Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key said Wednesday that the state's forthcoming plan for complying with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 must produce a cohesive school accountability system.
The new law on Aug. 1 replaced the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, which called for 100 percent of students to achieve at proficient levels on state math and literacy tests within a 12-year period.
Specific penalties -- including student transfers, private tutoring and staff and curriculum changes -- were levied for schools that failed to make annual progress toward the achievement goals.
The new law aims to give states and school districts more authority in deciding how to hold schools responsible for student learning.
"Right now, we have multiple methods of accountability, multiple avenues, and they are not congruent. They just don't have an alignment that makes sense," Key told the state's new Vision for Excellence in Education and Arkansas Accountability System (ESSA) Steering Committee, which met for the first time at the Arkansas Department of Education.
The state's system of labeling schools or school districts as being in "academic distress," for example, is different from the state's A-through-F letter-grade system for schools, he said. And those two systems differ from the federally required system of labeling the state's lowest-achieving schools as "priority" schools, and its schools with the largest achievement gaps as "focus" schools.
Arkansas has more than 1,000 schools, 235 school districts and 24 charter school systems.
"Our goal is to really have it aligned so that we are all talking the same language at the same time with the goal of helping our schools serve the needs of our students," Key added in describing for the committee its advisory role in developing a proposal that is due to the U.S. Department of Education next summer.
"We may not take every suggestion and put it in the plan, but we want every suggestion because it may shape and mold some other piece of what we are doing," Key said, emphasizing that there is no already prepared plan and that public engagement is critical to the success of a proposal.
The state steering committee of 11 educators, lawmakers and parents led by Key met on the same day that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute of Washington, D.C., complimented Arkansas as one of four states that rewards schools for their students scoring at "advanced" levels. That is in addition to moving students to proficient levels.
The institute called on all states to offer incentives to states to move students into "advanced" achievement levels as they now prepare their Every Student Succeeds Act plans.
Key told the Arkansas steering committee that passage of the new federal education law in December came after years of inaction and was "unexpected." However, it came at a time when the Arkansas Education Department was working to move beyond providing an "adequate" or "good enough" education program to one of excellence, he said. The department has developed its own vision, values and goals that it says are intended to make Arkansas the nation's leader in student-focused education. Key said the department's strategic plan and the new federal law "are a perfect fit."
Tina Smith, director of special projects for the Arkansas Department of Education, is spearheading the development of the state plan. It will encompass academic standards, student testing, and teacher and school-leader quality. Smith said the new law still requires state tests and intervention in the lowest-performing schools and that overall there will be more state and local control.
Smith said she welcomed the opportunity "to do something great for our state" in developing a system that will recognize schools where students are growing and learning.
"It's exciting, but I also feel a heavy burden because I want to get it right," Smith told the steering committee. "In order to do that ... we need to hear from you, to get your ideas on getting it right."
To aid in the discussions and planning, a series of 10 public forums on school accountability are planned around the state, starting Sept. 13 in Alma and finishing Oct. 25 in Springdale.
The public forum schedule and other information about the Every Student Succeeds Act are linked on the state Education Department website: arkansased.gov.
Annette Barnes, the Education Department's assistant commissioner for school accountability, told the steering committee that the attention to educational equity is greater in the new federal law.
Under the the No Child Left Behind Act, Arkansas singled out six subgroups of students: white, black, Hispanic, poor, non-native English speakers and special education. The new law adds three more groups to be evaluated for achievement: children of military service members, foster children and homeless children.
Additionally, Arkansas has identified 25 as the minimum number of students necessary to constitute a subgroup of students. That number may still be too large to ensure that children are receiving needed services, Barnes said.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which highlighted Arkansas' current accountability system, did a 50-state study of school accountability systems under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. That was to determine whether states held schools responsible for moving students to "advanced" levels on state exams on top of their focus on moving lower-achievers to "proficiency" levels.
"Our analysis indicates that just four states -- Arkansas, Ohio, Oregon and South Carolina -- have truly praiseworthy systems when it comes to focusing attention on these students," the report states. "The overwhelming majority of current (and planned) state accountability systems provide schools with few incentives to focus on their high achieving students."
Arkansas' system of assigning A-F letter grades to schools was most recently based on the scores earned by students on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test.
Schools received zero points for each student's test that earned a Level 1 score, which was the lowest of five performance levels on the PARCC test. Partial points were given for each Level 2 and 3 score. One point was given for each Level 4 and Level 5 score.
A Level 4 score indicates that a student met grade-level expectations on the test. A Level 5 score indicates a student exceeded expectations. If there were more Level 5 scores at a school than Level 1 scores, bonus credit was awarded.
The Arkansas Department of Education was assisted in developing those letter-grade calculations by the University of Arkansas' Office for Innovation in Education.
Denise Airola, executive director of the office, said Wednesday that the attention to high-achieving students in the calculation was "a product of stakeholder input -- people would say, 'We want to make sure this counts.' So we came up with ways to do that."
The Fordham Institute report notes that it is a matter of fairness that states and schools address "the ceiling as well as the floor" in their school accountability systems. It is wrong for any child to miss out on academic challenges and the opportunity to reach his full potential, the study said.
Additionally, it is important to the nation's economic and political future to meet the needs of high-achieving students -- including those students from high-poverty schools that are under the greatest pressure to concentrate on low-achieving students.
The transition that states are making from the No Child Left Behind Act to the new law is an opportunity to include incentives for moving students to advanced levels on state exams, the Fordham study said.
"Going forward, policy makers who care about their low-income high-achievers should take full advantage of their newfound authority under the Every Student Succeeds Act to ensure that their schools have ample incentives to educate those children, and all children, to the max."
A Section on 09/01/2016