations because of conflicts with the charter leaders' previously made summer plans, including attendance at a national charter school conference this week in Nashville, Tenn.

Open-enrollment charter school operators have said they were prompted to seek to increase the number of their campuses and available seats because of the parent demand for their schools, as evidenced by school waiting lists of thousands of students.

The stakeholder group is the result of an Arkansas Board of Education decision in April to hire a "research facilitator" to make recommendations on how the board might better manage decision-making and communication in a way that will increase collaboration and coordination among traditional public schools and independently operated, publicly funded charter schools.

The Education Board's call for guidance on how to generate cooperation among the different kinds of schools came after the heated debate earlier this year over the charter school expansion requests.

In addition to bringing in a consultant, the Education Board's action in April also called for the formation of a small stakeholder group of individuals representing the different kinds of public schools and the Little Rock-area community as a prerequisite to hiring the researcher or consultant.

The stakeholder group -- appointed by Key and outgoing Education Board Chairman Toyce Newton of Crossett -- is to ultimately identify data questions, define key terms and set measurement parameters for the consultant.

To that end, the group last month asked Denise Airola, director of the Office of Innovation for Education, to provide data on traditional and charter school achievement and definitions of a high quality schools that go beyond just test scores.

In response, Airola and her staff plotted achievement and achievement gains over time for each school using standardized test results for math and English/language arts and percentages of students at a school eligible for subsidized meals. The percentages of students eligible for free and reduced price school meals is an indicator of low family income.

As an example of the results, eight elementary schools -- Forest Park, Don Roberts, Baker, Chenal, Jefferson, Gibbs, Williams and Pulaski Heights -- had more than 50 percent of their students meeting or exceeding grade-level standards in English/language arts. All other traditional and charter elementary schools had fewer than half of students meeting or exceeding grade-level standards -- regardless of the poverty level in the school.

In terms of achievement growth in English/language, far more elementary schools exceeded expected growth. There were similar scatter plots for elementary school math achievement and growth, as well as for middle and high schools.

Bar graphs also were prepared to show achievement levels of student subpopulations -- black, white, Hispanic, English-language learners and special education students -- at both traditional schools and charter schools.

For example, 29.1 percent of all charter school students met achievement standards for elementary math, as did 24.8 percent of all students in traditional schools. A total of 13.5 percent of black students in traditional schools and 12.8 percent of black students in charter schools did the same in elementary math. A total of 57.8 percent of white elementary pupils at charter schools and 52.6 percent of white elementary pupils in traditional schools scored at proficient or better levels in math.

There is a lot of data available and a lot of ways to look at the data, which can result in conflicting inferences about the schools, Airola said Friday.

"Everybody wants to know, 'Are the charter schools doing well? Are the regular schools doing well?'" she said. "There is a mixed message that's come out about the data. If you put the performance data out there and you just present it with just a couple of key variables that people are concerned about, it doesn't tell a single story. It's a mixed story and it underscores the importance of knowing what are the specific questions that you want to answer.

"When this [stakeholders] group engages a research office to do analyses and collect data, it is really important to have a clear understanding of the questions you are trying to answer," Airola continued. "Also, the key terms must be clearly defined and understood," she said.

If the achievement and growth are the only indicators of a quality school and whether every child has access to a quality school, then the top schools in south Pulaski County would vary by grade level and subject area, Airola said about using a narrow definition of quality.

"As we looked at the data, what we felt it was saying was that you need to clearly know what you value so you can think about what you are going to infer from here and what deeper questions you need to ask as the result of what you are inferring," she said. "It doesn't answer questions. It raises more questions and the the committee needs to spend a little time discussing what is an achieving school, what is a quality school."

The stakeholder group members are Tommy Branch, a former Little Rock School Board member who is the committee's chairman; Tamika Edwards; Ann Brown Marshall; Jim McKenzie; Antwan Phillips; Leticia Reta; and Dianna Varady.

The group's meetings are open to the public. Each session is to be live-streamed, recorded and posted on the state Education Department website, arkansased.gov.

Metro on 06/27/2016

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