The state Board of Education approved forming a partnership with two philanthropic foundations to put together a comprehensive plan they hope will improve public school student achievement, especially in schools and districts identified as academically distressed.
The Education Board on Thursday unanimously accepted the partnership with the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Education Board member Vicki Saviers of Little Rock was absent from the meeting, and member Toyce Newton of Crossett abstained from the vote because she is the Rockefeller Foundation's board chairman. Arkansas will join at least three other states -- including Delaware, Connecticut and Kentucky -- that have similar private-public partnerships for public education.
As part of the collaboration, the two foundations will offer their resources -- "our dollars, our time, talent and et cetera" -- to develop an approach to improve education in the state, while the Arkansas Department of Education will hand over data and facilitate access to academically distressed schools and districts, said Sherece West-Scantlebury, president and chief executive officer of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. The state has labeled the Lee County and Strong-Huttig school districts, along with 26 individual school campuses, as academically distressed, as more than half of their students scored at below-proficient levels on state exams over a three-year period.
"I'm excited about this," Education Board Chairman Sam Ledbetter said. "My hope is we focus like a laser on what we can do to support underperforming schools."
Ledbetter said he hoped the approach would go beyond "just the school building" and into the community.
The foundations, which also aim to prepare students for college and careers, will soon commission a report on the state of public education in Arkansas. The report, expected to be completed this fall, will serve as a base line to measure the foundations' improvement efforts.
The groups will also choose a consultant to work with them and the state in developing the plan.
The foundations hope to have complete plans for the academically distressed schools and districts by winter 2014 and for all schools and districts by summer 2015.
Before the vote, Education Board members voiced concerns about the Education Department's responsibilities in the partnership, such as whether the department had enough staff members and time available.
"Coordination seems a little soft," said Education Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock, who also asked whether the department had additional resources to encourage districts to participate.
Education Commissioner Tony Wood took responsibility for "the language of it" being soft, saying other components could be brought into play. The efforts, he said, are separate from the responsibilities of the Education Department, which will simply provide its data.
Some of the precedent-setting states -- namely, Delaware -- haven't seen the achievements they wished to accomplish with the private-public partnership, Education Board member Alice Williams Mahony of El Dorado said, asking representatives from the two foundations what their long-term goals were.
West-Scantlebury said it will be up to the partners to accept the comprehensive plan and carry it out.
"We just have to move through this process as it goes," she said. "I cannot stand here and tell you what happens 10, 15 years from now."
The plan is not a quick fix, said Kathy Smith, senior program officer for the Walton Family Foundation's Arkansas Education Reform Initiative.
"With anything in education, it takes time for things to work," she said. "When we've seen plans that haven't gone well, maybe after 20 years, there's no movement. A lot of people get energized on the front end, and everybody [later] said, 'Well, that's over,' and put it on the shelf."
The foundations will track the targeted metrics and interventions, following the research that works and getting rid of what doesn't, Smith said.
"What we're proposing is more in the vein of being proactive versus reactive over time when it comes to these issues," she said.
The foundations on Aug. 4 sent a statement of intent to Wood, outlining the partnership. The foundations, under the statement, will report to the Education Board quarterly on the progress.
The focus here is on academically distressed schools and developing strategies to help them, Ledbetter said.
"There will be a menu of options that may best fit a particular community, and so that's really the focus -- the discussion about lifting up all schools and students in Arkansas," he said. "When we improve our lowest performing schools, we improve all of our performance."
Metro on 08/15/2014