Category Archives: Education

The keys for Johnny Key: leading, mending

Johnny Key speaks after Gov. Asa Hutchinson announces him as his choice as education commissioner.

Johnny Key speaks after Gov. Asa Hutchinson announces him as his choice as education commissioner.

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

I’m not the first person to point out that two of the most important people in Arkansas education these days are not educators. Not surprisingly, some educators are not happy about this.

Those two would be former Sen. Johnny Key, the state’s new education commissioner, and Baker Kurrus, the new Little Rock School District superintendent, who was appointed by Key.

Until this past legislative session, Key legally could not have served in his current post. Under previous state law, the state’s education commissioner was required to have been an educator for 10 years with five years’ experience as an administrator. Key has owned a day care but has not worked in education.

Previously, he was chairman of the Senate Education Committee and was the leading legislator regarding education policy. In that role, the Republican won friends and respect because of his cooperative, conciliatory, consensus-building style. You might not agree with him, but he’s fair.

He’s also perhaps the best person to be education commissioner, despite his lack of qualifications.

For the past decade, Arkansas education has been marked by consensus thanks to a common enemy – the fear of returning to court. The state spent many years under the thumb of the Lake View case because the Arkansas Constitution requires a “general, suitable and efficient system of free public schools,” which the courts redefined as “adequate” and “equitable.” To get the state out of court, and keep it out, legislators poured money into schools and then regularly gave them a cost of living raise, at the expense of all other state priorities. When other states were cutting school funding, Arkansas was increasing it.

But thanks to time and term limits, Lake View is a fading memory, and the ties that bound everyone together are fraying. A real divide exists now at the Capitol among education reformers, including some Republican legislators, and the education establishment. If anybody can bring those two sides together, it’s Key, the former Republican legislator known for fairness.

Still, the idea that a non-educator would be in charge of education policy is understandably hard for some educators to accept. He’s never been in the trenches with them. He’s never tried to teach geometry to a struggling student, or administer a standardized test, or deal firsthand with the laws he helped pass. My wife the other day said the president of the United States ought to have served in the military, of which he or she serves as commander-in-chief. It’s the same principle.

Key has some fences to mend across the state, especially after one of his first major acts was to appoint Kurrus as superintendent of the Little Rock School District. As education commissioner, Key effectively is a one-man school board for every district under state control, and that includes the state’s largest.

Like Key, Kurrus has crafted education policy but isn’t an educator. A well-respected attorney and businessman, he served 12 years on the Little Rock School Board and has been heading a committee studying the district’s finances. If Key is best described as “conciliatory and cooperative,” Kurrus could be described as “thoroughly competent,” and the district could use a lot of that right now.

But he’s not a competent educator, or at least, not an experienced one. The appointment of a legislator to lead education – that was tough for some to swallow. When that legislator named an attorney and businessman to lead Little Rock’s schools – well, then it became kind of a one-two punch.

Outsiders can bring a needed fresh perspective, and there are many walks of life where an organization’s leader is not necessarily an expert in that organization’s primary mission. It works well when those leaders understand their role and limitations and let the experts do their jobs. When I asked Key about his lack of experience, he cited the example of the hospital CEO who is not a doctor. Would any patient care? Of course not.

Is that a good analogy? Mostly, although in many hospitals, the doctors are the stars with the ultimate power, and the CEO, no matter how well paid, plays a support role. Teachers don’t quite have that kind of sway. The most important single person in Arkansas public education is now Johnny Key. The most important single person in Little Rock public education is now Baker Kurrus, and the person to whom he answers is Key.

This can work as long as they know their roles, let the experts do their jobs, and mend some fences.

What do teachers think of Common Core?

Common Core cover cutoutBy Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

What do Arkansas teachers think about the Common Core? According to a recent survey, 61 percent would keep it rather than eliminate it, but 87 percent don’t like the testing.

Those were some of the findings of the University of Arkansas’ Office for Education Policy, which asked 2,795 teachers to participate in an online survey and received responses from 975 of them.

Many Arkansas teachers seem to find a lot of positives in the Common Core, which is a set of common standards in math and English language arts currently used by 43 states. Sixty-six percent said they were satisfied with the standards, and 92 percent said they were more rigorous than the previous ones. Large majorities agreed or strongly agreed that the Common Core will lead to improved student learning, help students think critically, and better prepare them for college and the workforce.

Lt. Governor Tim Griffin, who is leading a panel appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to review the standards, found the results somewhat contradictory. Despite the above results, when asked to complete the sentence, “Overall, my students will be ___ after the introduction of the Common Core Standards,” only 46 percent said “better off,” while 28 percent said “the same” and 26 percent said “worse off.”

In other words, less than half of the teachers said the Common Core will make a positive difference overall in the same survey where large majorities were saying it makes a positive difference in the areas that matter – learning, critical thinking, and college and career preparation.

Griffin, a public school father who seems willing to listen to both sides of the Common Core debate, said the survey is “interesting” and “helpful” but “not dispositive” – which, he had to explain to me, is a legal term meaning it doesn’t settle anything.

Polls rarely do, which is why a democracy shouldn’t be based on them. This is not a criticism of the Office for Education Policy, which seems to have conducted a thorough survey. But, as is often the case, of course you get contradictory results when you ask complicated people about complicated issues with only a few simple answers from which to choose. Also, survey respondents often answer the questions they want to answer, not the ones that are asked. (Happens in real-life conversations, too.)

Which brings us to the 87 percent who said they didn’t like the testing associated with Common Core. Of all the elements of the Common Core, the testing is the most controversial. Arkansas is part of a consortium of nine states plus the District of Columbia involved in the PARCC assessment, which compares students across state lines. At one time, there were 24 states, but a majority have left. Legislators considered doing the same here but ultimately decided to renew Arkansas’ participation no more than one year at a time.

There are many questions about the test, including how the data will be used and whether the results will be known in time to do any good. With an 87 percent majority, it’s clear that teachers don’t like PARCC, but many probably also were expressing years of frustration with testing in general. It takes too much time, and they don’t like being judged for how another human performs on a test.

Teaching has undergone many changes in recent years. No Child Left Behind put the federal government in charge of holding schools accountable. The state has instituted a Teacher Excellence and Support System to evaluate teachers and help them improve. New instructional methods are de-emphasizing lecturing. More and more, teachers instead are expected to guide students through technology-driven, project-based learning.

Change is hard. Sixty-four percent of the survey’s respondents disagreed with the statement, “I like teaching more now than before the Common Core Standards were introduced.” Seventy-four percent said that teaching has become more stressful. But 63 percent agreed that the Common Core has made them better at their job.

So maybe many in that 61 percent who said the Common Core should be retained really think it’s better. And maybe some were really just saying they didn’t want to change to something else yet again. Maybe some were just saying, “Let us catch our breath!”

At the very least, this much is clear: A majority of teachers who answered this survey want to keep the Common Core, and a large majority don’t like the testing.

What should Arkansas do with this information? It’s not dispositive.

No child in Flippin left behind

Interventionist Juanell Potter works with student Thomas Gravely.

Interventionist Juanell Potter works with student Thomas Gravely.

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

FLIPPIN – Superintendent Dale Query has spent more than four decades in education, and one thing that has remained constant is smart kids struggling in school and often becoming discipline problems.

He and his fellow educators in Flippin long have struggled to find the key to helping those students reach their potential. Now they think they’ve found it. Many of them have dyslexia.

The condition, which is surprisingly common at varying degrees, is a language-based learning challenge based on brain structure. The students often are smart – sometimes very smart – but they just can’t read well or put things on paper, so from their earliest days in school, they begin falling behind their peers. Teachers tell their parents they don’t apply themselves. Some students make frequent trips to the principal’s office.

A couple of years ago, a school employee brought her grandchild to the elementary office and said the child was dyslexic. Principal Tracie Luttrell, who in the past had dismissed the condition per her training, decided to attend a seminar, and something clicked. Inspired, she and others began researching the condition.

The north-central Arkansas district has made dyslexia a top priority. Many staff members attended a Saturday training on their own time as the program was starting. Six full-time interventionists work one-on-one with students. The district has 800 students, and 107 of them last year attended hourly summer school sessions twice a week. Many saw significant improvements.

The district relies on the Susan Barton method, which uses multiple senses – sight, sound, touch – to help students’ left and right brains make the proper connections to make reading easier. In a room dedicated to dyslexia, students drag tiles with letters down a magnetic board as they learn the sounds those letters make. Tiles for more advanced students have groups of letters so that those developing brains can make the connection that “o-l-d” always says “old” when it’s part of a longer word. Students also are drilled in English grammar rules until they know enough to put a newspaper editor to shame. Did you know there’s a reason why “truck” ends in “ck” but “milk” needs only a “k”? These students do.

Juanelle Potter, one of the interventionists working with students, has a special reason for working what she calls “by far the greatest job I’ve ever had.” Her husband, a math whiz, and two of her children have dyslexia. Homework was a nightly battle. Now, the daughter who would tell her, “I’m stupid” has been invited to the freshman honors banquet. Her fifth-grade son, Raymond, is no longer falling behind his peers. “I thought I wasn’t that smart,” he told me. He wants to be a mechanical engineer someday.

For some students, the program will be the difference between reading well and a lifetime of near illiteracy. But Luttrell said the benefits have gone far beyond that small population. For the first time in her educational career, she’s ready to move students out of special education, which will allow those teachers to focus on those remaining. Students are graduating out of speech therapy more quickly. Meanwhile, students with mild dyslexic characteristics who were making “C’s” – and therefore not drawing much attention – are doing better in school. Counselor Sherry Rainbolt says students she was counseling with dyslexia no longer struggle with anger or motivation issues.

“Once they’re told that there’s a reason, it’s instantaneous that they know, ‘Well, I’m not dumb. Nothing’s wrong with me, really.’ I mean, this is something that we can help them with, and they see hope,” she said.

Query uses a pretty strong descriptor: “cured for life.” Students who were being left behind in school are catching up to their peers and will never fall behind again. He sees it as the answer to a lot of problems. He says certain students no longer will need therapy, or medication, or, eventually, wind up in jail.

“When we spread those numbers out from Flippin, Arkansas, to the state of Arkansas to our nation, dyslexia intervention has the potential of reshaping our whole society,” he said.

Thanks to laws sponsored during the past two legislative sessions by Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, school districts across the state will screen students for dyslexia in grades K-2, and in other grades where appropriate. Then they’ll be required to intervene.

Will they look to Flippin’s example? They will if they’re smart.

Common Core test survives battle

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The latest battle over the Common Core was fought Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee, where Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, presented a bill that would remove Arkansas not from the Common Core, but from the new PARCC assessment that students take as part of the Common Core. The result is that Arkansas is still part of PARCC.

The Common Core is a set of standards in math and English language arts/literacy, while the PARCC assessment measures progress and compares students in different states. PARCC originally involved 24 states, including Arkansas, which has had a leading role in its development. Other states were part of a different consortium.

Common Core’s supporters, including educators and business leaders, say it provides more consistency and clarity to America’s schools, and that it teaches students more relevant stuff. Before Common Core, we in Arkansas were patting ourselves on the back because scores had improved on state exams while not knowing how those scores compared to students in other states. Maybe Arkansas schools were getting better, or maybe not.

But many others say Common Core represents a federal intrusion. It’s become one of the biggest issues in Republican Party politics, and states have been dropping out of PARCC. Now only nine states are involved, plus the District of Columbia, and for a while this session, Arkansas looked like it might be leaving as well. The House passed Lowery’s bill, 86-1.

In the Senate Education Committee, Lowery argued that the online assessment is full of technical glitches and that it will not protect students’ personal data from prying eyes. The bill’s opponents and the state Department of Education countered that the test is going mostly smoothly, especially considering this is the first year, and that students’ privacy would be maintained.

In the end, the motion to pass the bill died for lack of a second, though senators later passed it with an amendment that weakens the bill nearly to the point of irrelevance. The committee amended the bill, slightly, again on Friday. Arkansas is still part of PARCC. Senators decided it didn’t make sense to end Arkansas’ association with the exam without something to replace it. They’ll hear about this from Common Core opponents.

I asked Lowery if he had any doubts. Not about the PARCC exam, he replied, but he does go back and forth when it comes to Common Core itself.

That’s understandable, because it’s a tough issue. The people who know best, teachers, have varying opinions. I think I’m for it, but I understand why people have reservations.

I’m on firmer ground with these observations.

– The standards themselves are not really the problem. Early in the Common Core debate, opponents argued that the standards are inadequate. They still argue that, but that part of the debate seems to have died down. Too many teachers seem to like them, or at least aren’t raising that much of a ruckus.

– The debate isn’t really about education. This is really the same argument we have all the time about the federal government’s role, with the volume turned up extra high. Much of this is political, and part of it is about President Obama, unfortunately. No Child Left Behind, signed into law in 2002 by President Bush, represents a far greater federal intrusion into education than Common Core does. It says the government can punish entire schools if a single student doesn’t do well enough on a test, and yet there was no public outcry when it was passed. It was a different time, but part of the reason we have Common Core is that everyone had to figure out what to do with No Child Left Behind.

– The federal government never should have gotten involved (which, of course, it inevitably would). Part of the Common Core’s appeal was that it was pushed originally by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. When the U.S. Department of Education started handing out Common Core-related grants, it became an Obama thing.

– The Common Core came into existence in Arkansas the wrong way, by a vote by the Arkansas State Board of Education during a meeting in 2010. Hardly anyone knew what was happening, and then parents were trying to check their kids’ weird math problems. This big of a change required more of a statewide discussion, if such a thing is possible.

– People who are maddest at the Common Care are maddest at the wrong thing. See the part about No Child Left Behind.

New law saves good small schools

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Bruce Cozart sponsored Act 377.

Bruce Cozart sponsored Act 377.

Sometimes the Legislature gets it wrong, sometimes it gets it right, and sometimes it gets it right after getting it wrong for a while.

The last was the case with Act 377, signed last week by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, which lets the Arkansas State Board of Education grant waivers from consolidation to school districts that fall below the usual 350-student threshold. As a result of that bill by Rep. Bruce Cozart, R-Hot Springs, a school district can remain open if it is not in fiscal, academic or facilities distress, and if keeping it open is in the best interest of students because of long bus rides.

The 350-student minimum was created in 2003 in response to court rulings in the Lake View case that put the state and its taxpayers firmly in charge of ensuring all students’ education opportunities are “adequate” and “equitable.” (The Arkansas Constitution uses the words “general, suitable and efficient.”)

The thinking was that districts must have at least that many students to provide the necessary economies of scale to accomplish those objectives, which is usually true. Generally, districts with less than 350 students cannot cost-effectively provide high-level math and science courses and other opportunities students need. Those districts typically are in declining communities that the rest of the state’s taxpayers are not responsible for propping up. Above all, policymakers feared that messing with the funding formula would land the state back in court. Every major education decision is made with that firmly in mind.

The result of all this is that, according to the Arkansas Rural Community Alliance, 53 high schools and 48 elementary schools have been closed. For the sake of both students and taxpayers, many of them probably should have been.

The problem with that arbitrary 350-student minimum is it confuses “impossible” with merely “difficult.” Against the odds, the Weiner School District was doing well. Its academics were among the best in the state. Its facilities were good. Its finances not only were sound, but its citizens recently had voted to raise their own taxes.

It didn’t matter. Because it fell below that magic number, it was forced to consolidate in 2010 with its larger neighbor, Harrisburg, whose students were not achieving at the same levels as students in Weiner. There’s still a Weiner Elementary School, but older students travel to Harrisburg now. To this day, taxpayers who live in Weiner pay higher millage rates than those who live in Harrisburg. So far, the district’s patrons have voted not to change that situation.

Michelle Cadle stood behind Hutchinson as he signed the bill into law and was handed one of the pens he used. Her family lives in what once was the Weiner School District. Her youngest child attends Weiner Elementary, but she drives her oldest to the Valley View School District 20 miles away.

The loss still stings, but she has chosen to channel her emotion into becoming an advocate for small schools. “We always said it was never about Weiner,” she said. “It was about doing what was right for all schools across Arkansas, so this was a victory day for us.”

Hutchinson made it clear that the law is “forward looking.” In other words, it can’t be used to reopen the Weiner district. Still, Cadle said the community is looking for alternatives.

There wasn’t strong opposition to this bill. It doesn’t do away with the 350-student minimum. It merely gives the State Board of Education a tool to use when there’s an exception to the rule, like Weiner. Districts in decline still will be consolidated.

More generally, education policymakers are concerned about the lack of institutional memory in the Capitol. Because of term limits, very few legislators were in office when the Lake View case was decided. The more the case shrinks in the rearview mirror, the more it will be forgotten – until somebody sues again.

That’s a valid concern. However, the fear of that happening shouldn’t lead the state to repeat a past mistake – or put more and more kids on long bus rides unnecessarily. Regardless of its size, if a district’s students are performing well, if its finances are sound, and if its facilities are in good shape, it shouldn’t be consolidated. It should be duplicated.