Little Rock School District Superintendent Mike Poore found some bright spots in the 2019 ACT Aspire test results, but said it's unlikely the district's eight F-graded schools met a mandate for moving students out of the lowest achievement category.
Moving students out of the lowest of the four achievement categories on the Aspire's English/language arts and math tests is a state requirement for restoring local control -- an elected school board -- in the Little Rock school system, which has been under state control for almost five years.
"Based on performance data, it doesn't look like we will meet that exit criteria in my mind for any of our F schools," Poore said in an interview. "The growth measure is still to come, but the metric for performance of moving folks -- my guess that isn't going to play out yet, even after we scrub," he said about the math and literacy results.
Scrubbing refers to the checking for and reporting to the Arkansas Department of Education any errors in the test results -- such as a student being counted in a wrong school or grade, or a student who moved away.
If Poore's prediction proves accurate, decisions about what will happen next in the school system of more than 22,000 students will fall to the Education Department and Board of Education -- as guided by Act 930 of 2017 and the statute's accompanying rules on school and district accountability.
2019 Aspire test results
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Overall, about one-third of Little Rock students in grades three through 10 achieved the desired "ready" or "exceeds ready" levels on the literacy, reading, math and science parts of the state-required tests. A high of 35.78% of students met the ready or exceeds ready in math, for example, but only 29.31% were ready or better in science. Slightly more than 32% achieved at ready or exceeds-ready levels on the reading portion, compared with 41.26% statewide.
While the district did improve those achievement percentages in math and literacy, including reading, over the 2018 results, it was generally 9-12 percentage points behind the statewide percentages in those subject areas.
[RELATED: Search 2019 Aspire test results at arkansasonline.com/2019act/district]
Within the district, the results at the schools varied widely. Better than 79% of third-graders and 83% of fourth-graders at Forest Park Elementary achieved at the ready and exceeds-ready levels on the reading tests. But at Baseline Elementary, no percentage of third-graders scored at ready levels in reading, and 15.63% of fourth-graders and 17.02% of fifth-graders attained ready scores.
At McClellan High, one of the eight F-graded schools, fewer than 9% of ninth- and 10th-graders scored at the desired levels in reading, compared with fewer than 7% at Hall High, another F-graded school.
At J.A. Fair, no more than 9.74% of ninth- and 10th-graders hit the ready mark in reading. At Central High, about 44% of ninth-graders and about 35% of 10th-graders scored at ready or better levels. At Parkview Magnet High, 39% of ninth-graders and 36% of 10th-graders did the same.
The state assumed control of the Little Rock district in January 2015 by disbanding its school board and putting the superintendent under the direction of the state education commissioner. That was because six of the district's 48 schools at the time had chronically low math and literacy scores under an accountability system that has since been replaced.
Nearly five years, a new test and a new accountability system later, the district is categorized as a Level 5-intensive support district. Eight Little Rock schools have a state-applied F letter grade, which is based largely but not entirely on Aspire tests. The F-graded schools besides McClellan, J.A. Fair and Hall high schools are Cloverdale Middle, and Romine, Stephens, Washington and Bale elementary schools.
Earlier this year, the Education Department established exit criteria -- both qualitative and quantitative -- for the eight schools. The quantitative criteria call in part for the number of students scoring at the "close," "ready" and "exceeds ready" categories of achievement on the literacy and math portions of the Aspire test to exceed the number in the lowest "needs to improve" achievement category.
The other quantitative criteria for each of the eight schools is a score of 80 or better in a calculation of student achievement growth in literacy and math over time.
That achievement-growth measure -- as well as a final determination on the number of students in the lowest achievement category -- won't be known with certainty until later this calendar year, Poore and state Education Department officials said recently.
"The growth is what you don't have right now," Poore said. "That's a more complex formula ... that no one can replicate right now, but we know that will happen in October. Growth is what we thrive on as educators -- not just in Little Rock but anywhere in the state. What did we do with that child and how did they improve?"
"My hope is that while a school may look flat, there could be some growth," Poore said. "We have to see what that looks like, and that is still to come."
Kimberly Mundell, Education Department spokesman, said the state agency didn't have anything to add beyond the release of the Aspire test results regarding their impact on the status of the state-controlled district.
"It's too soon to tell," Mundell said. "These are pre-appeals scores, and the correction window hasn't opened yet."
Poore and Danyell Cummings, the Little Rock district's testing director, highlighted the increased numbers of test-takers at McClellan and Hall, which will keep those schools from being dinged by the state for failing to report a 95% rate of students tested.
Poore also pointed to upticks in reading achievement at the four elementary schools with state F grades and in the district's elementary grades overall, where all but the sixth grade showed gains.
"I'm pleased with the progress there," he said. "I attribute that to several things." He noted the state's training of teachers in the science of how children best learn to read. He cited the state's support of administrators who are using classroom walk-through strategies to monitor classroom instruction.
"It's starting to pay dividends," he said of that training. As for raising student achievement, "our teachers are working hard on it."
The state's 27 pages of rules for carrying out Act 930 -- the Educational Support and Accountability Act -- deal in part with districts like Little Rock that are classified as being Level 5-intensive support. The September 2018 rules call for the Education Department to develop a district improvement/exit plan, as was done earlier this year for Little Rock.
The rules call for the Education Department to provide quarterly reports to the state Education Board regarding the progress of a Level 5 district toward meeting the criteria for exiting Level 5. The state board "may conclude that the exit criteria has been met and remove the district from Level 5 ... and place the district in Level 4 -- directed support for one year with monitoring by the Department and quarterly reporting to the State Board."
Another section of the rules says that the state Education Board may -- upon recommendation from the commissioner -- return the public school district to local control through the appointment or election of a board of directors. The state board, however, may limit the powers and duties of that public school district board. The school district board shall act in an advisory capacity to the state commissioner in the areas in which authority is retained by the commissioner.
Additional powers may be granted to the local board by the state board if there is progress toward improving the issues that caused the Level-5 classification of the district, according to the rules.
But, finally, the rules state that "If the public school district has not demonstrated to the State Board and the department that the public school district meets the criteria to exit Level 5 ... within five years of the assumption of authority, the State Board shall annex, consolidate, or reconstitute the public school district."
While the district and state wait for more data and for decisions on the future of the Little Rock district, Poore said the district will be updating school and district support plans and taking advantage of new resources, particularly for teaching reading and serving students who have characteristics of dyslexia.
The district has hired Chandle Carpenter to spearhead the services -- including screening -- for those students with dyslexia markers. The district has hired a new kindergarten-through-12th-grade literacy director, as well, and selected new literacy textbooks and materials for reading instruction.
"We have a lot of work still to do, but we knew that," Poore said.
"And then I still believe that we have a staff that is hungry to improve and get better," he said. "In every one of these audits [done by the state of special education and dyslexic services], no one has ever said that Little Rock is combatant or is not receptive. I really admire and respect our people for their receptiveness to suggestions on how to get better. That's a huge positive in terms of where our culture is."
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