LITTLE ROCK — Teachers and instructional coaches in at least five Little Rock School District schools will begin training next week in TargetTeach, a system developed by an Arizona company to improve student achievement by aligning a district's curriculum, instruction and student tests to state academic standards.
The TargetTeach system, in which teachers will be providedclassroom coaching and parents will be given lessons to do with their children, is the first largescale academic initiative undertaken by Linda Watson, who became the interim superintendent of the nearly 27,000-student district in late August.
Watson said she is excited about the system's success inraising achievement in schools in districts in Oklahoma, Ohio and California where large percentages of students are black and poor.
Elizabeth Menchaca is a senior adviser for Evans Newton Inc., the Scottsdale, Ariz., company that developed TargetTeach.
Menchaca told the School Board on Thursday that the system is not intended to replace existing district programs. Thedistrict, for example, will continue to use the Student Online Achievement Reports, a student assessment system used to prepare for the Arkansas Benchmark Exam. The assessment system is more commonly referred to as Project: SOAR.
Similarly, some district schools will simultaneously participate in the America's Choice school improvement program while trying out TargetTeach. Both America's Choice andTargetTeach involve the use of program consultants who work on a routine basis with their assigned schools.
"TargetTeach incorporates those things that the district has invested in the past and has adopted and teachers have been trained to use," Menchaca said. "This pulls all of that together so that the best of those programs show themselves in terms of higher student achievement."
The goal of the initiative is to raise the achievement levels of the different subgroups of students - based on race, ethnicity, income level, English-speaking skills and handicaps - by the end of the 2008-09 school year.
"We are looking to increase the percentage of students scoring at a proficient category [on the state Benchmark Exams] by 20 percent at a minimum," Menchaca said.
The five schools and grades already selected to participate in this year's pilot program are the third through fifth grades at Meadowcliff, Watson and Washington elementaries and the sixth grade at Mabelvale and Dunbar Magnet middle schools.
Watson said principals from at least four other schools also have asked to participate in the pilot program, which is expected to cost about $400,000 but could increase to as much as $800,000, depending upon the number of schools added.
The cost of the initiative can be absorbed by using federal funds earmarked for innovative programs, combined with money in budgets for professional development and other offices and divisions in the district, Watson told the board.
Watson and a team of district administrators, along with School Board President Katherine Mitchell, visited the Tulsa School District in September to talk with principalsand teachers about the TargetTeach system, which is in its fourth year of operation in Oklahoma's largest public school district. While the Little Rock team was investigating the system, Tulsa School District leaders received notice from Oklahoma that achievement on Oklahoma standardized tests was improved enough that the district was removed from that state's list of districts in need of improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Mitchell said that anything that will improve student achievement is worth the investment and "I'm on board for TargetTeach."
Board member Melanie Fox asked Watson for a written report on the cost of the program and a final list of schools that will be using it. Fox said after the meeting that she believes the program is promising but that the board, by policy, should vote on whether to fund it and that she would not want to vote on it without knowing more specifics.
Just before the start of Thursday's meeting, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey swore into office newly re-elected board members Mike Daugherty from Zone 2 and Baker Kurrus from Zone 4.
The School Board did not elect officers for the 2007-08 school year, contrary to standard practice after the annual School Board election and run-off. Board member Dianne Curry said after the meeting that the selection of officers is being delayed because board member Larry Berkley could not attend Thursday's meeting.
Arkansas, Pages 13, 24 on 10/26/2007