I have been having a discussion with Max Brantley over at his blog. The discussion has centered on the Office for Education Policy reports that investigate the effects of charter schools on desegregation efforts in Pulaski County. Yesterday Max claimed that the authors of the reports had “fudged the numbers.”  Having read the reports and looked at the data, it was obvious that Max’s claims were far from truthful. I felt obliged to jump into the fray. I thought it might be interesting to our readers to repost the ensuing discussion in the comments section of our post dealing with the subject. You can find the discussion here.

Well, Little Rock School District lawyer Chris Heller and his little lap dog (Max Brantley) are at it again. Over at the Arkansas Times Blog Max, Heller’s ever-reliable mouthpiece, is claiming that the Office for Education Policy (OEP) “fudged the numbers” in their reports on charter schools and segregation in Pulaski County.  Heller dug through a bunch of OEP emails he got through a FOIA, and thinks he has found a “Gotcha.” Max, doing his part, was more than willing to believe him and post the allegations.

The claim of “fudging” is a serious one, amounting to academic dishonesty, if found to be true. However, if not true, the claims made by Max and Heller represent plain idiocy at best or a failure of morals at worst.

First off, let’s dispense with the ridiculous claim that the OEP “fudged the numbers.” I have read their report and looked at their data. There are no inconsistencies between the numbers in the report and the e-mail produced by Heller.  They in no way changed or otherwise altered the data to yield a  particular result.

Second, no information was withheld.  The email posted on the Arkansas Times Blog was sent a couple of days after the report was released.

In the end, Heller cares very little about truth. He simply wants and is paid well to keep the desegregation money flowing to the Little Rock School District.

So, what’s all the fuss about? Well, Heller takes umbrage to the fact that the researchers did not disaggregate the data presented in the report to the school level. The report considers the effect of charter schools on the traditional public school sector (of which magnet schools are a subset). The report finds that a majority of the transfers are enhancing the levels of racial integration for the traditional public schools. Nothing in Heller’s memo or the OEP email changes this result. In fact, Heller fails to address the substance of the report in any way.

Instead Heller is completely focused on a very small subset of schools, the magnet schools. Why you might ask? When the magnet schools were set up by the 1989 Settlement Agreement it was stipulated that the magnet schools should have a student population “which is fifty-percent (50%) black and fifty percent (50%) non-black.” Heller has been wielding this 50/50 standard, meant only to apply to magnets, as a means to limit charter school enrollment. The 50/50 standard is of particular use to Heller because the demographics of Pulaski County are nowhere near 50/50.  Thus no school which pulls representatively from the surrounding community will be able to meet the 50/50 standard. I’ve dealt with the 50/50 standard before here, but suffice it to say the standard is arbitrary and capricious.  Any school that has a 50/50 ratio in Pulaski County is segregated by definition because it deosn’t match the demographics of the community.

The bottom line is that Heller, in his infinite wisdom, decided post hoc what question the researchers should have answered. He then considers the fact that the researchers were so brazen as to not answer his specific question as evidence of wrongdoing.

Or will they?  After not receiving any raises last year, University employees are going to have to wonder for another six months whether or not they’ll ever see the merit raises that were promised to them this year.  (Bobby Petrino and John Pelphrey, however, will get their raises either way).

I don’t always agree with Mike Masterson of the Dem-Gaz, but his article about the UA-Board-of Trustees-approved merit raises was spot-on.  You can read it here.  Below I’ve reprinted some of his best points.

“Who can university presidents and chancellors trust if their decisions, and those of their trustees, can be overruled by a governor? Must university trustees now check with the governor before making decisions about managing their institutions? If so, then of what real use is a university president, chancellor or board of trustees?

Injecting state government directly into the decision-making machinery of a university sets a dangerous precedent. Doing so makes it extremely difficult for university leaders to confidently manage when they don’t know if their decisions might be nixed a week later by a bureaucrat or the governor.

Why would a governor even get involved in these sorts of decisions when the state provides less than half of what’s required to educate a college student? And where do the boundaries exist in such instances, if at all? With curriculum? Admissions? Hiring? Administration?

Did the governor and the state’s chief financial guru not realize that UA-Fayetteville already had announced and programmed the raises into its computers? If so, why didn’t they talk with UA leaders before issuing what amounted to a political edict to recall those increases for the time being?

It’s the poorly timed, uncommunicative and needlessly heavy-handed way this unexpected disappointment unfolded that has left leaders at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville wondering what authority, if any, they truly have within their own institution.”

I would add one more point.  Masterson mentions that University leaders are left wondering what power they have, and in the case of Chancellor Gearhart and Vice Chancellor Pederson, I agree.  They’re out there trying to do what is best for their employees but they lack the power to do much in this situation.  I have less sympathy for Sugg (whose annual salary, by the way, is over a half-million dollars a year).  He didn’t have to accept the recommendation from the governor, there was nothing binding about it.  In the end, the most Beebe could do was “encourage” that the U of A not give raises at this time.

But Sugg quickly announced that there would still be no raises because he felt “we should honor the request of our governor.”

Honor the request of our governor?!   What kind of good-ole-boy rhetoric is that?!

Here’s an idea for Alan Sugg:  If you feel like honoring someone, how about honoring your commitment to the 1,200+ employees of the U of A who were promised raises?

Some jerks in Mississippi (they’re probably hanging out with Houston Nutt as we speak) have a problem with Saturday’s planned gay pride parade in Fayetteville. 

The president of the “American Family Association” told the Northwest Arkansas Times:

“We call on Mayor Lioneld Jordan of Fayetteville to cancel his plans to issue a proclamation celebrating homosexual behavior and Gay Pride,” wrote Tim Wildmon, association president, in a statement. “There is nothing about homosexual conduct to be proud of, and much to be ashamed of.”

It’s all pretty laughable, really.  Check out the fun they’re having over at The Fayetteville Flyer.  Matthew Petty even posted a letter from one of the nutjobs.  In the letter the guy calls us…wait for it…Gayetteville!

UPDATE: Sigh, looks like Fayetteville’s in the national media.  Again.

Our friend Max Brantley over at the Arkansas Times seems to trumpet every marginally negative charter school study story rumor that rolls across his desk, especially if the story appears in the New York Times (charter schools are thriving in NYC by the way).  Yet somehow he missed a screening of a charter school movie playing at the same LR film festival he attended, and he seems to miss most of the positive stories that speak well of charter schools.  So we thought Max and those like him in the state would be happy to hear some more great news about KIPP (see earlier good news about KIPP here), a charter school operator who is expanding in Arkansas.

Mathematica released a report today that takes a close look at academic performance in 22 KIPP middle-schools across the nation. You can find the full report here and the Ed Week article here. The report makes use of a matched longitudinal dataset as well as data from the traditional districts around the KIPP schools to answer several interesting questions.

Do KIPP schools take the best, brightest, and whitest from the traditional public schools? The resounding answer from the report is NO.

We find that students entering these 22 KIPP schools typically had prior achievement levels that were lower than average achievement in their local school districts.
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On average, KIPP middle schools have student bodies characterized by higher concentrations of poverty and racial minorities, but lower concentrations of special education and limitedEnglish proficiency (LEP) students, than the public schools from which they draw.

What about retention? Do KIPP schools simply counsel out those kids who can’t cut it? Again, the data demonstrate that retention rates at KIPP schools do not differ significantly (higher or lower) from the surrounding traditional school districts despite more rigorous monitoring.

Cumulative rates of attrition vary widely in different KIPP schools, but we did not find systematically higher (or lower) levels of attrition among these KIPP middle schools as compared with other schools within their districts. 

However, the report does find a couple of important differences between the KIPP schools and their traditional counterparts. The first difference is that KIPP is more likely to require students to repeat a grade. This finding is meaningful because there is some evidence that retention programs help struggling kids reach higher achievement in the future.

The second difference is that students who attended KIPP schools exhibited higher academic achievement in math and reading across multiple statistical specifications.

Within two years after entry, students are experiencing statistically significant, positive impacts in 18 of 22 KIPP schools in math and 15 of 22 KIPP schools in reading.

Not only are the results positive but they are also statistically significant and meaningfully large. The additional learning accumulated by the average KIPP student over the 3 year study period was equivalent to an additional 1.2 years of learning in math and 0.9 years in reading. To put it another way, the average KIPP school produced gains that would cut the black-white test score gap in half in math and by a third in reading over three years.

Now I’m sure there will still be the Debbie Downers out there who will try to downplay the continued positive findings for KIPP.  Some people just won’t let evidence stand in the way of their beliefs.  But I think we should be heartened that the KIPP model continues to demonstrate success with some of our poorest students.

Others will surely say that KIPP is not a workable solution because it cannot be scaled to help all the kids who might need it.  But I say abandoning KIPP because you believe it cannot be taken to scale is like firemen standing outside an apartment building in a poor neighborhood watching it burn, explaining their inaction by claiming that they could not save everyone.

In this video, Sheriff Tim Helder has some strong words to say about Jessie Lunderby’s recent art project.  Sheriff Helder sounds pretty serious about conducting a thorough investigation.  He clearly feels that the incident is an embarrassment to the department.

In order to put this into perspective, recall that two years ago, local incompetence led to Adriana Torres-Flores spending four days in a holding cell down at the Washington County courthouse.  She had no food, no water, and no toilet.  She drank her own urine in order to survive.  What was the result of that incident, you ask?

Was it an embarrassment to the law enforcement of the region?  Just Google Adrian Torres-Flores.  The national media had a heyday with the story, and it added to the perception that southerners don’t treat everyone equally.  Helder and Hunton were even publicly chastised by officials within the Mexican government.

How did Helder respond to the near death caused by the inexcusable negligence of one of his employees?  Well, he made some excuses for him, saying that the bailiff was simply busy and had forgot.  Judge Hunton also avoided saying much that was critical, offering that “The best thing that we can do is to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else.”

Ultimately bailiff Jarrod Hankins received a 30-day suspension without pay.  In his own words to local media 40/29, Helder articulated his forgive and forget philosophy:

“I realize some people may have expected Hankins to be terminated, however my philosophy is if an employee makes a mistake while trying their best to perform their duties I will try to salvage them,” Helder said.

It’s already been interesting to see how differently the Sheriff’s department has reacted to Jessie Lunderby’s art project.  The official punishment is expected to be handed down early this week.  I wonder how her punishment will compare to the one given to the guy who nearly killed a woman and caused an international incident.

UPDATE: The Northwest Arkansas TImes had an editorial on Saturday with a simliar (too similar?) take.  See here.

Some Northwest Arkansas prudes are freaking out about a local woman’s art project.  Jessie Lunderby, a 21 year-old Washington County jailer, posed nude (gasp!) for Playboy.com.  You can see the “scandalous” pictures here (fair warning, they include nudity!).

A few local yokels are up in arms, some saying she should be fired.  KHOG has a video story that you can watch here.  The Dem-Gaz covered the story too, but, alas, did not include any of the art.  And we wonder why print media is dying.

I doubt Fayetteville residents actually care that much about what Jessie does in her spare time.  It’s not like Lunderby locked up a Hispanic woman and forgot about her for four days, leaving her without food, water, or a bathroom.  And it’s not like she was secretly watching inmates undress. She was simply producing art in her spare time.

Still, in the 40/29 story, Sheriff Hoyt made it clear that he is against free artistic expression.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Hoyt said they’re conducting an investigation to determine if Lunderby violated any one of two policies — conduct unbecoming or engaging in off-duty employment in an area that’s sexual in nature.”

“It goes against the very things that let people have confidence in our agency,” said Hoyt. “Subscribers can actually pay money, so somebody’s making money on this and money is changing hands. So it is a business and so we feel that that policy has been violated as well.”

Sexual in nature?  Maybe Hoyt should get his mind out of the gutter.  When I looked at the pictures, I saw beautiful works of art.  I guess to some people, it’s only art if it’s 500 years old and painted by an Italian.  Maybe Jessie should’ve posed with some swans.

The state released the 2010 benchmark results yesterday. You can find them here. 

Those who “don’t believe” in tests or think students are being tested to death should probably stop reading now.  You wouldn’t want to gain any knowledge that resulted from torture.

For everyone else, here is the Dem-Gaz article about the results.  And here’s an excerpt.

More Arkansas students scored at grade level or better on the Augmented Benchmark Exams in math and literacy this year as compared to 2009, with two-thirds or more of students scoring at proficient and advanced levels on 11 of the 12 exams.

“We are excited by what we see in these test scores,” said Tom Kimbrell, who became Arkansas’ education commissioner in September. “We’ve got areas we need to focus on, and we’ve got areas in which we can celebrate success.”

Kimbrell said he was most pleased with the continued year-to-year progress in student achievement and, for the fourth year in a row, a narrowing of the achievement gaps among the subpopulations of black, white and Hispanic students.

In conjunction with the Benchmark exams, the Arkansas Department of Education also released the results of state’s 11thgrade literacy test and the Stanford Achievement Test, 10th edition. The Stanford results also showed gains in virtually all categories and particularly strong performances in math.

The Benchmark Exams, which test students’ mastery of state academic standards in grades three through eight, are required by state law and by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which calls for all students to achieve at grade levels in math and literacy by 2013-14.

The tests are used to identify students who need individual academic improvement plans.

Most state media sources (for example see here and here) are reporting that for the first-quarter of 2010 the Arkansas lottery ranked fifth in the nation in per-capita sales.  La Fleur’s magazine reports that Arkansans have spent an average of $38 per person for the first three months of this year.

I’ve expressed before that I am not a huge fan of the lottery because it is a regressive way for the state to raise money and because the way scholarships are being awarded is a joke (see here and here).

Naturally, fans of the lottery saw the ranking as a wonderful measure of success, while opponents viewed the rankings with disdain.  I think, however, that fans would be even happier, and opponents even more fruistrated, if these numbers were put into context.

Here’s the rankings in order. I have also added the average median income of each state in parantheses:

1. Massachusetts ($65,401)
2. Georgia ($50,861)
3. New York ($56,033)
4. Connecticut ($68,595)
5. Arkansas ($38,815)
6. Tennessee ($43,614)
7. New Jersey ($70,378)
8. Maine ($46,581)
9. South Carolina ($44,625)
10. Pennsylvania ($50,713)

Now, while I don’t know the per-capita numbers for every state (I’ve looked but to no avail), Arkansas sticks out like a sore thumb as the poorest state on this list with the lowest median income.  Some news stories did cite that Connecticutt, at number 4, collected an average of $42 per person during the first quarter.  Compared to Arkansas, that’s only an 11% increase in per-capita sales, but their median income is 77% percent higher than Arkansas’.  Clearly, if we consider lottery sales as a percent of income, Arkansas is doing far better (or worse, depending on your view) than Connecticutt.

If anyone has access to the per-capita numbers for everyone on the top ten list, please weigh in.  It would be interesting to see how we measure up to the other states when relative income levels are added to the mix.

Arkansas has submitted it’s application for Round Two of the Race to the Top grant.  The Dem-Gaz’s coverage can be found here. After finishing only 17th in the first round, it doesn’t appear that the State’s application has changed much, except that the amount of money requested this time is significantly less ($175 million).  Most notably, no changes have been made to Arkansas’ charter school law, which cost the state a significant amount of points in Round One.

The application can be found here.  Winners are to be announced in September.