After voting Thursday to remove academic distress classification for two districts and six schools, the state Board of Education on Friday heard a progress report for schools remaining under academic distress.
Elbert Harvey, coordinator of public school accountability, presented the quarterly update to the board.
The report says the recommendations made by review teams in October will be converted into 45-day action plans during the third quarter this school year. The plans are intended to “assist school leadership teams in identifying actions to be accomplished and to maintain focus on the implementation of the recommendations,” the report states.
“We’ll actually help the district write the plan,” Harvey said.
The next quarterly report will measure how much progress was made on the plan.
Board member Diane Zook voiced concerns regarding the background of the Little Rock district’s Department of Education improvement specialists, who are assigned to provide district and school leadership with guidance, saying that curriculum specialists are serving in the role of improvement specialists.
Harvey said he couldn’t speak for the specialists on their prior experience, but said he would like to implement a training series for improvement specialists to ensure they had the skills required.
The board commended Harvey for a “clear and detailed” report, but wondered if the root of the problem has been identified.
“This is a wonderful report,” board member Joe Black said. “But the schools continue basically to be the same schools. Do you feel that you all are beginning to understand the core reasons for academic distress, and treating the core reasons?”
Harvey said they are continuing to uncover reasons for academic distress, but so far attention has been centered on two things: leadership and teacher recruitment.
“Initial work has been around leadership; we’re seeing some great improvement along those lines,” he said.
Another focus has been on building a retention system to retain high-quality teachers, he said.
Identifying the reasons for academic distress is an ongoing analysis, Harvey said.
“We have to continue to look. As we uncover one, we many uncover another.”