Half of schools in state failing to achieve goals

LITTLE ROCK — Correction: This past summer, the state Department of Education released the names of 19 “exemplary” schools that were then on a statewide achievement list. The department released a more detailed list Monday with five categories of achievement. In the revised list, the number of exemplary schools had been reduced to five. The number of schools currently on the exemplary list was incorrect in an article Tuesday.

More than half of Arkansas’ 1,102 public schools fell short of achievement and graduation goals set in the state’s newly revised school accountability system in 2011-12, according to information released Monday by the Arkansas Department of Education.

A total of 587 schools are designated as needing improvement, including 25 in Little Rock School District, 19 in the Pulaski County Special and six in North Little Rock. There are nine schools in the high-achieving Bentonville School District, seven schools in Rogers, nine in Cabot, six in the Nettleton district in Jonesboro and three in Marion.

The schools are identified because either the overall enrollment or the combined subgroups of special education, poor and non-native English-speaking students missed achievement targets on literacy and math sections of the Benchmark and End-of-Course exams.

High schools also could be labeled as needing improvement for failing to raise graduation rates.

The schools must make efforts to raise achievement for those students who don’t score at proficient, or grade-level, but they don’t face severe sanctions - such as replacing the principal - levied in the past against under performing schools.

“‘Needs improvement’ does not mean the same as it did under the old system,” Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said at a news conference Monday.

“Because a school may have a designation of ‘needs improvement’ - that does not mean it is a failing school,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it’s not in any way failing. It means that school missed a target.”

Kimbrell released the achievement status for each public school Monday. There are five categories of schools: exemplary, achieving, needs improvement, focus and priority.

Besides the 587 schools that need improvement, Kimbrell released the names of 341 schools categorized as “achieving” Monday.

The school achievement list released Monday also included three previously announced categories: 46 “needs-improvement priority” schools, 109 “needs-improvement focus” schools and 19 “exemplary” schools.

Schools with achieving and exemplary labels will be rewarded with less state involvement in school operations.

Kimbrell said Monday that while he was dismayed by the 587 schools needing improvement on top of the numbers of priority and focus schools, he said the situation could be worse.

“If we had used the old system, we would have had 80 percent below what you would say is achieving,” Kimbrell said.

Arkansas’ new accountability system was approved by the U.S. Department of Education in June as a waiver to provisions in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. The federal Education Department offered states the opportunity to apply for waivers when Congress and the president failed to revamp and re-authorize the 10-year-old law.

The federal act calls for 100 percent of students to score at proficient levels on state math and literacy tests by the end of the 2013-14 school year.

Before the waiver, an increasing number of Arkansas schools faced penalties under the system. Those included permitting students to transfer to other schools, hiring private tutoring services, replacing the principal, changing the curriculum or reconstituting the school staff.

Kimbrell said that reaching 100 percent proficient by 2014 is not achievable. But the achievement targets in Arkansas’ new system - which are tailored to each school - can be accomplished and an unsatisfactory label removed.

“We are trying to find a system in which we expect every school to continue to move its achievement forward,” Kimbrell said. “If you tell me I have to jump six feet, I’m going to give up. This takes the place of an unachievable goal and gives you a goal that is achievable but also maintains a standard of continuous improvement.”

A school identified as needing improvement in the state’s revised system must meet its achievement and graduation targets in two consecutive years to be labeled as an achieving school.

Already, some of the schools labeled as priority, focus and needs-improvement schools met achievement goals on the spring 2012 state tests and just have to meet the goals one more year, Kimbrell said.

The Arkansas waiver plan calls for each school to reduce by half the gap between the percentages of students scoring at proficient or advanced on state tests in 2011 and 100 percent proficient. That is to be done in equal increments each year until the achievement goal is reached in the 2016-17 school year.

For example, if 76 percent of students achieved at proficient in literacy in 2011, the school - which is 24 points away from 100 percent proficient - would have to improve 12 points by 2016-17. That would have to be done at a rate of at least two percentage points a year.

The requirement to reduce the achievement gap by half applies to the overall student body and to the combined subgroup of low-income students, students with disabilities and students who are learning English as a second language.

Kimbrell said schools can be labeled as needing improvement when just one group in that combined subgroup doesn’t meet achievement requirements.

Schools can now use their resources to help the students meet the goals rather than spending what Kimbrell said was “millions of dollars” on required supplemental education service providers that were not held responsible for student achievement under the No Child Left Behind system.

Kimbrell also praised the new system for holding more schools accountable for the achievement level of special education, low-income and English language learners than the previous system.

The previous system required that a school have 40 students in a single subgroup, such as special education, to be held accountable for the group. Only 16 percent of the state’s schools met that threshold. Now, the accountability system is triggered if just 25 pupils are in the combined group of at-risk students.

The new system results in some schools that are generally seen as high performing being labeled as needing improvement.

Forest Park Elementary in the Little Rock School District is on the needs-improvement list although 90 percent or more of pupils routinely score at proficient levels on the Benchmark Exam and it was recently named a Blue Ribbon School for excellence by the federal Education Department.

Several of the state’s charter schools are on the list, including the high-performing Lisa Academy charter school in Little Rock.

“Arkansas has some very high-performing schools,” Kimbrell said, adding that they can’t rest on their accomplishments.

“Their targets are high and they have to achieve just as other schools have to achieve,” he said. “They have to stretch themselves and challenge their staffs, their students and their communities to continue to see a trajectory of high performance and growth.”

Kimbrell acknowledged that there are school and district leaders who are angry about the new labels.

Conway School District Superintendent Greg Murry isn’t one of them. A participant in Monday’s news conference, Murry welcomed the new system that doesn’t require all students to reach proficient within the next two years. He said it will allow a better focus on the students with the greatest educational needs.

Murry did say he disliked the “needs improvement” phrase and wished another term could be used, and that he is still working to understand all parts of the new system that resulted in eight Conway schools being labeled as needing improvement.

No Conway school received an exemplary label despite the fact that at least one of its schools was recently recognized as one of the top 10-performing schools in the state by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Office for Education Policy.

Murry said there is no reason for parents to avoid a school labeled as needing improvement.

“That’s part of our job to get the message out: ‘Here’s the label. Let me tell you what it means,’” Murry said. “’Here’s the impact to your child.’ That’s ultimately what parents care about - ‘What happens to my child.’”

In addition to the 587 schools labeled as needing improvement, there are an additional 46 priority schools, which are the 5 percent lowest-scoring schools in the state, and 109 focus schools, both of which the state previously announced.

The 109 focus schools have the largest achievement gaps between students at-risk of failing school and those who are not considered to be at-risk of failure.

Both the priority and focus schools must operate under improvement plans. Priority schools that don’t meet achievement goals within two years risk putting the entire school district in jeopardy of a state take-over.

The priority and focus schools are a concern to the Little Rock district, which has eight schools on the priority list, 10 on the focus list plus the 25 newly designated needs improvement schools.

Dennis Glasgow, the district’s associate superintendent for accountability, said district leaders are troubled by requirements in the new system that hold a high school responsible for the graduation rates for the Classes of 2011 and 2012.

Those graduations occurred before the new accountability plan was approved by the federal Education Department last summer. High schools across the country, not just in Arkansas, are now held responsible for every student who started a school as a ninth-grader and didn’t graduate with the class four years later.

The Little Rock district has three high schools listed as priority schools and is under pressure to improve student achievement and graduation rates to avoid a state takeover. Glasgow said it would be “a shame” to lose the district over the graduation rate requirement.

“With math and literacy you can work hard and affect that,” Glasgow said about the accountability requirements. “That is in the here and now. The graduation rate is in the past. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.”