State board gets data on 6 troubled LR schools

More than 400 documents including reports, tables, letters and lists regarding the Little Rock School District and its academically troubled schools are now available to the Arkansas Board of Education for its use in deciding the future of the state's largest school system.

The documents were submitted electronically by the Arkansas Department of Education and the Little Rock School District by this week's deadline in preparation for the state Education Board's special meeting at 10 a.m. Wednesday, during which it will decide whether to take action against the district and/or its six academically distressed schools.

The Education Board last year classified Baseline Elementary, Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools, and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools as being in academic distress because fewer than half of their students scored at proficient levels on state Benchmark and End of Course exams in math and literacy over a three-year period.

State law gives the Education Board the broad authority to address underperforming schools and their districts. That authority includes removing the principal and staff at a school, requiring the use of a particular curriculum, removing the school from the jurisdiction of its district, closing schools and/or taking over the district.

A district takeover could mean the removal of the locally elected school board, the replacement of the superintendent with a state-appointed chief and/or reconstituting the district.

"LRSD's Board of Directors has clearly stated that Baseline, Cloverdale, Henderson, Hall, Fair and McClellan are its top priority and the Board will do 'whatever it takes' to improve teaching and learning at those schools," Little Rock School District attorneys Chris Heller and Khayyam Eddings wrote in a portion of the school district's submission to the state board.

Little Rock district representatives are asking that the state not take control of the entire district and "at most" take only some degree of control over the six academically distressed schools.

"In this case, the simple solution that I think a lot of people see for the problems in six academically distressed schools is simple -- is take over the school district," Heller said then added, "But that's wrong because it doesn't solve the problem."

He said taking over a school district is a huge, unprecedented and arbitrary undertaking.

"The state has all the authority it needs to fix those problems without taking over the district and the best way to do it is working hand in hand with our people," he told the board.

The state Education Department submitted the bulk of the 400-some documents provided to the Education Board. There is no single report from Arkansas Education Commissioner Tony Wood and his staff summarizing documents, nor is there a recommendation on a particular course of action for the state Education Board and the agency to take.

The state documents include multiple reports over several years from the agency's school improvement specialists and similar reports from school improvement consulting companies about improvement efforts at the six schools and at the district's state-labeled "focus" schools.

A focus school has the greatest achievement disparity between the group of students who are poor, disabled or have limited English speaking skills and all other students at the same school.

The state agency also sent to the state Education Board the Little Rock district's five-year strategic plan, the amount of federal grant money distributed to the academically troubled schools in recent years, the list of the district's superintendents since 1869 and the history of principal changes at the six academically distressed schools. There is also data about the number of students who qualify for subsidized school meals at each school, as well as the number who qualify for special education services and for services because they do not speak English as their first language.

The state documents also include some student test results from earlier this school year, showing a mixed record of success for the academically distressed schools.

The information further includes the school-by-school recommendations for improvement made by the agency's school improvement team. For example, one recommendation for Baseline Elementary is to identify and implement classroom-level measures that will provide timely data for tracking student progress and to promote differentiated instruction.

Another of the Baseline recommendations suggests that given the large number of English-language learners and low-performing special education students at the school, the subgroups should be closely monitored.

All of the documents are available for public viewing under the "State Board" and "meeting agenda" links on the Arkansas Department of Education website at arkansased.org.

In their submission to the state board, which is included on the website, Heller and Eddings wrote that state law calls for a "measured response" by the Education Board to the case of an academically distressed school.

They said the Education Board can legally take only those actions necessary to correct the issues that led to the classification of a school. Removing the elected Little Rock School Board is not necessary, they said.

"Little Rock School District has worked with the Arkansas Department of Education to improve the six academically distressed schools and remove them from that classification," they wrote.

"The Little Rock School District Board of Directors has been fully supportive of that effort and has committed to do whatever is necessary to improve the performance of those schools. In these circumstances, Arkansas Code Annotated 6-15-430(b) provides no authority for the State Board of Education to take over Little Rock School District or remove its elected Board of Directors."

The attorneys wrote that there is no established criteria or precedent for taking over a district in which the majority of schools are not in academic distress.

They note that only the Lee County School District has been taken over by the state for academic distress, and in that case the entire district was classified as distressed. The Strong-Huttig School District has also been classified as an academically distressed district but has not been taken over by the state.

Heller and Eddings also wrote that it doesn't appear that the state agency has developed any plan that would significantly change the improvement efforts currently underway at the six campuses.

The attorneys had earlier used the state's Freedom of Information Act to obtain all documents from the department regarding possible action against the district and the academically distressed schools.

"[W]e hope that the state Board of Education will focus on fixing six schools and not dilute that effort by trying to do too much," the attorneys wrote. "The best hope for immediate and sustainable change at [the six schools] comes if the Arkansas Department of Education and Little Rock School District are working together to make that change with the enthusiastic support of the LRSD board of directors."

The district's submission to the state also includes a report from the administrative staff describing how the six schools have responded to recent state Education Department recommendations to narrow the number of initiatives to just two or three that each is undertaking to improve student achievement this year. Each initiative listed by a school is accompanied by tasks, timelines and an evaluation process.

For example, one of the improvement strategies listed for Hall High is to develop leadership and instructional teams. The tasks call for the instructional teams to meet for half a day every month to separate data down to the individual student with the intent that students will show one year's academic growth on reading and math inventories or tests.

"The district will fully support the schools as they undertake the tasks to which they have committed themselves," the district staff wrote.

The final piece of the district's submission to the state Education Board is a letter from the School Board in support of the district's efforts to improve achievement at the schools, and committing to work together and with the district's administration to make the changes necessary to meet the district's obligations to students.

A Section on 01/23/2015

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