The Little Rock School Board will submit to the state a statement of challenges for the district's schools in academic distress and the processes in place to fix those problems.
The statement -- which a subcommittee would draft -- will also include the School Board's commitment to address the challenges and its commitment to the students.
The statement submission began as a motion during Thursday's meeting from School Board member C.E. McAdoo and comes as the date for district officials to face the state Board of Education's Academic Distress committee nears.
The committee will meet with district officials Jan. 7 at 1 p.m., and the Education Board will have a report on the matter two days later. The January meeting is a result of the state Education Board labeling six of the district's schools as academically distressed because less than half of the students over the past three years scored at proficient or advanced levels on state exams. The six schools are Baseline Elementary, Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools, and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools.
The district has designated a central office administrator to act as a school improvement specialist at each of the campuses. The move is one of several efforts that district officials have implemented in attempt to improve the six schools.
Other efforts include a focus on "essential" elements in teacher lesson plans and on each school principal's assessment of a teacher's delivery of those lessons in the classroom -- a redesign of school leadership teams so principals and teachers can better review student data, identify instructional needs and let the faculty know those needs.
The district will provide the Education Department with a separate update on some of its efforts today.
"I feel very confident about what we will be taking to the state," McAdoo said. "I really feel that we're on target."
The district has monitored classroom observations and recorded the amount of time spent by administrators monitoring classrooms in the six schools and comparable schools in the district, said Dennis Glasgow, the district's associate superintendent for accountability.
In the academically distressed schools, administrators spent on average 622 minutes in classroom observations during a month-long review period, while they spent 290 minutes in classroom observations in regular schools during that same time period, he said. The time spent has increased, Glasgow said during last week's agenda meeting, adding that it indicated administrators were giving teachers good feedback.
The district will also hire a company to perform a curriculum audit to see whether the curriculum and classroom instruction are aligned with Common Core, Glasgow said Thursday. Officials will recommend the district contract with Curriculum Management Systems Inc., which bid for the services at $85,400, he added.
If the audit reveals gaps, the district will be tasked with rewriting the curriculum, he said.
School Board member Joy Springer voiced concerns with bringing in a company to provide training to the district on how to use data to improve student achievement.
"I believe you already have people in the district to do just that," she said.
District Superintendent Dexter Suggs said he disagreed. The district, he said, has 18 schools either on priority, academic distress or focus.
"We're talking about how to utilize data effectively," he said. "If we have the skill set that we needed in the school district, we wouldn't be in this situation."
Metro on 12/19/2014