There were some positive developments at the State Board meeting in Little Rock yesterday concerning the proposed Little Rock Urban Collegiate Public Charter School for Young Men.  Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell deserves a lot of credit for standing up for common sense.  He argued against the restrictions the LRSD has been asking for and, as reported by the Dem-Gaz,  “said the department’s current process for reviewing applications and existing charter schools is inadequate, and he announced plans to establish a charter school review council that will be made up of Education Department staff members, including himself and assistant commissioners.”  Naturally, Chris Heller is upset.  Here are some excerpts from the article:

Restrictions lifted on school for boys

Charter won’t fill seats by scores, income, as favored by LR district

LITTLE ROCK — An independently run charter school for boys that is set to open in August in Little Rock no longer has to meet state-imposed restrictions on family income and student achievement levels.

The Arkansas Board of Education voted 5-0 Tuesday to remove the conditions it approved last month requiring the new Little Rock Urban Collegiate Public Charter School for Young Men to serve mostly poor and low-achieving students.

The Little Rock School District had urged the state board to set the enrollment restrictions.

An attorney for the district said Tuesday that removal of the restrictions could be a setback in ongoing negotiations between the district and the state on how to phase out nearly $70 million in state desegregation aid to the three Pulaski County school districts.

The state board lifted its restrictions at a meeting in which it approved a new conversion charter school in Forrest City, denied two proposed conversion charter schools in the Pulaski County Special School District and delayed a decision on a conversion charter program at Little Rock’s Cloverdale Middle School until that proposal is rewritten.

Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell told the board that enrollment limits on the Urban Collegiate school – which is designed to serve up to 696 boys in kindergarten through eighth grades – were counterproductive, a logistical nightmare to carry out and not good for children.

Kimbrell, who became commissioner in September, recommended removing the restrictions. He said he should have done so at last month’s meeting but hesitated because he was new to the job.

“From a practical and professional perspective, it is my opinion that putting these conditions on the charter school won’t lead to anybody’s success,” Kimbrell told the board.

He said the department’s current process for reviewing applications and existing charter schools is inadequate, and he announced plans to establish a charter school review council that will be made up of Education Department staff members, including himself and assistant commissioners.

The council will evaluate in a more systematic manner than now exists the applications for both independently operated and school district run charter schools.

The council also would immediately evaluate already operating charter schools on an annual basis to determine whether they are conforming to the terms of their charters, which are five-year contracts with the state Education Board. Those reviews would focus on enrollment in the schools, their finances and any new programs or decisions that are under way.

“We would come to you about applications and existing charters with recommendations for modifications, revocations or continuations of those charters,” Kimbrell said about the council.

*****

Minutes from the state Education Board’s Dec. 19 meeting said that the board required at least 80 percent of the school’s enrollment each year to be from low-income families or below-proficient on the state Benchmark Exams.

But Kimbrell said in an interview that a review of a tape of the board meeting indicated it had to be both – not one or the other.

The tape showed that the board wanted at least 80 percent of the students to be from low-income families and below-proficient on state exams, a tougher requirement.

Kimbrell told the state board that the school planners would not have access to records showing whether school applicants qualify for free- and reduced-price school meals, which is an indicator of low family income, until after July 1. Nor would they have access to Benchmark results until late summer.

In both cases, the information wouldn’t be available until well after students would enroll for the August start of classes, he said.

Additionally, he said, some students from home schools and private schools do not have state test records and, as a result, can’t be included in the 80 percent. And he said that some families decline to fill out an application for subsidized school meals for their children even though they would qualify for the benefit.

Kimbrell also said a school populated with virtually all low-achieving students would leave the school devoid of student role models and peer mentors. As well, the school would become a permanent fixture on the state’s list of schools in need of improvement because of low test scores

There will be 12 open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County next year.

Little Rock School District officials have objected to most of them, in part because they say such charter schools hinder efforts to attract students to the district’s magnet schools, which are a component of federal court approved plans to racially desegregate schools in Pulaski County.

Charter schools also tend to attract higher-achieving students, district representatives argued, leaving the traditional district with a higher proportion of low-achieving students and fewer financial resources to serve them.

*****

Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock district, tried to address the state Education Board on Tuesday but was not recognized.

The district is in negotiations with the state over the possible phaseout of state desegregation money. Unconditional approval of charter schools by the state board has been an issue in those negotiations.

“Up until today it appeared we were making progress and some of our concerns were being heard,” Heller said in an interview about the talks. “This is a significant reversal.”

*****

Arkansas’ application for Race to the Top funds can now be found here on the ADE website.  I’m sure composing it was a long and tedious process for those involved, and I’m impressed that there are people out there who can navigate through such intense bureaucratic jargon.

We haven’t fully digested it yet.  At first glance, it reads more like a brag sheet of what Arkansas has done for the past decade.  That’s to be expected.  Unfortunately, the document seems to be pretty thin when it comes to demonstrating any new specific innovations or any new legislation that has been forged that will lead to future reforms.

One item that is worth mentioning shows up in the section that defends Arkansas’ charter school cap (charter caps are discouraged by RTTT goals).  Arkansas’ application states that:

As of the date of this submission, no applicant for an Open-enrollment charter has had its application denied due to the existing “cap” of 24. While no applicant State or State agency can guarantee the future adoption of any type of legislation, we anticipate that, as has occurred in the past, when the number of high-performing Open-enrollment charters approaches the current “cap” the question of increasing or eliminating the cap to accommodate additional high-performing Charter will be given serious consideration.

This might be news to State Board members.  As we’ve mentioned before, State Board member Brenda Gullett told the press that the charter cap was was the basis for how selective she is when considering applicants.

I also thought it was entertaining when, in response to a question on the RTTT application that asked specifically for:

“The number of charter schools allowed under State law and the percentage this represents of the total number of schools in the State”

Arkansas’ application answers:

“24 open-enrollment charters (8 percent of the total number of LEAs – 244).”

Of course,  the number of total public schools is more than 4 times the number of LEAs.   The actual correct answer is around 2.2%.

And, since we’re getting technical, 24 is 10 percent of 244, not 8.

Tomorrow (January 19th) is the deadline for phase-1 Race to the Top applications.  As our readers know, the so-called Race to the Top program is a federal program that aims to disperse around $4 billion in education funding to states.  We describe the program here, and we’ve been worried for months about Arkansas’ ability to compete against other states that seem to be more enthusiastic and knowledgeable about education reform.  While some states have been busy tuning-up their engines,  it seems that Arkansas is still fumbling around in the trunk looking for a pair of jumper-cables.

We’ll review Arkansas’ application once it becomes public.  In the meantime, the group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) has been keeping tabs on what other states are doing.  You can check out DFER’s own blog here.  They’re doing a great job of monitoring RTTP activity.  Here’s a sample from their January 18 post:

After months of legislative work around the country, states are scrambling to meet the Jan. 19th deadline for legislative and policy changes as part of the “Race To The Top.” What gets negotiated and signed in the next 12 days will largely determine which states cross the finish line with the kind of gusto it is going to take to win some serious federal dinero for public schools.

California – Lawmakers there yesterday shifted power away from bureaucrats and foot-dragging school boards and placed it in the hands of parents, passing new “Race To The Top” legislation which allows parents from failing schools to yank their kids out and/or vote as parents to take drastic measures at their local zoned schools. Kudos to our friends, Ben Austin, at Parent Revolution, and Sen. Gloria Romero (our September education reformer of the month – http://www.actblue.com/page/dferseptember09) for their inspiring leadership on this one. The Governator will quickly sign the bills into law to make the Jan. 19th RTTT deadline.

Massachusetts — Early this morning, the House passed RTTT legislation that will allow Boston school officials to shutter failing schools and convert them to new charter schools, without having to allow the teachers union to decide which schools could and couldn’t be closed. Boston Mayor Tom Menino told the Boston Globe “this bill was made in Heaven.” (Which probably means we better read the fine print!) The Senate previously passed its version of the RTTT bills and conferencing on the two bills was expected to start today. Legislators were on track to pass the bills into law by Jan. 14^th, so that the state would have ample time to prepare its application by the Jan. 19^th deadline.

New York — Regular DFER readers know we have been frustrated for much of the year by the Empire State’s unwillingness to take the reform competition seriously – particularly at a time when the state’s coffers are beyond bare. But things have been moving quickly in the last month, starting with bold action by the Board of Regents in passing a series of K-12 reform recommendations. The Senate and Assembly are looking at what they can do to allow New York to apply, and earlier today Gov. David Paterson introduced a program bill that would eliminate the cap on charter schools, kill a law that bans using student performance in teacher tenure decisions, and allow the Regents to take control of persistently low-performing schools, among other things. The next week will be very interesting, as New York decides whether it wants to try to take the necessary steps to become a national leader. Stay tuned.

Tennessee — Gov. Phil Bredesen is calling for a special session of the legislature next week in order to change several laws in time for the Jan. 19^th application deadline. “The (the feds) don’t want any promises for the future, they want things in law,” Bredesen told reporters. One change high on Bredesen’s wish-list: a change in state law to allow the use of student achievement in teacher evaluations.

Education Week recently released their annual Quality Counts Report. You can see their nifty graphics here and some more detailed information here. Arkansas received a B- this year (it’s worth mentioning that we received the same grade last year as well). To create a report like this it is necessary to define what quality in education is. It’s obvious from the data items included in this report that, for the Ed Week editors, quality is almost entirely about inputs. While it is true that better ingredients tend to make a better product, good ingredients are not sufficient. You could give a bad cook the highest quality ingredients but the end product would still be inedible.  Further, education research has shown time and again that the inputs we think matter are at best loosely correlated with achievement. So why focus on inputs?… because it is easy. While I think the right inputs are important, I would much rather see that Arkansas’ students are achieving at the highest level regardless of what input mix got us there.

And what does our achievement grade look like? Ed Week gives us a D where it counts!

Stuart Buck wrote a great critique of the Quality Counts Report over at Jay Greene’s blog last year. You can see it here. But for those of you who are lazy here is a little taste.

…imagine a state that managed to produce A-level achievement even though its population was poor and disadvantaged (and thus got a lower grade on the “Chances for Success” measure).  Under any rational grading system, we should give that state the highest possible rating.  But the Quality Counts method would actually downgrade the state for having too many poor children.  By the same token, Quality Counts would upgrade a poor-achieving state that happened to have a privileged and rich student population, even though that state’s education system would obviously be far more incompetent and inefficient.  If anything, the “Chances for Success” ranking should be counted inversely as compared to all the other measures of a state’s education system.

Margaret Raymond from CREDO writes on the Ed Next blog that the variation in the report’s Chance-for-Success Index can almost entirely be explained by state demographic changes rather than changes in education quality. Here is the money quote.

Until the measures that are incorporated into the Quality Counts ratings are more clearly tied to education outcomes, we are likely to see continued shifts in rankings that bear little resemblance to actual changes in education quality.

Margaret and her CREDO team present revised estimates of the index here. Arkansas moves up ten spots, from 45th to 35th, but is still in the bottom third of the ranking.

Anyway you look at it, Arkansas has a lot of work to do to improve the quality of its schools.

As we’ve seen, there’s reason to suspect that Arkansas benchmark tests may have been subject to some shenanigans in recent years — at least the Arkansas Department of Education hasn’t shown otherwise. Now comes a New York Times story that highlights criticisms of Arkansas’ high school algebra exam:

Also among those states using end-of-course exams is Arkansas, where seventh, eighth or ninth graders will this year for the first time be required to pass the end-of-course Algebra I test to qualify for a diploma.

Critics of Arkansas’s system say it fails to show true math proficiency because students have only to score 24 out of 100 to pass the test and those who fail will be granted two additional chances to take the test. After that, they can take a computerized tutorial that is followed by a test.

Tom W. Kimbrell, the commissioner for the Department of Education in Arkansas, rejected that criticism.

“The alternate options are not some escape valve that everyone gets to use,” Dr. Kimbrell said. “They are mechanisms that require the student and teachers to go back and actually learn the material.”

On the other hand, while I’m all in favor of making sure that (say) fifth graders learn all of the basic math skills, I’m a bit more dubious that all high schoolers really need to know algebra (let alone geometry). For example, I’ve never even heard of an actual adult who needed to use the quadratic formula — other than high school math teachers. So maybe it’s no great harm if the high school exit exams are dumbed down.

The so-called Race to the Top is up and running and approaching the home stretch.  We will be covering it in more detail here on Mid-Riffs in the coming days, but here are the preliminary guidelines:

WHAT? The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Race to the Top

HOW MUCH? About $4 Billion (with a B!) total to be awarded in two phases

HOW MUCH for us? The Feds have listed some non-binding guidelines to help states develop budgets — Arkansas should apply for somewhere between $60-$175 million

WHEN? Phase 1 applications due from states on January 19 (next week!); Phase 1 winners will be announced in April.  (Phase 2 apps due in June; winners announced in Spetember)

WHY? In addition to providing an economic stimulus, these funds are intended to encourage state departments of education (and hopefully our ADE) to engage in some out-of-the-box (jargon alert!) thinking and some ambitious reforms.  According to the federal website, the purpose of the Race to the Top (RTTP) is:

Through Race to the Top, we are asking States to advance reforms around four specific areas:

• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.

Awards in Race to the Top will go to States that are leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive education reform. Race to the Top winners will help trail-blaze effective reforms and provide examples for States and local school districts throughout the country to follow as they too are hard at work on reforms that can transform our schools for decades to come.

HOW ABOUT US?

Arkansas Commissioner Tom Kimbrell sent this 19-page memo to Arkansas Superintendents last week to encourage participation in the Arkansas application.  From our quick read, the memo asks the Sup’s to pledge allegiance to the general stated principles of the RTTP (data are good, find effective teachers, etc..) and does not ask for much in the way of specific reforms or plans.

However, we will read more carefully and study this more in the days to come.  We will also look at what some other states are doing to see if we seem to be in a good competitive position.  According to his memo, Commissioner Kimbrell expects fewer than 5 states to be funded in this first phase, so it may take something extraordinary to bring these resources home to the Natural State.  Stay tuned!

While many of us were hibernating or visiting the mall Santas, a familiar story was published in Arkansas Democrat Gazette about the gaps in teacher salaries between higher-paying and lower-paying districts.  In fact, this story was also linked to the website of the nationally influential Education Week.

The story begins with this provocative line:  ”The gap between the haves and the have-nots among Arkansas schoolteachers has widened.”

Then, there are a few salary tables along with the sympathetic comments from legislators, one of whom bemoaned, “It’s very unfair and unfortunate that people can make twice as much as people doing the same thing with the same credentials with the same experience.”

You might ask …. what’s the problem here?  There are a few.  First, there is little if any mention of student learning; presumably, the public should care about teacher salaries because of the potential link to the quality of the schooling delivered to our children.  However, the tone of the article  feels much more like we should worry about this for the sake of our teachers.

Moreover, the article is laden with flawed reporting and erroneous implications.  Allow me to briefly summarize the key points of the story and simultaneously describe the associated problems.

1.  The teacher salary group is defined as the difference between the highest average district salary and the lowest.

This is not a good way to define any such gap — average salary is a function both of the pay scale in a district and the age of the teaching force in that district.  Thus, generous districts with younger teaching forces will have lower average salaries than will lower-paying districts with older faculty.

Moreover, defining the gap simply by the 2 districts at the high and low end of the scale is not very meaningful.  These districts might be extreme outliers. A more thoughtful strategy for assessing the gap might be to focus on the districts in the bottom 10% of average salary to those in the top 10%.  This measure of the gap, at least, would not be wholly defined by 2 individual districts.

2.  The article then presents a table of the average salaries of 20 districts — the 10 highest and 10 lowest — and includes a column for enrollment.  This shows that all of the high-average salary districts are large and all of the low-average salary districts are small.  The article then puts forth the idea that this is because of higher funding in the larger districts and the choice (and ability) of some larger districts to levy additional local property taxes.

Indeed, it is not necessarily fair to conclude that our state policies unfairly disadvantage small districts, as this article seems to imply.  In fact, the article does not focus on the actual data which show that smaller districts receive additional state support to the extent that, on average, small districts spend more per pupil than do large districts in Arkansas.  This deserves repeating — small districts actually have more dollars per pupil than do large districts.  For example, in the DemGaz article, the average per-pupil expenditures for the 10 high-average salary large districts was about $8,200, as compared to $8,500 for the lower-salary smaller districts!

So, if we need to remedy the differential salary levels, we should at least proceed with evidence in hand.  We can’t fix this by simply ensuring that the poor small low-average salary districts get as much funding as the bigger districts do — they already get more!

3.  Finally, while the article relays that this is a difficult issue without an obvious answer (true!), it perpetuates the concern that teachers are not fairly compensated and that we should base fairness on equal pay for equal experience and credentials.

This is so 20th Century!  These days, we realize that all teachers, even similarly experienced and credentialed ones, are NOT doing the exact same jobs.  Fairness does not mandate that they all be paid equally.  In fact, this type of a pay plan is “unfair” to the hardest-working and most effective teachers, right?  If we really care about students in rural and poor areas, we should figure out who the best teachers are and pay THEM a lot more to live and work in these areas.

Furthermore, these analyses, which simply compare the nominal pay of one district to another, ignore one very important fact — costs of living differ widely among districts within the state.  It may cost more to live in Rogers than in Caddo Hills … any true analyses of a salary gap must pay attention to this.

***   ***   ***   ***

So, here is what makes me cranky about these cursory “analyses” focusing on our “paltry” teacher pay.  They perpetuate the common belief that teacher pay in Arkansas is our primary problem and that the equity we should focus on is equal pay for all teachers.  Shouldn’t the focus be on equal opportunities for all students?   Indeed, it may well be the case that, to be “fair” to our students, policymakers are going to need to create intentional inequities in teacher pay (for example, for more effective teachers, for teachers of math or special ed, or for teachers in hard-to-staff geographic areas) so that our students are served by the best possible teachers in all areas.

Our friend Michael McShane had a recent op-ed in the Kansas City Star that dishes out some tough McLovin to the Kansas City School District for fudging their dropout rates in order to make them look better.

KC School District’s dropout rate doesn’t add up

As a parent, I’ve never been a huge Santa fan.  I do a lot of research and make a lot of  exhausting trips to the stores during Christmas to track down the items that will make my children happy come Christmas morning, and it’s always annoyed me that the guy in the red suit gets all the credit.

But the whole Santa enterprise got a lot more annoying this year.  During a trip to the Northwest Arkansas Mall, I discovered that parents are no longer allowed to take their own pictures of their kids sitting on Santa’s lap.

Obviously the mall and the guy in the red suit deserve to be compensated.  But, in the past, that compensation has always been indirect: The mall provides a Santa, I visit the mall as a result, and I inevitably spend some money while I am there.  I thought that was the deal.  And, if I want to snap a picture with my own little point-and-shoot camera that fits into my pocket, so what?  The lunch I bought my whole family at the food court should cover the 30 seconds my son spent with Santa.

Given how long this Christmas-time transaction has been implicit at malls, I was mildly annoyed (though not as annoyed as most of the parents I encountered) when I found that the Northwest Arkansas Mall was prohibiting parents from taking their own photos of their children with Santa.

I might have easily dismissed this act as yet another sign of the struggling economy and respected the tough decision the mall managers had to make.  That is, if myself and every other shopper hadn’t been insulted in the process.  Here is the sign the Santa Plus company had posted at the Santa Line:

Now, I would have had no problem with a straightforward sign that spelled out the policy.  Heck, I would have admired a brutally honest sign that said something like “your kids have snot noses and we’re trying to make a living here, so no personal cameras are allowed, Bub.”  But to cite safety?! If you’ve ever doubted how stupid some retailers think we are, you should make a mental note to never doubt again.  That is, unless you think a bit of Allspark might be loose in your local mall and could turn your camera into a killing machine.

And, in case you’re wondering how much they were charging for photos:  The cheapest item a parent could buy was a single 5×7 for $14.99, and the prices went up from there.  At these prices, you’d be better off buying your own Santa suit.

This is probably the last year Santa will be a part of my Christmas, simply because my kids are getting too old.  But I expect annoying policies like this one will cause a lot of other parents to reconsider whether or not this whole Santa business is even worth it.  I also think that retailers at the mall will eventually suffer as a result.

I would advise other parents to do what I did this year.  If the people who wrote that sign truly think that people are that stupid, then oblige them and play along.  I acted like I couldn’t even read when I pulled out my own camera and took my own picture of my son sitting on Santa’s lap.

We don’t actually have technical difficulties, but we’ll be taking a break from the interweb to enjoy the holidays.  You should quit wasting your time reading silly blogs and do the same! In the meantime, here’s a fun holiday video.