An organization that will develop recommendations to improve public education in preschool through college is reaching out to Arkansans for their opinions and ideas on the topic.
Forward Arkansas -- a recently formed partnership of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Arkansas Board of Education -- is asking adults and students alike to go to the organization's website to take an online survey about public education.
The survey, which can take about 15 minutes to complete, will be available for about four weeks, or until mid-February, on the website ForwardArkansas.org.
Forward Arkansas formed because, although Arkansas has made strides in access to and funding of education, the state is near the bottom of the nation in student achievement and college graduation. State leaders have said repeatedly that a better-educated citizenry will make it easier for the state to attract new business and offer better-paying jobs.
In addition to the website and survey, Forward Arkansas has also established a steering committee of state business, civic, government and education leaders to help create a strategic, comprehensive plan for improving public education with particular focus on improving student achievement in the schools that are classified by the state as academically distressed.
Academically distressed schools are those in which fewer than half of the students scored at proficient or better levels on state math and literacy tests over a three-year period. There are currently 26 such schools.
The strategic plan is due out in late spring.
"We want this to be a state plan," Kathy Smith, senior program officer for the Walton Family Foundation's Arkansas Education Reform Initiative, said this week about the reason for the survey. "We have put the resources together to operationalize the writing of the plan, but we want it to be a plan that is crafted by Arkansas, generally, and not just by one of the partners.
"The activities that are going to be organized around this effort, including the survey that is on the website and including the stakeholder meetings that are going to be held all around the state, are very important to the effort," Smith added. "We need to have the voices from all the different sectors and from all the different constituencies to put together a plan that will be meaningful."
Information about the respondents to the survey will remain confidential, organizers said.
The survey asks what school district the respondent lives in and whether he or his children currently or formerly attended the state's public and private schools. Other questions ask about the respondent's degree of satisfaction with the quality of public education and whether he agrees that student achievement in the lowest-performing schools can be improved.
Some of the questions require typing out answers, including one asking what elements of public school education are important to preserve and another asking for how the respondent hopes to describe education 10 years from now.
Still another question asks respondents to choose from a list of two dozen topics the ones they believe are most important to be addressed in a statewide plan.
The steering committee, selected to be representative of the diverse population and interests in the state, will be led by Smith; Sherece West-Scantlebury, the president and chief executive officer of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Hugh McDonald, president and chief executive officer of Entergy Arkansas.
The committee will give direction to the development of the plan, in part by its reviewing and signing off on the work that is done, Smith said.
The committee's tasks will include selecting the successes of the state to be highlighted, identifying areas for improvement, selecting what is to be measured and tracked, and choosing ways to best present information.
Melanie Fox, a former Little Rock School Board member and co-founder of a local gourmet food company, said that as a steering committee member she is looking forward to the committee devising something other than a one-time, quick fix to troubled schools.
"It's not enough to simply intervene in these schools," Fox said of academically struggling campuses and districts. "Arkansas needs a comprehensive plan for turning around the schools that are in distress. The state needs to make sure it is providing an adequate education for all students.
"I'm excited about it," Fox added about the initiative, "because not only are we going to be addressing the academic portion as far as coming up with a plan, but we are going to be trying to figure out how to engage the parents and the community and all the people who need to come together to make a great education system."
Smith said the Forward Arkansas initiative's focus on academically distressed schools is a starting place that can jump-start improvement throughout the state.
"We find from research in other states that if you can do something to address the lowest-performing schools, often those efforts can then translate into supports that are good for lots of other schools, as well," she said. "When the lowest- performing schools can be supported well and brought up, it really kind of lifts all boats in a way. It doesn't stop with academic distress, but we think that it is a good place to prioritize and focus in the first phase."
Since July, when the Rockefeller and Walton Family foundations -- two of the state's most prestigious philanthropic organizations -- asked to help produce a plan for improving public education, the Forward Arkansas initiative selected the Boston Consulting Group to prepare the strategic plan and Jared Henderson to be the volunteer project manager.
The consulting group is compiling baseline data about education in Arkansas that will become available in report form later this month.
Henderson, also Arkansas manager of the Teach for America program, recently presented some of the preliminary baseline findings to the Arkansas Board of Education.
Arkansas ranks among the top 20 states nationally for providing access to pre-kindergarten programs, Henderson reported. The state also ranks above the national average in high school graduation and college-going rates. Additionally, the state's school accreditation standards are routinely refined. State law provides school choice -- such as charter schools -- and requires digitally delivered instruction. The state's per pupil expenditure has increased in recent years and is near the national average.
However, student achievement overall remains below preferred levels and the achievement gap between racial and economic groups is significant, according to the preliminary findings. While 26 schools are identified as distressed for poor performance on math and literacy exams, there are another 45 schools serving grades three through eight in which a majority of students fell below proficient levels on either math tests or literacy tests.
Arkansas ranks in the bottom 20 states on fourth- and eighth-grade national tests in math and literacy. Additionally, Arkansas' college graduation rate is among the lowest in the country.
Metro on 01/17/2015