LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Department of Education will apply for relief in early 2012 from the federal law that requires all public school students to be proficient in math and literacy by 2013-14, state Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said Monday.
The state will seek waivers from some of the terms of the decade-old No Child Left Behind Act using guidelines issued last month by the U.S. Department of Education.
If the state is successful in obtaining waivers, the state’s 239 school districts and its charter schools could avoid the dilemma of having to test students on the basis of the state’s current set of math and literacy standards to meet the requirements of the federal law while putting into place the new national Common Core State Standards and accompanying testing system.
More than 400 of Arkansas’ nearly 1,100 schools are already on the state’s list of schools needing improvement because of low scores earned on Benchmark and End-of-Course exams.
Waivers could keep additional Arkansas schools from being labeled and sanctioned should their students fall short of proficient — or grade level — on state exams by 2013-14.
Kimbrell told the state Board of Education on Monday that he and his staff will consult with teachers, school and district administrators, parents, businessmen and community members about the content of the waiver request at public forums to be held in five parts of the state in November and December.
“We will be looking at the options that are available and sharing those op- tions with stakeholders across the state as we develop this new accountability program,” Kimbrell said.
The state Education Board last spring sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education asking that the state be allowed to freeze achievement requirements at the 2012 levels. That request was denied, but there was an indication then that some relief might be available later.
“This is not going to be anything that is an easy process,” Kimbrell said about developing a waiver request.
“Lot of hoops, lot of writing, lot of explanation, a lot of meetings — but we are going to go through the process because we don’t believe that it’s fair to our schools, to our children or to our teachers to move to a whole new set of standards and hold them accountable for an old set of standards and an old assessment system.
“We’ll be asking the stakeholders to help us craft our waiver. We have some ideas, we have some guidance. We’ll be sharing all of that with the stakeholders and the board.”
In addition to the input, the federal guidelines condition any waivers on a state’s adoption of standards that will prepare students for college and careers.
Arkansas is one of 44 states that has adopted the Common Core State Standards in math and English/language arts and is putting those standards into place this school year in grades kindergarten through two.
The new standards will be phased into grades three through eight next year and into high schools in 2013-14.
The applicant state must aggressively deal with the bottom 5 percent of schools in terms of achievement, called “high-priority” schools, Kimbrell said.
And states must provide assistance to another 10 percent of struggling schools. Incentives must also be made available to the highest 5 percent of top-performing schools to do even better.
It’s left up to the states about how they deal with schools “in the middle,” Kimbrell said.
“We are looking for an answer to the question about growth. What is an acceptable amount of growth? If you are in the middle, there is still an expectation that you continue to see student improvement. The measure is going to be some measure of continuous improvement and growth,” rather than just reaching a specific or static achievement level.
The federal waiver guidelines are meant to give states and schools new flexibility in raising student achievement. They were announced by President Barack Obama on Sept. 23 in lieu of Congress’ failure to act promptly to reauthorize the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
The No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President George W. Bush in early 2002, is the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that dates back to 1965.
No Child Left Behind calls for all students to score at proficient or advanced levels on state tests in math and literacy by 2014 regardless of a student’s ethnicity or race, income level, language barrier or handicapping condition.
To that end, Arkansas schools have had to meet annual state achievement requirements on the state B enchmark and End of Course exams.
The student body as a whole and each subpopulation of students at a school must meet the state requirements, which are ratcheted up annually.
Schools that fail to meet the state minimum achievement requirements in two successive years are labeled as needing improvement and sanctioned.
The sanctions include requiring schools to offer students the opportunity to transfer to higher achieving schools and to pay for afterschool tutoring.
Over time, the sanctions become more severe. Schools can be required to contract with school-improvement companies for consultants or employ school-improvement directors. Additionally, principals and faculty members at an academically troubled school can be replaced.
Arkansas’ waiver request will take the form of a proposed revision in its workbook for complying with the No Child Left Behind Act and will be submitted for approval by a federal deadline in February, Kimbrell said. The state can’t meet an earlier November deadline, he said.
He called the prospect of a waiver the “most important opportunity for our state to help our schools, our teachers and our students, and to hold them to an accountable level that does makes sense and isn’t so full of problems that it discourages the process.”
Board member Mireya Reith of Fayetteville questioned Kimbrell about how Arkansas would continue to “bring highlight and attention” to the achievement levels of subpopulations of students, including students of different races and ethnicities, and students who are learning English.
States and schools must continue to report achievement levels by subpopulations and be held accountable for achievement gains by subgroup, Kimbrell said, including students who have disabilities.
In response to questions from board member Toyce Newton of Crossett, Kimbrell said he envisions a waiver enabling Arkansas to revamp the existing, differentiated Smart accountability system in which schools are labeled as being in “whole school intensive improvement ” or “targeted intensive improvement,” for example.
“You’ve got lots of schools that fall in the middle. What do we do with those schools? If you don’t see the kinds of growth and continuous student improvement, what do you do? Do you limit their use of federal dollars? What options should the state exercise to ensure there is continued improvement every year?” he said.
“It’s not as simple as the letter we wrote last time,” he said. “In order to get these waivers, we are going to have to develop a unique, very comprehensive plan.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/11/2011