It starts at the top

LITTLE ROCK — “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

-Mark Twain ANYBODY wondering what’s to keep Arkansas from offering every student in the state a quality education need look no further than the very top: our own Board of Education.

The state legislature did its part to raise educational standards earlier this year when it passed Act 987, which pretty much eliminated the ceiling on the number of charter schools allowed in Arkansas. And about time, too. Why put a ceiling on an educational reform so promising?

The state Department of Education did its part by evaluating the applications for charters. The one application that withstood the department’s scrutiny and wound up being recommended was for a proposed new high school in Texarkana that would serve students at risk of becoming drop-outs.

The education department’s in-house Charter Review Council had done its job with thorough care. And found that the school’s application met all 20 standards for establishing a new charter school. Every one of them. And, boy, how Texarkana could use a decent charter school for those who need one most: kids who aren’t doing well in regular schools. A look at the state’s high-school rankings explains why. Gary Ritter, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, notes that Arkansas High in Texarkana ranked 239th out of the 252 high schools in the state when it comes to graduation rates. If ever a town needed to offer a decent alternative to that kind of sorry record, it’s Texarkana, Ark.

The group sponsoring this proposed charter school-Responsive Education Solutions out of Texas-operates 54 charter schools in that state with a total enrollment of 6,579 students. It’s not exactly inexperienced. Indeed, it has an impressive track record. According to Professor Ritter, the schools run by Responsive Education have outperformed Texarkana’s schools on the NAEP exam, a test that’s been dubbed The Nation’s Report Card.

It was good news, or should have been, when the Responsive Education people proposed to cross State Line Avenue and organize a charter school for Grades 9 through 12 in Texarkana. In short, opportunity had come knocking in what is supposed to be The Land of Opportunity. At least that’s what our license plates used to say. Now all was good to go.

BUT THIS week the state’s board of education turned down Responsive Education’s application for a charter by the narrowest of margins: 4 to 3. Why, for gosh sakes? For no apparent reason except to protect Arkansas High from any meaningful competition for students, which is just what such schools need. Certainly these kids need it. Right now they’re without a decent alternative to a school that ranks 239th out of 252 when it comes to graduating students.

A slim majority of the Board of Education now has slammed the door on this charter school’s application, and on these kids’ hopes. Responsive Education would have provided a school with a low teacher-student ratio (1 teacher for every 25 to 30 students on average) as opposed to 1 teacher for as many as 150 students in a traditional high school. No wonder this charter-school system has compiled such a promising record in Texas. It offers kids a lot more attention than they’ve been getting in Texarkana’s schools.

Just look at the record: Arkansas High in Texarkana now has been on the state’s list of troubled schools for eight years-eight years-because of low test scores earned by just the kind of students this proposed charter school was designed to attract. Arkansas High’s drop-out rate of 5.7 percent is more than twice the 2.5 percent that is the state average. But none of that seemed to matter to these four members of theBoard of Education.

Why? It’s hard to understand. Surely none of the four naysayers on the board-Mireya Reith of Fayetteville, Alice Mahony of El Dorado, Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock and Joe Black of Newport-would have been happy to enroll a child of their own in a school that ranked 239th out of 252 in graduation rates, and has been on the state’s list of troubled schools for eight years. But all four decided that kind of “education” is good enough for others’ kids.

Why would a state board supposedly dedicated to improving education, not hindering it, pass up this opportunity to give these kids in Texarkana a new chance at a decent education?

The most charitable explanation that occurs to us is what the Catholic Church used to cite as grounds for forgiving otherwise morally inexplicableacts: invincible ignorance. Or maybe the board’s decision was just the result of invincible prejudice against what has become the most promising innovation in public education: charter schools. In either case, the result is just as destructive when it comes tothe future of these kids and our state.

Here’s a thought experiment these four members of the state’s board of education might try if they’re interested in doing what’s best for Texarkana’s kids, particularly those that traditional schools have been failing. Suppose a school with Arkansas High’s sorry graduation rate and its eight-year record of landing on the state’s list of troubled schools were applying for a charter. Would the board grant such a school a charter? Particularly if the alternative were a school with a record like the one Responsive Education has achieved in Texas?

In any fair competition, would there be any question of which school deserved a chance to serve Texarkana’s at-risk kids?

UNTIL a decent education is recognized as a civil right in this country, and fought for with the same insistence and perseverance as the right to vote, failing schools will continue to fail our children. A state that is serious about education cannot afford this kind of complacency, or this kind of obeisance to local interests and the gods of things-as-they-are.

Good schools don’t come naturally. They take good planning, smart leadership, new initiatives. Slowly even the educational establishment comes to realize that good education requires competition, too. That is the function of competition-to shake up old and all too settled ways with an infusion of new ideas, higher goals, innovative approaches, more effective techniques, solid standards, better results. In short, everything that comes with competing. It won’t do to stand pat and assume that everything will come out just fine.

Does anyone believe that American education is doing just fine? Anyone who can look around and see knows better. “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” That’s from the report of the National Commission in Excellence in Education back in 1983. And the trend has scarcely been reversed over the quarter-century since. Though it needs to be. A decision like this one out of Arkansas’ board of education is symptomatic of a state tempted to stand pat in education rather than try the new and promising.

No, charter schools are no panacea when it comes to the plight of public education. There is no such thing.But there are a variety of different, developing approaches to improving our schools, and charter schools may be the best yet. That doesn’t mean all charter schools are equal, or likely to be equally effective. The state’s board of education turned down a number of other applications for charters, and for good reasons. But it failed to approve the best candidate-by the Department of Education’s own evaluation. It’s encouraging that the board failed this test by only the narrowest of margins: one vote. It is not encouraging enough.