When it comes to problems in Little Rock's public schools, can anything surprise anymore? Is anybody--outside Mike Poore's office--interested? If so, we must've missed the news conference of lawmakers, businessmen and the whole of the executive branches of the city and state governments when the paper published the story on chronic absenteeism the other day.
Is nobody surprised that more than half of the kids supposedly "attending" J.A. Fair were what experts call "chronically absent" last school year?
That is, they missed at least 10 percent of the school year. In a 178-day school year, that'd be about 18 days.
Eighteen days. At least.
Some of us might remember back to high school, and the kid who got mono. And had to do catch-up work at home, and might have been given special permission to walk at graduation.
But half of the school chronically absent? This should be treated as a crisis, and not just by the school system.
The paper said that 451 of the 865 kids at J.A. Fair were chronically absent last year--that's 52 percent. At Hall High, 601 of 1,216 were as well. As were 402 of the 834 students at McClellan High. For those kids (not) attending J.A. Fair and McClellan, they're getting a $100 million new school next year. We wonder if the school will be used much. (As a reform, the More Money Approach makes a great problem.)
A recent national report with several sponsors says that 15 percent of the nation's kids were chronically absent last year. And the Hamilton Project allows anybody to see such rates in your local school. It's an interesting website, at https://bit.ly/2wXXtxv, and easy to navigate.
Central High is about average on absenteeism. Several elementary schools in the Little Rock district are below average. But some of the schools, such as the ones mentioned above, have a shockingly high rate of absent kids.
For their part, folks at district HQ are aware of the problem. For they've started a "Feet to the Seat" campaign to address it. According to Cynthia Howell's reporting in your statewide paper, the campaign "will go beyond banners and Sunday night phone calls to parents to also include professional development teams that will work with schools on how to use the data to identify the needs and plan accordingly." Which sounds like something school administrators would be good at: forming teams and planning professional development. It might even help a little.
But again, is anybody outside of the superintendent's office interested? The state has taken over Little Rock's schools, which means the state is accountable for them now, which means the governor is. Will Asa Hutchinson see Little Rock's failing schools as part of his legacy? The rest of us will. Where are lawmakers? As a presidential candidate named Bob Dole once asked, "Where's the outrage?"
And what about the other school districts in the state that have high absentee rates? Check out that website at the Hamilton Project. You'd be surprised.
Maybe this newspaper, at least the editorial column, is partly to blame. When half the kids in some schools, in what has traditionally been the state's largest school district, don't show up to class, why are we just now crying bloody murder? Answer: Because we've just found out.
There have been a lot of words written in the opinion section of this paper, and not just this paper, about how to make Little Rock more livable. To make it more attractive. To change the image it has--the one that led to a stampede at War Memorial Stadium a few weeks ago when somebody shouted, "Gun!"
Folks, Little Rock will not get better without the public schools getting better. And although absent kids missing 10 percent of the year isn't the only problem, it's a big one. Students can't learn if they aren't there.
A school district that fails its kids is taken over by the state--because that's a crisis. When the opioid epidemic hit, the United States Senate passed a response act--because that's a crisis. A federal agency, FEMA, is ready when a hurricane hits the coasts--because that's a crisis.
Half the kids at some of Arkansas' schools aren't showing up to class. How is this not a crisis?
What are we afraid of? It can't be failure. We're already familiar with that.
Now and then the cloud bank of verbiage covering education in this state may part and give view to what's really going on in the classrooms. This time it ain't pretty. But fear not, we're sure to hear from those who've mastered two unintelligible languages, educanto and lawspeak. They'll surely explain to us civilians that things aren't what they appear.
But then we'll send them to a math teacher, and have "52 percent" explained to them.
Editorial on 09/15/2018