The state-controlled Little Rock School District will use a process at its schools of setting goals, teaching, testing and then reteaching in an effort to affect every student every day, Superintendent Baker Kurrus said Thursday.
Speaking to the district's state-created Civic Advisory Committee, Kurrus said similar efforts in past years were haphazard at best and, as a result, success varied from school to school.
The district, the state's largest, is going to be focused not on activities but on student outcomes, he said. To that end, standardized, interim tests will be given to students throughout the school year starting before Thanksgiving. After Christmas, district teachers and leaders should know, roughly, whether each individual student is making achievement gains.
"We'll never take our eye off the ball," Kurrus said about the focus on student outcomes in what he called a "servant model" organization in which the purpose of the superintendent, associate superintendents, principals and instructional specialists is to support the teacher in the teacher's work with students.
"The principal is going to run the building and is going to be responsible," Kurrus said. "The only person telling the principal what to do will be an associate superintendent. It won't be me."
In response to questions from Civic Advisory Committee member Joy Springer, Kurrus gave assurances that employees will be held accountable for doing their jobs.
"You got the stick, fly the plane," he said of the employees. "And we'll be on top of that."
The Arkansas Board of Education voted in January to take over the Little Rock School District because six of the district's 48 schools were classified as academically distressed, meaning that fewer than half of the students at the six schools scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy tests over a three-year period.
The six schools are Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools; J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools; and Baseline Elementary -- which will start this fall with a virtually all new staff and a 90-minute longer instructional day. The state Education Board immediately dismissed the locally elected School Board and authorized Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key to hire Kurrus, an attorney and businessman, to head the district under Key's supervision.
Kurrus said Monday that the district's achievement problems go beyond the six schools. As an example, the majority of students -- better than 60 percent -- who enroll at a school such as Hall High for ninth grade or at Henderson Middle for sixth grade arrive at those schools from their preceding schools scoring at below proficient levels, he said.
"When we see failure we are going to address it," he said about the coming year. "We are going to very intentionally set goals. We've already begun to do that. Then we are going to assess our students. We said we were going to do that last year but we didn't do it consistently. We didn't have a consistent, routine collaborative process to set goals and then we didn't assess our students properly, and then we didn't adjust our teaching as we should have and intervened when we needed to."
At the time the Education Board voted to take control of the Little Rock district it also approved the formation of the Civic Advisory Committee as a way to retain public involvement in the district's operation.
The committee, co-chaired by Greg Adams, who was one of the dismissed Little Rock School Board members, and Dionne Jackson, a college faculty member, receives a monthly status report from Kurrus. The 33-member committee is the first of its kind in the state and is made up of representatives from seven election zones in the district as well as teachers, students and philanthropic organizations.
The group is planning a day-long work session for an as-yet-undetermined Saturday in September where it will work with facilitator Jennifer Henderson to decide how it can best assist the district.
"The common feeling is that we are perfunctory rather than impactful," committee member Marq Golden said Thursday, joining a chorus of the members who said they are eager to begin tackling tasks.
Kurrus urged the group to take on broad issues dealing with the direction of the district.
"I think you will miss the mark if you look at the square inch of the elephant -- if you decide you all are going to do my job for me," he said. "You all are paying me to do some things I'm trying very hard to do. I really want you to decide what is the outcome you want. Then challenge me and our team. Say, 'Baker, balance the budget. Let's build new schools in areas of great need. Let's put a $60 million education center in south central Little Rock. Yeah, we want to do that. We know we'll have to close some small schools. We have the nerve to do that.' Then tell me, 'OK, do it. Give us a plan.'
"That's what they did in North Little Rock," he said about the school building program in that district. "Anyway, that's my advice."
Metro on 07/24/2015