Student achievement and student well-being took priority at this week’s Little Rock School Board meeting, as the district grapples with how to raise its ratings and help students struggling in a post-pandemic wave of emotional and mental health challenges.

Tending to students’ emotional health

If you are paying attention to schools in Little Rock and all around the country you know that kids are suffering from higher-than-normal rates of stress. This has serious health effects and we are seeing an increase in suicide, obesity, eating disorders, drug abuse, bullying, violence, depression and anxiety among our students. While our conservative legislators and incoming Republican governor would deny this has any effect on student outcomes, those of us who trust science and understand how education works know these emotional problems are a real roadblock to student learning. Beginning under Mike Poore and continuing under Wright, our administration is showing concern and compassion for the whole child. We do not have the luxury of teaching only well-fed, well-dressed students with solid family support. We teach everyone. That means our schools require more work and cost more to run.

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In keeping with this compassionate concern for the whole child, the administration recommended that the board approve a partnership agreement between the Health Information Project (HIP) and the district. There is no fee for this partnership, but LRSD will incur miscellaneous costs such as a stipend to the faculty sponsor and costs associated with student training.

The HIP program, developed in 2009, is the only peer-to-peer comprehensive health education program for high school students in the country. HIP trains 11th and 12th-grade students as peer educators. They then deliver the program to all 9th-grade students at their own schools during the school day. This program uses a peer-to-peer model to have health conversations that are science-based and rooted in practical discussions. This strategy empowers students to take responsibility for one another. This program provides a mental health curriculum that is updated in real-time on their website. Since 2009, HIP has trained more than 17,500 11th and 12th-grade peer educators who have taught more than 370,000 of their 9th-grade peers. The program has a 100% retention rate at all of its schools. This means they have never been asked to leave a school in the 13 years it has existed. The program, reportedly a success in the Miami-Dade school district, is donor-funded. Board members unanimously voted to start the HIP program in our schools.

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A strategy to boost disappointing grades

Superintendent Jermall Wright shared his vision for transforming our district in the face of low scores after years of state takeover followed by pandemic-related learning loss. While most education experts recognize end-of-year testing is irrelevant and does not tell us a lot about kids, they are a reality and will be until we change the state government. Regardless of test results, it’s true we do have an education crisis in our state and city.

We hired Wright because he has a proven record of turning districts around. While the grade reports that came out last week are heartbreaking, the reality is none of us who know how education works were surprised. The solution Wright is beginning to craft seems to hit all the key factors why kids are not doing well: issues of poverty, leadership culture and classroom issues.

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There is a complicated formula that the state uses to grade schools. We have known that our schools were in trouble for decades. We have known that there were a complicated set of factors that played into the lack of progress in academic achievement. These factors include a correlation between poverty and low scores, school cultures that are toxic and not student-focused, leadership culture that is not focused on all kids, curriculum issues, too many programs with no assessment or focus on evidence-based student achievement, teaching methods, and social and emotional factors. There is not one reason why our students are failing and anyone who tells you there is one simple answer is either a liar or has no clue what education should look like.

In 2019, at the end of the state takeover, our elementary schools were not all doing well. We had the normal high-ranking A schools that included Roberts, Forest Park, Gibbs and Jefferson. All of these schools had fewer low-income students and larger pockets of white middle-class students. Fulbright, Pulaski Heights and Williams were all B schools. Carver, Otter Creek, Terry and Wakefield were all C schools. Our D schools included Bale, Booker, Brady, Chicot, King, Western Hills, Mabelvale, McDermont and Stephens. Our F schools included Baseline, Meadowcliff, Washington and Watson.

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At our secondary schools in 2019, Forest Heights and Pinnacle View were our A schools. Mann and Pulaski Heights were our C schools. Coverdale, Dunbar and Mabelvale Middle were our D schools. Central and Parkview were our C schools.

And then the COVID pandemic hit. According to research, on average, students are five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading. Students in the majority Black schools ended 2021 with six months of unfinished learning. It was seven months for low-income kids. Race and class matter in the education field. Do not forget this.

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So, when the state started testing again, we might have expected these heartbreaking scores. In our elementary schools, only three earned A grades: Roberts, Forest Park and Jefferson. We have two B schools – Gibbs and Pulaski Heights. There were only two C schools – Fulbright and Williams – and only two D schools, Chicot and Wakefield. We went from four to 15 F schools – Baseline, Terry, Meadowcliff, Washington, Watson, Bale, Booker, Brady, Carver, King, Western Hills, Mabelvale, McDermont, Stephen and Otter Creek.

At the secondary level, we find the same story. Only Forest Heights was a B school. Pinnacle View and Pulaski Heights were C schools. Mann was our D school. And Cloverdale, Dunbar, JA Fai and Mabelvale all were F schools. Central and Parkview were C schools. Hall and West School of Innovation were D schools and Southwest was an F school.

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There is a clear correlation between achievement on the school grade formula and poverty. The data shows that if you are an A or B school you only have between 15 and 39% poverty rates. If you were a C school you have between 40 and 56 percent poverty rate. D schools have between 42 and 98% poverty rates. And F schools have between 83 and 97% poverty rates. Class matters. Race matters. The schools that succeed tend to have higher concentrations of white middle-class children pulling up their grades. If we look at composite data by race and grade, we see that white children are doing far better than any other subgroup.

Now, this is complicated. Clearly class and race matter, but they ARE NOT determinative. Poor children can learn. Black and Latino kids can learn. How are we addressing the complicated needs of children coming to our schools? We have kids who are hungry. We have kids who slept in houses last night with no power. We have kids who are abused. We have kids who suffer greatly from depression and anxiety. Private schools and charter schools can reject kids like these who are expensive and challenging to educate. The Little Rock School District cannot and should not. We love all kids and want them to have better futures.

With this in mind, we are seeing some academic growth in high-poverty schools. This shows that we can make changes to help more kids. Wakefield showed 98% growth over the 2019 scores. Fulbright showed 4% growth. Gibbs showed 52% growth. Otter Creek showed 84% growth. Williams showed 51% growth. Forest Heights showed 48% growth. West High School of Innovation showed 42% growth. And Hall High School showed 84% growth. As you can see, poverty is a correlation, not a cause. Poverty does not determine that a kid is damned to being uneducated. If poverty is a correlation and if we have higher rates of poverty than private and charter schools, and if we have shown growth in some of our low-income schools, then that means we can make changes to address the issues that arise from poverty, we can adopt new educational programs and teaching styles and we can transform these kids’ lives. This is what a bunch of us were screaming about in 2014. But the state and the Chamber of Commerce were not interested in what a bunch of Black people and a few white allies had to say about the matter and they stole our schools from us.

When the state took over our schools, they took the district over for one and only one reason, because 6 of our schools were failing. Since then, the state, the Chamber and the conservative anti-public-school lobbyists tried to rewrite history and claim it was for financial and organizational reasons. The state came in in 2015 and made massive changes to our financial system and the organization of the downtown offices, they closed a bunch of schools and forced the district to use state software for reporting grades. They had no urgency about teaching and learning. The state failed Little Rock kids. They brought in charter schools that are failing the same kids we are. The Chamber got their fancy new job training program, but poor kids, Black and Latino kids, were forsaken by the Republicans who controlled the Department of Education and the statehouse. It’s always 1957 in Little Rock.

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If we look at the data for 2017-2019 when the state controlled our schools, we went from 2 F elementary schools to 4. Currently, we have 15. In our middle schools, we saw an increase in D and F schools during the state takeover. And in our high schools, we floundered with C schools. The bottom line is that the state failed.

How do we explain the high rate of D and F schools in 2022? The six years of no action by the state have hurt many kids. The high rates of poverty and the failure to address the emotional and material issues that arise from that have hurt kids. The failure of leadership and creativity by school district administration has trapped kids in inadequate schools. The failure of principals to do proper evaluations has hurt kids. Failed curricula and failed programs continue to hurt kids. In the end, there are many reasons.

We hired Wright to help, and he has not disappointed with his plan to address the educational crisis that is plaguing the majority of our kids.

He is reimagining our schools with a three-tiered system of support. Still in the works and ripe for your input, this plan came together after Wright asked principals what they need to succeed and to attract highly qualified staff. We will have a report with those answers by the end of January. He was clear that the district is looking very hard at the downtown office staff and that big changes will be coming to the downtown offices. This is great news.

Tier 3 will be our priority schools. Tier 2 will be our watch schools. And Tier 1 will be autonomous.

Tier 3 schools are D or F schools with high unmet social and emotional learning needs. Don’t forget this is one of the factors that we must address to see success. School leadership will get training and support, and all of these schools will install assistant principals, regardless of the number of students. There will also be full support for kids in poverty who need food, health care and emotional support. There will be teacher leaders and model classrooms. Teacher leaders can earn stipends for their expertise. Teacher assistants will help in the classrooms. Teachers who come and stay a minimum of three years, or who help their students achieve growth goals, will earn incentives. Each school will have a math and literacy facilitator.

At our Tier 2 and Tier 1 schools, teacher assistants will be in rooms where they’re needed. Teachers and teacher assistants will receive incentive pay for the educational growth of their students. This is so key. We don’t just need to think about school grades, we have to focus on individual kids.

This plan, if properly implemented, will succeed. But we have people in the administration who have been part of the problem for years. They have proven they cannot turn schools around. Most of them will need to be replaced. We also have a number of principals who have moved from school to school and spread their incompetence. It is time for them to go. Some will challenge the idea of incentives for our educators. I want to see the details on this, but I do not reject it out of hand. We must turn these schools around to save our district so we can continue to serve these kids. They are worth us collectively working together by any means necessary. In the end, we will help these kids as a community or the Republican super-majority will give them vouchers. We know vouchers don’t work. Let’s help these kids now. This is a good plan and Wright needs our support.

Testing the tutors

Wright plans to bring tutoring companies to some of our D and F schools to see if they can help. Last month the board agreed to invest in a program called GoSchoolBox. This is a tool that allows the district to input a series of objectives and standards and then the GoSchoolbox program will pull the relevant data we want to evaluate and give leaders a way to measure if tutoring programs are helping kids. The district wants to implement five tutoring programs that will be available to students 24/7 beginning in spring of 2023.

We will also have data in which we can determine if the programs work and if not get rid of or tweak them. Once we get to the end of the spring of 2023, we will know what programs are helping and which are not. The tutoring programs will cost $1,627,732.32, the price covered with remaining ESSER funds. The board unanimously approved this plan to track results of the tutoring programs.

The student registration nightmare will end

The district  is finally rolling out a new student registration system. As most of you know, the old system was a nightmare. The new platform, School Mint, offers a two-step process for for K-12 parents. The initial registration process should only take the average citizen 10 to 15 minutes. Other information will be captured as a part of the check-in process at the assigned schools.

Budget looks OK

Kelsey Bailey, the district chief financial officer, said tax revenue appears to be on track with the district’s budgeting projections. Bailey also reported that property assessment will go up around 4.45% for 2022, providing us more money to help kids and pay our staff a livable wage.

A small (but creeping) policy concern

The final issue was a change in board policy to allow the board president to assign board members as representatives on committees and or task forces. This is a problematic idea since no board member can speak for the whole without a vote of the board. The board president has no policy right to dictate who can speak for the board.

It also violates the spirit of the independent school zones, created to give separate areas of our city an equal voice. This establishes the board president’s zone as the head zone. For the board to be equal the board president should be no more than the board meeting manager. All other decisions should be made by vote. Vicki Hatter spoke against allowing the board president to appoint board members as representatives on committees or task forces. She was concerned the board is giving up too many rights to one board member. This was not a concern about current board President Greg Adams, but about anyone who might hold the president’s seat.

Democracy is an abstract process, not something many are willing to fight for. This is not a big issue, but slowly but surely, we chip away at democratic governance in the Little Rock School District. This passed 7-2. Hatter then asked what the procedure would be for selecting committee members. Adams said there was not one. That means the decisions will be arbitrary.

This was a frustrating ending to a good meeting. Good things are happening in the Little Rock School District. Even though the majority of our board is lost on policy (for the most part), the district is focused on kids and making sure we have the right people and resources in place. Big changes are coming.

 

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