Category Archives: Education

Welcome to Greenbrier High U

Education
Greenbrier students Caroline Harrod, Will Ratliff and Kourtni Bowen study simple harmonic motion using a spring/mass system and Vernier motion sensors in an AP physics class.
Greenbrier students Caroline Harrod, Will Ratliff and Kourtni Bowen study simple harmonic motion using a spring/mass system and Vernier motion sensors in an AP Physics I class.

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

Faulkner County is the home of three degree-granting educational institutions – the University of Central Arkansas, Hendrix College, and Central Baptist College. Soon there will be a fourth – Greenbrier High School.

Twenty minutes north of Conway, the district is waiting final accreditation – and there’s no reason to believe it won’t be granted – from the Higher Learning Commission in Chicago. If that happens before the end of the school year, 8-10 students will graduate high school with a two-year associate’s degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Students already can earn college credit by taking concurrent and Advanced Placement courses – in other words, college English that counts as a high school English class. The cost for them and their families? Fifty dollars per class to give them “a little bit of skin in the game,” said Scott Spainour, the district’s superintendent, unless they can’t afford it, in which case it’s free. Lakeside High School in Garland County is partnering with National Park Community College to offer a similar opportunity.

Spainhour hopes the idea spreads beyond these two school districts. Arkansas ranks 49th in the country, above only West Virginia, in its percentage of adults above age 25 with a bachelor’s degree. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18.9 percent of Arkansans have reached that level of attainment.

Of course, having a four-year college degree isn’t necessary to be successful in life or to have a good-paying job – a fact that can be covered in another column. But, on average, you’re better off with more education than you are with less. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reported last year that average college graduates earn $830,800 more over their lifetimes than high school graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in 2013 was 7.5 percent for Americans with a high school diploma but 5.4 percent for those with an associate’s degree and 4 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree.

College, obviously, is expensive, even with all the scholarships available. Last year, Greenbrier graduates saved almost $700,000 in college tuition costs because they had already taken those courses in high school.

But cost alone is not the only barrier to college completion. Many students graduate high school unprepared academically, and only one in 10 students requiring remediation will graduate with a four-year degree, according to “Four-Year Myth,” a 2014 report by Complete College America. Meanwhile, a college education is a major disruption occurring in an unfamiliar environment during a transitory stage in life. According to Complete College America, only one advisor is available for every 400 students on a typical college campus. It’s no wonder the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported in 2014 that, during the last 20 years, 31 million college students have started school but not earned a degree.

Students in Greenbrier and Lakeside, in contrast, will earn their hours in a familiar, supportive home environment before they go to college. “Four-Year Myth” reported that 62 percent of associate’s degree seekers who earn 30 credits during their first year graduate, compared with 10 percent with less than 12 credits. Greenbrier and Lakeside students easily can reach that level, and none of them have to be remediated. With up to two years of rigorous instruction already under their belts, they’re more likely to complete a four-year degree rather than drop out. And even if they enter the workforce straight from high school, they will be more job-ready because of the classes they have taken.

Arkansas has taken a number of steps to increase students’ educational attainment, including state-sponsored gambling through the lottery.

But making college more affordable isn’t enough. It’s not a good strategy to send 18-year-olds to a sprawling, impersonal campus and expect most of them to be successful. Arkansas has 297 public high schools, including Greenbrier and Lakeside, where classroom teachers know their students’ names and care about their well-being. There’s no reason many students can’t graduate with their basics at age 18, ready for more. Community colleges and four-year schools then can serve as economic and academic engines, not remedial facilities.

If this spreads – and it will – students could go “off to college” each morning from their homes, where parents can guide them, without going into debt. Sure seems like a better way to me.

K through job education

Business and economics, Education, Legislature, State government

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The elected official in the state Capitol making the biggest impact next year will be Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson. The second most impactful elected official may be a 74-year-old grandmother with an agenda.

That would be Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock.

English spent her career in economic development and will use her chairmanship of the Senate Education Committee to try to change how Arkansas educates and develops its workers. She says the education system is composed of too many disconnected silos – K-12 public schools over here, colleges and universities over there, career education in a third spot, etc. – that don’t always prepare students for the workforce.

“We typically think of education as K through 12, but for me, education is K through job,” she said after selecting the chairmanship.

She wants to reform a system that did not serve the state well enough during her career in economic development. There’s also this motivation: “I have a 17-year-old granddaughter, straight A student, takes AP (Advanced Placement) courses,” she said in an interview Dec. 12. “She’s going to play softball with the Lady Razorbacks. Well, she’s fine with this whole pattern. But then I have a grandson, that may not work for him. I had a grandson, and it didn’t work for him at all. He was not an AP person. He was never going to college, but he has a good career now.”

English is not the first or the only one making this point. Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller would say the education system is like a string of water pipes laid end to end but not fastened together. Hutchinson talked a lot about workforce development in the gubernatorial campaign. In September, the State Chamber of Commerce hosted a summit highlighting the need for Arkansas’ education system to be more responsive to the job market.

Changes already are occurring, particularly at the local level, to make the system more connected and responsive. Many high schools offer students opportunities to earn significant college credit. Bearden High School students are bussed to Southern Arkansas University Tech each day for academic and career classes. At Maumelle High, students basically select a major and take classes that are tailored to their interests and that prepare them for a job. Colleges and universities are becoming more responsive to workforce needs. The University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, for example, created a robotics program after surveying local industries and discovering a surprising number needed training in that area.

Despite these individual successes, Arkansas needs a more comprehensive overall strategy, a reallocation of resources, and a different mindset. And that’s where English has become a pivotal figure. In February, she switched her vote on the private option – until then, one vote short of passage in the Senate – from no to yes in exchange for a commitment from Gov. Mike Beebe to focus on the issue. As a result, for much of the year she chaired weekly meetings each Monday with various state education and economic development officials. Shane Broadway, director of the Department of Higher Education, says one of his staff members jokingly referred to the meetings as “English class.”

English said the meetings have produced no concrete proposals, though she has some ideas. She said many of the needed changes don’t require legislation.

Whatever the Legislature passes will be the result of collaboration and compromise. English’s main role will be to continue doing what she has already done: serve as a catalyst. Broadway said state agency heads were already discussing the need for changes, but English’s switched vote was the spark. As she explained it, “Sometimes you have to have something wild that starts things in motion and gets people to start talking. Otherwise, you’re just churning around forever and ever.”

The private option, prisons, and other issues will get the most attention this session. But, quietly, significant workforce development changes could occur. The facts are clear, the need is obvious, and the agreement is broad. Too many students aren’t being prepared for actual jobs, while too many jobs are unfilled because workers with the right skills aren’t available.

Now the Senate Education Committee is headed by someone whose top priority is doing something about it. We’ll see if the other legislators speak English’s language.

“That girl” makes good money as a welder

Business, Business and economics, Education, State government

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

If you were asked to describe a welder, it probably wouldn’t be much like Tori Huggins.

The 29-year-old graduated Hendrix College in 2007 an All-American in basketball with a degree in theatre and kinesiology – and $40,000 in debt she couldn’t repay.

“I was that girl that went back to my parents’ house, living in the basement,” she said.

Many years earlier, Huggins had been singed by a spark while her dad was welding and refused to go anywhere near the activity again. But during college summer breaks, she’d done some basic welding in a boat factory in her hometown of Clinton, and she continued working there after college.

After a tornado destroyed the factory, she decided to get serious about welding and discovered she loved it. Soon she was traveling the country working in nuclear power plants and earning enough to pay off her debt in three years. She bought a car and a house in Conway.

Today, she teaches welding at the Plumbers and Pipefitters Joint Apprenticeship Center in Little Rock, a state-funded program where 12 students learn a skill that in 18 weeks will take many of them from minimum wage backgrounds to $18 an hour. She tries to encourage more women to follow her example. Classes are free and also available in Fort Smith and El Dorado. The school’s phone number is 501-562-4482.

Huggins this past Tuesday shared her story during a panel discussion at Jobs Now, a summit sponsored by the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce. Before an audience of 500, she wore a smart business suit and spoke confidently alongside her fellow big shots on stage.

The conference’s purpose was to consider ways to match unemployed and underemployed Arkansas workers, like Huggins once was, with the tens of thousands of skilled trade jobs that are remaining unfilled and those that will be available as older workers retire. Steve Williams, CEO of Maverick Transportation, said he had parked 100 18-wheelers because he couldn’t find reliable drivers. That job starts at $52,000.

Two common mentalities clearly need to go by the wayside.

One is that learning a trade is somehow inferior to going to college. Too often, young people are encouraged to make good grades so they can get a scholarship – and if they don’t go to college, well, maybe they can get a job in construction or something. Skilled tradesmen often earn higher salaries than college graduates, and their jobs require no less brainwork.

“We don’t put in nuclear powerhouses by being a bunch of idiots,” Huggins told me. “You’ve got to know offsets, you’ve got to do fractions and multiplication and all this stuff, and at times even a little bit of calculus here and there.”

The other outdated attitude is that “getting an education” means leaving home for four years after high school. Colleges and universities should be oriented toward nimbly moving students of all ages to employability in an ever-shifting economy. Moreover, as Dr. Glen Fenter, president of Mid-South Community College, said during the panel discussion with Huggins, all students should graduate high school with a job skill, not just a diploma.

Some of this is already happening – the state-funded Plumbers and Pipefitters Joint Apprenticeship Center being an example. At Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, some students, instead of earning credit hours, obtain certificates that move them straight into jobs with Walmart and its suppliers. Many high school students take concurrent credit classes that shorten their college careers. At Maumelle High School, students declare a “pathway” and leave school with a marketable skill.

How do we get more of this? Joe Quinn, Walmart’s senior director of pubic affairs and government relations, said in the panel discussion that the next governor should make workforce development a signature issue.

Both Asa Hutchinson and Mike Ross have shared ideas on the campaign trail. Hutchinson favors economic development plans tying together high schools and two-year-colleges based on regional opportunities. Ross has called for sending reports home with eighth and 11th grade students projecting common careers and salaries when they enter the workforce. “Too many people today are going to college and getting degrees in what makes them feel good rather than where the jobs are,” Ross told school board members this summer.

That’s sort of what happened to Huggins, but in a good way. She got a degree that made her feel good, and now she has a career that makes her feel good.

School elections: big issues, few voters

Education, Elections, Legislature

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You wouldn’t know it from all the political ads still running, but some of the most important elections in Arkansas this year have already occurred.

Those would be Tuesday’s school elections.

In Jacksonville and north Pulaski County, 95 percent of voters elected to separate from the Pulaski County Special School District, a large doughnut-shaped district that surrounds Little Rock and North Little Rock. Voters wanted more of a say in a district whose administrative offices are on the other side of the county.

That’s a big deal. Ninety-five percent of voters don’t agree on anything unless they live in North Korea. It also represents a temporary break from a historical trend of school consolidation. According to a history written by Kellar Noggle, former executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, Arkansas had 4,734 school districts in 1927. Before Tuesday, that number had shrunk to 238. Unless another consolidates before Jacksonville’s separation is complete, there will be 239.

While the Jacksonville election attracted almost 4,000 voters, turnout elsewhere was low, as always. Two competitive school board races that unseated incumbents in the 25,000-student Little Rock School District attracted a little over 1,300 voters. Before the election, Randy Zook, head of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, asked 400 Rotarians in Little Rock if they knew the date of the upcoming vote. Half a dozen raised their hands.

It’s a problem when a school board election in Little Rock is decided by a vote of 379-221. Those low numbers make it easier to manipulate an election and then manipulate policymaking. A candidate can be elected with the support of a few people with an agenda and then try to implement that agenda once in office.

The rest of this column will cover what, if anything, should be done about this low turnout. I should disclose that I publish a magazine, Report Card, in partnership with the Arkansas School Boards Association (ASBA). It is supported by advertising, and ASBA does not pay me, but I have done other work in which it has. I think I can play this straight.

It’s understandable that school board elections attract little attention. School board offices are unpaid, part-time, and nonpartisan. Most candidates don’t have the funds to advertise and attract voters’ attention – especially in a year like this when the U.S. Senate and governor’s races grab so many headlines.

If the problem is simply a lack of attention, could that be fixed? Last year, the advocacy group Arkansas Learns spent $100,000 on advertisements and automated phone calls encouraging people to vote – not for a particular candidate, just to vote – in various contested races. It made so little difference that it did not repeat the effort this year.

Arkansas Learns’ president and CEO, Gary Newton, instead favors holding school board elections in November with the other races. Doing so would result in more voters expressing their will and would reduce the potential for manipulation that can result from low turnout. The idea has been proposed in previous legislative sessions and been voted down, but it might pass in 2015. Arkansas has moved the date of school elections before. A few decades ago, they were in March.

ASBA is opposed. It says school elections should be a separate vote and that November elections would politicize a traditionally nonpartisan office. Don’t make the local banker and the local farmer running for school board compete for attention with Mark Pryor and Tom Cotton, it says. A lot of voters will just end up guessing.

I come down on ASBA’s side on this. My November ballot is already too crowded with races for U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, land commissioner, county judge, sheriff, and who knows what else. I don’t even know who some of these people are or what the offices really do.

On the other hand, I publish a quarterly magazine for school board members, and this election nearly snuck up on me as a journalist. Who thinks about voting in September?

There is one other alternative: Get rid of school boards. However, so much power in education has already moved to the state and federal levels. Unless mayors are put in charge, without school boards, there would be no local control at all.

You might argue it doesn’t really matter where school policy is made. It certainly mattered to the folks in Jacksonville.