Category Archives: Education

The Class of ’26 and the Class of ’87

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I had the honor of driving a school bus full of Bryant High School seniors to graduation practice at Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium. Police officers escorted us through town. Families held signs and cheered their graduates as we drove down Reynolds Road. It’s a nice tradition.

While they rehearsed, I corresponded by text with a Wynne High School classmate about our next reunion – our 40th. Life goes by fast.

The Class of ’26 had a different school experience than my Class of ’87.

For one, schools today emphasize workforce preparation and technical skills in ways schools in 1987 did not. College was the highest goal when I was a student; other paths were less valued. Continue reading →

Oliva’s accelerated mindset: More 18-year-olds with degrees

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Secretary of Education Dr. Jacob Oliva wants more Arkansas high school seniors graduating with two-year associate’s degrees. Some could even leave high school as four-year college graduates.

Oliva touted an “accelerated mindset” in comments May 5 before the Arkansas School Boards Association and the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators.

Oliva became Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ secretary of education in January 2023 after serving in various roles in the Florida Department of Education, most recently as interim commissioner, the top job. He started his career teaching elementary students with special needs.

He told the ASBA-AAEA Joint Leadership Conference that schools should design pathways for all students to achieve.

“We’ve created this culture and this mindset that we’ve got to focus on the bottom, which I agree,” he said. “Kids in the bottom need a lot of help. They need a lot of support. They need a lot of intervention. They need scaffolds. But while we’ve been focusing on the bottom, we’ve been holding everybody back. And our systems need to be designed to support all students, meet them where they are and push them as far as we can get them to go.” Continue reading →

The University of Arkansas’ ‘radical shift’

By Steve Brawner, © 2026 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

What happened January 28 at the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees meeting was indeed a “radical shift.”

That’s how one trustee, Judd Deere, accurately described it in speaking later to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The board voted to transfer somewhere between $10 million and $11 million annually from university operations to the athletic department. The vote was 7-3, with Deere one of the three voting no.

The shift is occurring in two ways. First, the trustees’ resolution ends the athletic department’s annual transfer of funding to the university, which has averaged $4.4 million the last three years. Second, the resolution calls on Chancellor Dr. Charles Robinson and Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek to create a plan for the university to generate $6 million annually for the athletic department. 

Robinson and Yurachek said they had not seen the resolution prior to the meeting.

What made this shift “radical” is the fact that the UA has long taken pride in being one of a small number of major universities nationwide that hasn’t subsidized its athletic department.  Continue reading →

Cross County’s creatures of character

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

How does a public school reinforce character traits like humility and integrity without wading into the culture wars or crossing into parental territory? The Cross County Elementary Technology Academy may have figured it out.

Located about 45 minutes south of Jonesboro, CCETA weaves seven such values into its daily learning activities. 

“The way we think of it is, character education is not something else on your teacher’s plate,” said Kathryn Pruiett, the school district’s character education master teacher. “It is the plate that everything else rests on.”

Superintendent Dr. Nathan Morris decided years ago that the school district needed to be more intentional about teaching character along with academics. A committee started determining what that would look like at the elementary school. The school surveyed teachers and parents about the values the community wanted to instill. 

Continue reading →

Going to college while still in high school

Micah Bradley is on track to graduate the Hope Collegiate Academy with her associate’s degree.

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Micah Bradley played shortstop and third base for the Hope Bobcats softball team this past year as a sophomore. She wants to go to college and become a nurse anesthetist, and she’s getting a head start. Thanks to the Hope Collegiate Academy, she’ll graduate high school in two years with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree, for which her family will have paid nothing. 

Students at Hope can earn a two-year associate of arts degree by taking concurrent classes at the nearby University of Arkansas Hope-Texarkana campus. They get their basic courses done and can be well on their way toward a four-year degree.

Since the academy’s founding in the 2018-19 school year, 89 Hope students have completed the program. This year, 14 graduated with their associate’s degree three days before they received their high school diploma.

Arkansas High School in Texarkana has a similar program. Students take classes at UAHT’s Texarkana campus. Started a year later, 54 students there have graduated with an associate’s degree. Eighteen did this year. Continue reading →