The Arkansas Board of Education gave Covenant Keepers Charter School in southwest Little Rock a reprieve Thursday.
The board took no action against the charter school despite its state classification as academically distressed.
Thursday's lack of action follows the same decision in April by the Charter Authorizing Panel, made up of top-level staff members in the state Department of Education.
At the time, the panel heard from the school's representatives, along with school intervention specialists, about strategies the 189-student school has carried out in hopes of raising academic achievement. In May, the state Education Board said it wanted to review the panel's decision.
"I felt like from the time we got here, the board really had some concerns about where we were and our trajectory," the school's founder Valerie Tatum said. "We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but we're going to come back stronger and with greater gains."
The school, which serves sixth- through eighth-graders, opened in 2008-09, and its charter is up for renewal next year. The Education Board designated it as academically distressed because fewer than half of its students scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy exams over a three-year period.
For the most recent three-year period, 46.64 percent of students scored at proficient levels on the state exams.
It is one of 22 schools in the state to have the designation. The independent Covenant Keepers school is in the Little Rock School District boundaries. The district was taken over by the state because six of its 48 schools were classified as academically distressed.
Education Board member Alice Mahony of El Dorado wanted to place the school on probation until its charter was up for renewal, but the motion did not receive a second.
The school enrolls a lot of children who enter performing below grade level, school representatives have said.
Sarah McKenzie, the executive director of the University of Arkansas' Office for Educational Policy, said the school has made leaps in students' individual growth, even though they are scoring below proficiency.
Of the 70 percent of children who are below grade level, McKenzie said 66 percent made a year and a half growth in reading during the past year, while 54 percent made the same growth in math in that time.
The school also has changed its curriculum to programs such as Engage NY and Expeditionary Learning, which representatives said are more challenging and based on math and literacy education standards adopted in more than 40 states. Teachers at the school also take the first 45 minutes of a class to teach at a student's level, said Laurette Whipps, the literacy coach at the school.
Education Department officials still had concerns about the math programs.
Covenant Keepers has applied for a grant that would allow hiring of a math interventionist, Tatum said.
"I've got a lot of ideas for that individual," she said. "Again, we're looking for an individual to take [the data] and pull kids out to do aggressive teaching."
Education Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock said he's heard from school representatives countless times. Many of those times, Barth said the school had solved one problem, but another one popped up.
"Because of that history, I'm a little bit wary," he said. "I am really, really troubled by a charter that is in academic distress being allowed to exist in the state. I think it makes sense to take no action formally today, but I think ... if this isn't real growth, then it's going to be real hard to continue the life of the school -- no matter how good the intentions are."
A Section on 06/12/2015