Education Committee Senate & House
Video
Transcript
7 documents
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin RTX5060
- Processing date
- October 8, 2026
Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Speaker 1
5:30
We are going to try to get started. we have a long day. Ted, I'd just like to make you
move back to your seat every morning.
good good morning I'd like to call this meeting
to order madam chair you have anything you'd like to okay we're good on that all right I will
make a couple of statements this morning we have a lot of non-members in the room with us and I just will announce that non-members will not be offered a question we will not recognize you for questions you're welcome to be participate by listening
and but due to time sake non members will not be on the list to be to ask questions and that's pretty normal for a lot of our meetings during adequacy time so that's what we're going to do today also but we are glad you're here to participate and to listen and learn so we're going to move on and everybody
ready at this time we're going to hear oral presentation by Schulz and
associates regarding a RFP for education adequacy dr. James and I may say this wrong? Is it Schultz? Schultz? Close enough. Schultz? Schultz? Schultz. Well, I didn't see a T in there, so I probably said it, though, didn't I? I'm sorry. And then Dr. McGee. So Dr. Schultz, Dr. McGee, you are welcome to take the chair,
and if you would just introduce yourself and who you're with when you are ready to present, and you are recognized.
Speaker 15
9:09
Good morning members of the committee, thank you so much for this opportunity to present today. I'm James Shulls, the managing member of Shulls and Associates, along with my colleague Josh McGee from the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas. So this morning, we want to discuss our team and our experience in regards to this proposal,
provide an overview of our analysis plan, and answer any questions that you may have. Our goal here really today is to share with you that we are excited about the possibility of working with you and serving the state of Arkansas, and we hope that comes across today as we present to you. So first, let me talk about who we are. So as you may know, the LLC was recently formed, and I formed this LLC to bid on education-related projects. This, of course, being the first government project that I'm bidding on.
But the goal is to assemble the best team possible to bid on each project. And I think that we've really done that here. I've assembled a bipartisan team with tons of research experience related directly to school finance. And as you can see, members of our team have served as expert witnesses or as consultants on school finance adequacy cases in nine states. We've published over 80 peer-reviewed publications in some of the top journals in education policy, in school finance, in public policy, economics.
So this is a team with really a lot of research experience that we've brought together specifically because of their expertise and their ability to work towards satisfying the RFP and the requests in this project. So I want to talk first about myself and give you a little bit more about who I am. So I first was a teacher. My bachelor's and my master's degree are in elementary education. I was a first grade teacher in southwest Missouri. and you guys are already much more well-behaved than my first-grade students were.
So I was a first-grade teacher, and then I went on to get my Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas in education policy. And from there, I moved to the University of Missouri-St. Louis. And at the university, I serve in a variety of capacities. So I'm an assistant professor in educational leadership and policy studies. I'm also, I just recently received an appointment as an assistant professor in public policy administration. I serve as the Associate Department Chair for the Department of Educator Preparation and Leadership.
That's our entire department that works with pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, training future teachers, and school leaders. I'm the Program Director for Education Leadership. I've been doing that for a number of years now. And I teach courses related to school finance, education policy, program evaluation. And most of my students tend to be aspiring administrators. So there are oftentimes people who are principals who are wanting to step into school leadership roles or district-level leadership roles.
And I do a lot of work related to school finance and especially pensions. And I put in here that in 2017, my work related to the equity aspects of teacher pensions won me the 2007 Junior Investigator of the Year Award. There's no Sherlock Holmes hat or magnifying glass that comes with that. That was a research award for junior faculty members in their first six years. So directly related to this RFP, I have plenty of experience.
So first, I was an expert witness in the Martinez-Yazi et al. case in New Mexico. I was hired by the state's attorneys to analyze the adequacy study that had been conducted by American Institutes for Research, AIR. they conducted a professional judgment study and the state hired me to analyze the study and explain the flaws in the design of that study and and as the the
the judge said in the ruling she said that it seems like a collection of wish lists and and that was the the big takeaway from my analysis in that case So, have that experience working directly on a school finance related case. I also have written a ton related to education policy, school finance, and pension. So, I've written a primer on Missouri's funding formula, explaining to people how our state funds the education system,
which has been, I've found to be really well received by legislators wanting to know more about how we fund schools in the state I've evaluated fiscal impacts related to school choice analyzed impacts to Missouri's the changing Missouri's foundation formula for public education these are just a few of the things that I've done directly related to the items in this RFP so I'll turn it over to my colleague Josh now to talk more about the office for education policy and the
Speaker 21
14:35
folks there so I'm Josh McGee I'm with the office for education policy really appreciate the opportunity to present to you all today we're excited to be here excited to have the opportunity to potentially do this work so the office for education policy is an applied research center at the University of Arkansas was founded in the early 2000s so it's been around for for 15 years plus it's focused on education policy so we don't work nationally we work on education policy in Arkansas and our mission is to help education leaders in
in the state connect research evidence with policy, with practice. We've been doing that for a very long time. The founding director, Gary Ritter, just recently left to go to Missouri. Sarah McKenzie, who we're gonna talk about here in a second, is the executive director and I'm the associate director. We're funded by a number of sources. We're not what's called hard funded by the state. We don't get general revenue to support our operations. We have to raise funds to be sustainable and we raise those funds from a variety of sources.
We raise them from local and national philanthropy. We have contracts with school districts like Pea Ridge, Bentonville, Helena West Helena. We've also had contracts directly with the state, with the Department of Education, with the Attorney General's office. And then I've included a link to our website there if any of you all want to dig a little bit deeper. So a little bit about myself. I'm going to serve as the chief economist for this project. I have a PhD in economics from the University of Arkansas. Before that, I was an industrial engineer.
I have deep experience in finance issues generally. I just came off an eight-year stint at a national foundation where I led their public finance portfolio. I also have specific experience on school finance. I sit on the board of a non-profit, national nonprofit called EdBuild which is focused on school financing inequities created by school boarders I've also got extensive experience writing about school finance and advising state governments while in Texas I also chaired was
appointed to chair the pension review board there which of course is a big public finance issue and a finance issue inside the state of Texas so moving on to Sarah McKenzie she is a project advisor and the executive director of OEP she's got her PhD in educational statistics and research methods from the University of Arkansas and she's also got an MA in early childhood education from Mills College she's an experienced teacher she's taught basically all levels from preschool through post-secondary and she's got over 15
years of experience working in Arkansas helping education leaders in the state use data and evidence to inform policy and she's done this across multiple organizations norms Fayetteville Public Schools where she was I think correctly termed the data czar and OEP she's also a governing board member for the Southwest Regional Education Laboratory the REL for the Southwest Region so she's got a lot of experience working with states on on education policy Bob
Castrell is the last member of the University of Arkansas team he is going to be a product serve as a project advisor he's got a PhD in economics he's probably got the deepest experience of any of us working specifically on court cases related to education funding he has worked in several states Tennessee New York Connecticut Washington Montana New Hampshire Missouri and Massachusetts he served for a very long time inside the state government of of Massachusetts under three governors,
but probably longest under Governor Mitt Romney. James is gonna get to a couple of our consultants here in a little bit. I just wanted to give you a thumbnail of EdBuild. I said they work on education equity. They've been one of the brightest voices on education funding and inequities in education funding over the last year. I encourage you to look up EdBuild. We have a couple of people that are independent consultants for us. We are not contracting with EdBuild in particular, but they work for EdBuild and we're contracting with them independently.
Speaker 15
18:54
independent consultants, first is Sean Sims. Sean Sims is an experienced project manager working for a Fortune 20 company, 10 years of project management experience, and he's managed ginormous projects, over $250 million in projects. In 2018, he was St. Louis's Project Management Institute, Project Leader of the Year. And so he really brings a lot of expertise in project management.
And with an RFP of this size, I thought it was important to bring someone on with that skill set to really help keep us on the timeline, especially with the timeline that we have, trying to get everything done within a year so that you guys can do the work that you need to do. He'll really bring his skill set to bear in that case. Michael Ford comes to us from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. He'll really be leading Project 12, which is our analysis of waivers. If you, to
Speaker 29
19:49
foreshadow into what we're about to talk about,
we really broke the project up, the RFP up into 14 projects. He's going to lead one analysis of that, has a lot of public administration experience, teaches courses in public administration, many peer review publications. And so he really has a lot of expertise in this
Speaker 15
20:08
area. And when I look for someone to do an analysis of waivers, he's the first person that came to mind. Next is Sarah Hodges. As Josh mentioned, she comes to us from EdBuild. She is the Director of Data and Visualizations at EdBuild.
And as Josh said, they are really leading the charge in terms of looking at school finance equity. And her job is really to make the visualizations pop, right, to make the maps tell the story. and that's what
Speaker 29
20:35
we're bringing her in on this project to do there are lots of cases in which we want to be able to display the data to you so that you can see where programs are where the funding differences are it's she'll really bring those skill
Speaker 15
20:50
sets to this project to help make the data come off the page and not
just be numbers but be able to visually present it to you she has tons of experience doing this as you can see from some of her affiliations here the The other fellow from EdBuild is Matt Richman, who's the chief program officer at EdBuild. He will serve in a research support role, providing a lot of background work for the OEP team and for myself as we conduct the analyses. He's authored a few reports for EdBuild, such as the hidden half school employees who don't teach
and financing education of high-need students. A lot of experience, both of these individuals, specifically related to school finance. So now I wanna shift to talking about our analysis plan. And in the presentation, I really give a
Speaker 29
21:42
high level overview of the analysis plan. And at the end of the appendices, I go into a little more depth and you also have the proposal in front of you. I didn't wanna walk through point by point
each of the things, because that could take up all of our time. And we really wanted to
Speaker 15
22:02
make sure We had plenty of time for question, answer, and discussion. And so I'll give the overview of it, but if you want to dig into any of the specific projects, have any questions about any of the analysis, feel free to jump in and ask those questions. So the first thing I did when I was reviewing the RFP, I was
Speaker 29
22:19
actually looking at the old RFP first and then shifted to the new one once it was released, is I met with Sean Sims, again the project manager, and said, what does this look like?
How do we break this down into a really manageable work project that we can do within a year? And that meant we went through the RFP looking at each of the items requested and lumped them together into similar requests. So if you had two items on a similar topic, we put them together into a project and we outlined 14 projects in the RFP that we thought were 14 sort of coherent projects. But there are oftentimes overlap between these things. And so as you'll see in our proposal, we sometimes say, you know, this project is going to be informed by previous work.
Speaker 15
23:05
So some of these things do build on one another, but we really broke this out so that we could have a manageable project that we could get finished again within the timeline that
Speaker 29
23:16
you guys are requesting. On page five and seven of the proposal, we match each of our projects to the items in the RFP. I just want to highlight that to make sure you see that we are touching on and plan to meet every item in the RFP. So there's nothing that's missing. Everything should be covered in our analysis plan. And on page
Speaker 15
23:37
8, we identify in a chart all the different research strategies, sort of summaries of the things that we'll do for each of those projects.
And these are those items. So you'll see on each of them, like Project 1 has this and this and this. These are the types of analyses that we're planning to conduct for you. So literature reviews, combing through systematically the research that is out there and what it says related to the issue at hand. We've got a number of different literature reviews listed in the study. Quantitative analysis. This
Speaker 29
24:09
can be a large group that encapsulates a lot of different types of studies, but some of this is descriptive work, comparing spending in different districts
or comparing Arkansas to our neighboring states or SREB states or, you know, giving lots of different comparisons for you to look at and see how Arkansas stacks up internally and externally with other people. It also includes value-added analysis, looking at growth in
Speaker 15
24:34
student achievement and how that varies among school districts. So we've got lots of different types of analyses in there. We'll be conducting interviews, specifically with individuals in school districts that are doing a really good job of serving at-risk or high-need students,
conducting focus groups with individuals, school leaders, and teachers throughout the state in the different regions, using that early on in our project as one of
Speaker 29
24:59
our first projects that we're planning to conduct to then inform a
Speaker 15
25:05
lot of the work that we do. We'll conduct surveys, multiple surveys, of different levels of staff members, again, getting input on various different pieces of the work. Review of agency records, sometimes that term can be confusing, but that means looking at government documents, right, like in the analysis of waivers, it would be looking at state statutes, looking at the documents from the ADE, those types of things.
And then geospatial mapping and data visualization, again, this is where Sarah Hodge's experience comes in, where she'll be taking the data and helping to display it in a visual manner for us. So these are all the different types of things we'll be doing and as I said you have that chart that shows Which type of thing will be done on each of them and as I said We have that in more detail at the end in the appendices, which we're happy to talk more about So we've laid out this timeline in our Gantt chart explaining how we would
Get the work done and I I apologize that right the order of it is not one two three four five So, we first went through and created our projects, and then we said, okay, what's the timeline of each of these projects? And we put them in order, and so the numbers don't go in order there. But, you know, we start out with some important studies that can either be done quickly and be put out of the way, such as the review of the fiscal impacts of school choice, get that done, get it out of the way,
and then move on to the next project, the review of adequacy cost studies, which that then informs a lot of the other work. The convening of educators, that's our focus groups, which informs a lot of the other work. And then the plan is just to work through each of these projects and giving these to you as deliverables along the way with ultimately that culminating project being the funding formula analysis and recommendations. Josh, anything you'd like to add to any of these?
Speaker 21
27:01
no just to note that we've got on here the gantt chart running out until november
we based that on the the timeline and the rfp understanding that you all might want to have the report before you have to make some decisions so we can finish it on a faster timeline we would just
Speaker 31
27:22
our goal is really to serve the state of arkansas and to serve this committee i mean we believe that
Speaker 15
27:28
school funding matters and that good funding formula really can the design can help better meet the needs of all students within the state and so we really feel like we put together a dream team of
very experienced people like I said a bipartisan team with a ton of experience directly related to school finance and we're excited about the possibility of working together and working with this committee to make sure that every student the state gets the resources they need to succeed so with that I'll open it up to
you all for questions all right we're going to start with questions and I will ask again due to time please try not to belabor your
questions and make them long and try to make them short I guess try not to but anyway we're going to limit you to two for sure you'll you'll have one in a follow-up and then we'll see how we go we just we just have certain time restraints today so
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
28:33
sir Chesterfield you're recognized thank you mr. chairman and good morning why did you decide to create yourselves into this body in 2019 yeah
Speaker 15
28:44
so I do a lot of policy consulting work as an individual I've done that for
many years now, and I've followed this issue for some time, and especially after I saw
Speaker 29
28:54
the initial RFP proposal was not accepted, and that the committee planned to
Speaker 15
29:00
put it out again, I saw that in the newspaper and public documents, realized that this is something I was
Speaker 29
29:08
interested in pursuing, and so formed the LLC with the intention of bidding on this proposal. So the reason that the LLC was formed is because it needed the tax identification.
Speaker 15
29:22
And I knew this wasn't a project that I couldn't take on myself. I needed to
Speaker 29
29:27
be able to bring in other people and subcontract with other people. And so that's why the LLC was formed. And then
Speaker 15
29:35
Josh was one of the first people that I reached out to because of his deep experience, him and Bob Castrell. And that's
Speaker 41
29:42
why this team was put together. Have you ever worked for
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
29:46
a Department of Education to conduct a statewide study of education? No. Thank
you. Those are my two right now.
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
29:53
Senator Elliott, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair, right here, and good morning. I would like you to help me with a
conclusion that you made about the Kerwin study in Maryland to see so I can understand how this fits you say in your analysis of the current report on page 7 where they're talking about improving the teacher core the
recommendations here are contradictory the Commission calls for both higher quality as measured by test scores and similar metrics and more diversity there's one problem with this goal and that there is a substantial achievement gap between white and underrepresented minorities in the United States so basically I'm assuming from that that in this case you don't see how they have they can have both diversity and quality I'm assuming based on the metrics they
have so would you clarify that
for me because we're going to be talking about what it means to have great teachers, I think,
Speaker 15
31:05
in adequacy. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. What I'm really saying there is it's not wise to use a blunt instrument to try to increase quality. So I had a study published in Educational Policy using Arkansas data, and I looked at individual teachers, their scores in the licensure exam, and their performance in
Speaker 29
31:24
the classroom, their value-added student achievement. And what I show in that study is that, on average, black individuals and Hispanic individuals tend to score lower on licensure exams.
And so many states have decided to just increase the cut score on those tests to make it more difficult to become a teacher. And when you do something that's just, like I said, a blunt instrument that says, we're just going to raise the bar, oftentimes you inadvertently remove more disadvantaged populations or more people of color from participating as being a teacher. And so I think it is inappropriate to use that to try to increase the quality of the field by doing something like that.
And the other thing is, as I say in the report, in the educational policy paper, is that it also starts to disadvantage certain regions of the state. And so you think about in a state like Arkansas, the places that would be more impacted by that type of policy would be southeast Arkansas and places that already have difficulty finding teachers. And so policies that make it harder to become a teacher, just themselves, end up making it harder for people of color to become teachers and increase teacher shortages.
And so that's really the point that I was trying to make. And I don't have
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
32:47
the paper in front of me, but that's the ultimate point. That's responsive, as I think it should be. because my follow-up question to that has to do with as we are exploring and one of the things that we have issues with time and time again is making sure we have high quality teachers but I often feel we make a mistake in trying to define what a high quality teacher by saying oh look this person made the best test score right and that has impeded a lot of advancement
because we do have this blunt instrument rather
than especially professional judgment and I'm glad to see that that's going to be part of what you're doing. Also, in the current report from Maryland, you were analyzing, from what I know about they were doing, how their standards might stack up to international benchmarks, not just the surrounding states, not just
the region. Will you, according to what you assume you're supposed to do from Arkansas,
are you going to look at adequacy just in terms of what the court said in black and white or are you going to try to give us some notion of that adequacy is not just
about in the state, just not about in the region, and it's certainly not just about the United States. Does that go beyond
what you think you're supposed to do with this or is it in keeping? Well,
Speaker 15
34:15
I believe that there was a specific definition in the RFP on what adequacy was.
I think we would certainly be willing to work with the committee if there were other issues to look at. So, you know, if that's what we want to speak to what the RFP says, and so we will absolutely use that. But we will also be doing, like I said, cross-state comparisons, all those sorts of things. So I would say we're
Speaker 69
34:39
very much flexible to work on this more. Josh, would you like to
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
34:43
say more about that? Well, before you do, let me say this. I know some people are. I am not horribly interested. What led me to this question is, it's okay if I know what Missouri or Louisiana is in, but that's not a high mark.
So I'm not knocking at those states. I just think the United States in general, except for Massachusetts, is not a high mark. Pick a state. So I'm not picking on one. That's why I said, since you're going to take the initiative to give us information about how
we compare to those, will you go any further to give us something for which to reach? That's what prompted that question. Mr. Chair, I'll get out of the order now and get back in because I do have some more questions, but I'll listen to this response. Thank you.
Speaker 21
35:25
I appreciate that question. And we have deep experience working on international comparisons. I've published a few papers comparing state-level performance to international benchmarks. And as James said, we're excited to work with the committee and take this work wherever you all want to go and be responsive to your requests. Representative Speaks, you're recognized.
Representative Nelda Speaks
Unverified
35:57
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to build on something she's talking about. My concern is, will you point out to us where we're weak, but tell us the weakness that we have in the schools and where we can build on? I'd love to see Arkansas be one of the top-ranking states in the United States. And I agree, even all over the world. So my question is not just saying, well, you're here or there,
but will you tell us exactly where we can start working toward that? I think hopefully we'll be able to provide
Speaker 15
36:39
you with really useful and actionable research to really guide the work that you're doing. I mean, that is the goal and the purpose. I mean, part of the work that we're doing is descriptive, describing where Arkansas stands, where districts stand compared to one another. but as you're saying that's not what you're really interested in we
Speaker 29
36:56
want to be able to use information to inform policy to move the state forward and so
I would say yes I mean part of what we hope to do especially from the literature reviews and talking with educators and all of those sorts of things is provide useful feedback to you all to be able to inform policy to make decisions
Speaker 21
37:16
and I'll just add to that from the OEP's perspective we live and work in this state we're taxpayers in this state my daughter attends public schools in this state my wife works in a public school in this state so we have a deep vested interest in helping Arkansas become not just a national leader but a
international leader and we want to create a customized report for you all
Speaker 93
37:37
that helps us get there thank you Representative Deppenvall. Thank
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
37:53
you, Mr. Speaker. I think it's a pretty simple question. Dr. McGee, you mentioned that basically you just work in Arkansas. Is that true? That's what you said earlier?
Speaker 21
38:04
Yes. The mission of the Office for Education Policy is to work on education policy in
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
38:09
the state of Arkansas. Yes. Okay. Okay, so you mentioned EdBuilt, and that's, is that a national, that's a national program, isn't it?
Speaker 21
38:16
That's a national organization. So I am Associate Director of Office for Education Policy, and then, of course, I do other work as
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
38:23
well. Okay, so how much stock or how much do you glean out of their information to
Speaker 21
38:29
help Arkansas? Well, quite a bit. So they're very focused on equity issues and how school borders affect equity.
So, in particular, how school districts can keep their local tax dollars hyper-local and how that might lead to inequities. They did a national report here recently, for example, that compared states on a measure of equity, found that Arkansas was pretty good, relatively speaking to other states. Of course, there are still improvements. But I think that national perspective, being able to draw upon that national experience
Chair
Unverified
38:59
and apply it to Arkansas is a big plus. Thank you.
Senator Chesterfield, you recognize it. Senator Chesterfield. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
39:11
One of the things, this is more to staff than it
is to them on this issue. Vendors shall not contact members of the committee or the BLR regarding this RFP or the vendor selection process from the time the RFP is posted until the intent to award is issued. If that is violated, what is the result?
Speaker 106
39:35
Are you asking me? I'm asking staff through you, sir. I'd have to ask the attorney on that. Jill Thayer, Bureau of Legislative
Speaker 107
40:02
Research. Senator Chesterfield, Section 1.3 of the RFP states that this may be considered a basis for disqualification of the vendor if that occurs.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
40:09
All right. Thank you. Getting back to you guys because I have some concerns in that area, Mr. Chair, and I'll discuss it with you after we have done this. I'm still concerned about the lack of experience dealing with a whole state project. And I'm wondering what you have done that says to you that you can deal with some 200 school districts,
look at them, determine not only the finances, which I hear much about, but the economic needs, the educational needs, et cetera. And I'm reading only things from Schindler Law Firm and people like that, and it gives me pause as to what you would do that would make you qualified to do an entire state adequacy study with absolutely no experience at the state
Speaker 15
41:23
that I have lots of experience and the reason that those examples were put in is partly because they're the most recent things that I've worked on related to this but I've conducted lots of analyses in in Missouri looking at the pension system analyzing the pension system and its impact on every single school district in the state over 500 school districts collecting all of their salary schedules I have lots of research experience
Speaker 29
41:48
working on projects of this type but not in an RFP for a state and part of this too is that realizing that I myself couldn't do it by myself and that's why I specifically built this team a team of people with lots of deep research experience and school finance related experience and so together I absolutely think we have the ability uh to to conduct this study and to do it very well and my final
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
42:16
question is have you or anybody that is familiar with this been asked to lobby any legislator about this
project no and so the individual uh who may or may not have been talking about this project was not working under your auspices is that what you're
Speaker 29
42:36
saying that is right i've never spoken to any member of the committee or anyone,
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
42:39
any lobbyist? Not you, but I'm saying have you spoken with someone else who has spoken with a committee member? No.
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
42:51
Thank you. Senator Sturge, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Schultz, I'm over here on your left. Your left. You're on.
I wanted to go to the overview of the analysis plan. So when you're talking about the different projects, you said you divided them into 14 different smaller subprojects. I'm looking at how many times you use interviews and focus groups and surveys. I guess my overall first question would be, I want to make sure that we are getting information and feedback from the schools as much as possible. So I understand that we're relying a whole lot on literature reviews and qualitative analysis because you have several check marks throughout all the projects on those, but
I only count four times that you use interviews or four times that you use focus groups. So can
you tell us how that was determined and how much we really will be looking at what the
Speaker 122
43:41
schools say are going to visit schools and things like that? Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 29
43:45
again, the analysis plan was built on responding to the points in the RFP. And so trying to find the right type of strategy to answer the questions and the issues in there. Now, what I'll say is that we plan to use a lot of the information that we gather from the focus groups,
from the interviews, the surveys, to inform a lot of the other work. For instance, there's the line on convening educators, and that's where I plan to do the focus groups throughout the state with various different groups. But in that focus group, we'll be asking questions that relate to many of the other projects. And so it's not necessarily that some other project doesn't have any input, but that we're, I put it there, that we're meeting with the faculty, we're meeting with the people there, and it's informing a lot of the other work that we do so we absolutely plan on doing the best job that we can to try to get feedback from
the constituents in arkansas the teachers and the principals and the school district leaders okay follow up mr
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
44:48
chair one follow-up can i ask then is that going to be one-time occurrence and then you'll
ask all the questions that you can or one time that the focus group will meet or do you plan to go back several times to different areas of the state or or in that year process i guess I want to make sure that it's not just one time and we try to meet them all at that once. But as we go through the process, you know, there's several times that you'll be visiting and hearing from people on the ground.
Speaker 38
45:10
Sure. So there's one round of focus groups that we have planned to, again, get
Speaker 29
45:16
into each of the regions, conduct the focus groups. There are numerous surveys, so it won't be one survey. The survey will there will be a few different surveys throughout the process. and then also interviews on one of the projects where we'll be identifying high-performing school districts and getting into those school districts and interviewing those folks. So it won't all take place at one time, but there is only one round planned right now
for the focus groups. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
45:55
You're finished? Okay, thank you. Representative Murdoch, you're recognized. thank you chairman thank you all for being here several questions so I'll start and then try to get back in the queue
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
46:06
when you on the qualification piece and you describe yourself when you're asked questions about your experience you continue to mention predominantly pension systems and
pension system though they're very important and there are some concerns that they're obviously that dealt with fairly, that's different than what we're dealing with here, okay? But you continue to mention pension systems as something that qualifies you to do this type of study. Can you explain to me the correlation you're making why you continue to use pension systems as something that qualifies you for this study? Sure. So partly I mention it because it's the
Speaker 26
46:43
most recent big projects that I've been working
Speaker 15
46:48
on, but I think it is directly related. I mean, it is related to school finance. Pensions are a huge portion of school district budgets. Josh could tell us probably the exact numbers here in Arkansas, but in Missouri, we're talking about the district making 14.5% contributions into the pension system. When you have school district salaries and benefits being 80% of a school district's budget, these are directly related to this issue. And so I think that it not only demonstrates that I've got research expertise related to this, but that I am publishing and doing
Speaker 29
47:24
work that is very relevant and related to the issues related to school finance.
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
47:30
Thank you. And another thing you continue to say is school finance. This is an adequacy study. Finances are certainly a part of this, but the adequacy study involves socio-economical, other factors, the whole community. There are lots of things that go into this study that make up the end, hopefully, recommendations. When you say school finance, when you say pensions, you say just budgets, school budgets, that's, to me, to some, in some cases, not necessarily directly germane to you being qualified to do an adequacy study.
But let me go to my next question so I can get out, move forward, and come back. In our state, we have a diverse population that we have to serve and educate. Specifically, talk specifically about your experience in dealing with high-poverty, underperforming districts where they have... So your studies of when you went into those districts and what you... Well, I guess I can't ask that question because you don't have any experience doing that. You hadn't done this.
this your first time i'm sorry how would you let me ask it this way how would you deal with those districts that are underperforming high poverty from the measures that we currently use in terms of underperforming how would you address that assessment how would you assess those attach this to senator sturge's questions about focus groups interviews how many times you were go in because well excuse me let me let you answer that question thank you for
Speaker 15
49:12
the question I would say maybe part of the reason that I talk about pensions or specific pieces is because of my mind around the research literature and when I think about an adequacy study when I often what I typically think about is what you had in your first RFP where people would then be proposing to do a professional judgment model or a successful schools model or evidence based model. That's what my mind goes to with that word, and so I think it's just a difference of language that we have here. Now, in terms of doing work in these types of communities,
first, I have conducted field work in southeast Arkansas, in Helena, West Helena, and the schools around that area, and so I have some experience being in schools in Arkansas, and also where my university is situated. The University of Missouri-St. Louis is situated in the Normandy School district which is one of our has been one of our only unaccredited school districts about 98 percent black many of my students work in these schools we're located miles from ferguson i mean this is
the area in which i work and i conduct
Speaker 29
50:15
my my business all the time and have really good relationships with individuals around that area and so
Speaker 91
50:21
it's an issue that i'm very well attuned to and i feel very equipped to to work in this community i'll go back in
Speaker 142
50:28
the queue yeah i need You too, but there's a
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
50:36
lot of questions still out here. Representative Lowry, you
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
50:42
recognize? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that you've answered a previous question as it was asked,
and that may have been limiting. So I want to go back to the question of the expertise on your total team of working with states on adequacy studies, and I specifically would like for you to expound on the amount of work that Dr. Kostrel has done, specifically with Massachusetts, which is considered by, I mean, there's not anyone that doubts that Massachusetts is probably the top state,
if not one of the top ten states in the nation in terms of what they do with K-12 education. So I know you were asked specifically about your experience, but I think that the critical issue is your team and the people that you've put together. So if you could expound on that, I'd appreciate it.
Speaker 21
51:38
Yeah, I appreciate that question. I'll note that the Office for Education Policy has done lots of statewide work in the state of Arkansas. We know the state well, have been around for 15-plus years, so we've got deep experience working in the entire state of Arkansas where this work is to take place.
have been in schools, so have done lots of, have lots of school level interactions and think that that is very important to, hearing from schools is very important and going back multiple times is very important to doing this work. We've also got lots of experience on our team in other states. You mentioned Robert Castrell. He has been involved in numerous states on adequacy studies in particular. He was deeply involved in a lot of the reforms that happened in Massachusetts that led to great uptick in performance in that state. We've also got independent consultants from
EdBuild who, in addition to writing reports that focus nationally, dive deep into states, they have also worked with state legislatures, I think most notably Mississippi here, close to us on the issue of adequacy. They've worked in Washington and a few others. But we've got deep experience
Chair
Unverified
52:47
on adequacy studies, doing statewide studies across a number of issues and in multiple states thank you mr
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
52:55
chairman i may have a follow-up on process and this is a
question to you and maybe possibly jill there there has been a reference to possible impropriety which i you find troubling to put that out in the middle of this company's presentation but My question would be, if this issue is brought forward with some substantive fact, finding a fact, who would be deciding whether we go forward or not?
Would that be BLR, or would we be having a vote among the committee
members? Can you restate that question? I was kind
Speaker 151
53:39
of not paying attention. Well, it's been referenced. I'll be honest. I wasn't paying attention to you.
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
53:45
Yeah, well. I never do anyway. That happens a lot between you and I, doesn't it? Well, there have been references to possible improprieties, and I'm just asking you, would we be voting on whether we would uphold that protest,
or is that something that would actually go to BLR in analyzing the vendor qualifications? I'm going to let our attorney answer that. I'll let
Speaker 156
54:09
Jill. I may just bring her up here and
let her sit at the table with us, but I'll let Jill answer that. Representative
Speaker 107
54:23
Lowry, that would be a decision for the committees to determine if you were going to look at disqualifying one of your vendors. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
54:36
All right, Representative Garner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've got a couple of questions just because you guys have mentioned EdBuild so much and there are so many folks that have participated with EdBuild on this team. Am I remembering correctly? Are they closing? And if so, is that right?
Speaker 21
55:03
Aren't they closing? Yes, they have a plan to close within the next year or so.
You know, as a small nonprofit, they set out with the mission to raise the issue of inequities created by school boarders. They feel like they have raised that issue and that it's time for their team to move on and
Speaker 84
55:22
do other things and not get caught in a perpetual cycle of trying to raise money
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
55:30
to say the same thing over and over again. Okay. And are the same funders funded, the same funders funded EdBuild as fund the university, or not the university, but OEP?
Speaker 21
55:42
I'm not sure. We've got a diverse set of funders at the OEP. There may be some overlap. Walton, certainly. They also have a diverse set of funders, including Gates and Kellogg. So we've both got a diverse set of funders. There's probably overlap there. Okay, thank you. Representative Evans, you're recognized. Evans. Thank
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
56:09
you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.
Under Project 10 of Best Practices, Dr. Shul is your list as a project lead there. It's an examination of best practices related to students with additional needs. One of the challenges that we face as a state under FAPE is providing that care and education for all students, especially students who have a very diverse set of additional needs or special needs. So I'm curious as to what your background and your team's background is of having a thorough knowledge of understanding how to educate special education students or students who are medically fragile and have these additional needs.
Speaker 15
56:58
Thank you for that question. So in terms of this project, I mean, one of the things we're going to do is think about best practices. As I said, a literature review is looking and figuring out what does the research say around this? But the other component is these interviews. so the part of the process of what we want to do is through some of the other work that we're going to be doing is identifying schools that seem to be doing a very good job of this type of work and then conducting interviews in those school districts that are doing a really good job and finding out from them what the best practices are finding out from them what the strategies are
so my expertise is really on the research side and conducting the late reviews and conducting interviews and synthesizing what those say but I expect that the the really ideas for what works to
Speaker 29
57:42
come from the research and then come from the practitioners in the
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
57:48
schools follow-up mr. chair thank you you had also mentioned early on in one of the questions that you were asked about the timing of the formulation of your team and i'm curious were you aware of the rfp prior to the decision to release the rfp a second time
so when the initial rfp was released were you aware that that process was going on the end and why
Speaker 15
58:16
did you not participate at that point yeah first i'll say josh and his colleagues in the oep were following the initial rfp thought about submitting at the time didn't think the timing was right for them i was aware of the process but not following closely until the the initial proposal was rejected and then got more interested and really it
was after that that these things are discussed in policy circles people who talk about these sorts of things and I became aware of it I got a copy of the previous RFP and that's actually where I first went through with my colleague Sean Sims and said could we do this work they're looking for more bids you all specifically said you want to find more bidders they're looking for bids this might be an opportunity for us and so went through and said could we do this let's start thinking about this and building the team I knew right away that
I would need to have an EIN need to have a business in place and so yes all of that was in response to the initial RFP after it was
rejected thank you Representative Allen, you're recognized. No.
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
59:35
What about now? You're on now. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for being here. As you know, in the state of Arkansas, our school system is at a critical junction right now.
If you look at some of the reports that came out recently that has been labeled and tagged some of the schools in the Little Rock Public School System as those schools that are performing way below proficiency, do you feel that your company will have the expertise and can come up with a strategic plan to turn it around?
Speaker 21
1:00:14
I think it's safe to say that we're confident that we can work with you to come up with recommendations around adequacy and school finance whether we can come up with a complete strategic plan to turn it around that's a very complex and complicated issue that's probably beyond the scope of this particular study but we're willing to take it as far as we can inside the scope of this study we believe deeply that community investment is very important to be able to turn schools around turning schools around us is if
you look at examples of turnaround efforts it's just very challenging and generally takes coordinated investment in communities and and that takes more of a push
Chair
Unverified
1:00:52
than than probably the scope of this study. Thank you. Representative Birch you recognize? thank you
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:01:13
mr. chair dr. Schulz a couple of times now you've mentioned that you
were in southeast Arkansas and in confirming what you've already said about your bios in your research that there's been a lot of research that you've performed on labor markets and school choice there's a big concern in southeast Arkansas and really in all the public schools that are rural that that research is going to bypass the need for public schools and not just on the education but also the economics of the public schools. I'm wondering whether
you made any conclusions with regard to your travels and or research regarding Southeast Arkansas schools and if so what those were. Well this conclusion wasn't in my research, but I thought, man,
Speaker 26
1:02:04
there's so much promise. That was my big takeaway from visiting
Speaker 15
1:02:08
Helena, West Helena, is that there's so much opportunity for improvement and growth, and that's what I walked away with. But let me shift and speak a little bit more about rural schools
in general. I had a paper out that's in an edited volume on rural schools, and I wrote the school finance chapter on rural schools. And part of what we struggle with in rural communities that we don't often talk about and think about but that we are going to we have in our analysis plan is thinking about how we assess and tax ourselves in rural places so in missouri for instance we have different land grades for our assessments in rural communities and so we put rural communities at a disadvantage by saying we're going to assess you at much lower rates and then it makes it very
difficult for rural communities to build school buildings to do all those sorts of things because we've artificially set their property tax rates lower and so we'll dig into that issue and figure out how the system may advantage or disadvantage rural schools and so we've got some expertise in that area and really looking forward to possibly
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:03:14
digging into that more follow-up mr chair thank you great answer positive that's what we want here of course have you made any conclusions with regard to your studies in other areas that doing something proposing perhaps a diversity or a
difference in how some schools where one millage means 13 000 and you know that same millage means a million three in another school district have you had experience or anyone in your team had experience with proposals and or areas of the state that do have something that's diverse or a difference in how we fund rural schools in particular well in in
Speaker 21
1:04:01
an adequacy study often they are confronted with the issues of how to deal with schools that have to teach different types of students or in have different challenges that that they have to overcome i think rural areas of course come with their own particular set of challenges and we our team Bob Castro myself have definitely looked at how to handle rural schools I think Arkansas is is probably further out on the spectrum in terms of how many rural schools that we have and so it's probably a little further along
that spectrum of rural versus urban than some of the states that we've worked in but OEP has lots of experience going out to these areas of the state and are familiar with them and we would bring that experience from other states and inside the state to try to figure out the best way to handle rural schools inside Arkansas all
right I'm just gonna remind everyone the one hour is up in four minutes I have two more that have not asked questions yet I'm going to if
if you're okay with this I'm gonna let the last two ask a question and then we're going to give you a couple of minutes to close if that's enough or whatever it takes to close. I'm trying not to do. But if you've already asked questions, you're not back in the queue anymore because we're out of time. So Representative Walker, you're recognized.
Representative John W. Walker
Unverified
1:05:41
Can you hear me? Thank you. I would like to, of course, I don't have time to really ask you the questions, but
if you could, can you tell me what your understanding is that the Arkansas Department of Education has ever done through its initiatives other than to try to hold districts accountable?
to promote the aims and the outcomes of Lakeview. I mean, here's my concern. The record of the ADE in being able to do anything is dismal. There's nothing that shows basically on any kind of objective standard that they have done anything to equalize any district or whatever. They only try to hold people accountable. So, my first question is can you tell me tell me whether you agree with that or not and if so
if you do agree with it, can you tell me how since we know that this is to an extent an effort to try to privatize public education, can you tell me what your views are on privatizing public education where there is no demonstrated record
that except for race the students of this state are all poorly served
Speaker 21
1:07:16
Yeah, I appreciate that question. We're here to respond to an RFP that was put out by the
legislature. We want to work with you to make recommendations to improve the situation in Arkansas, improve education in Arkansas. We're deeply committed to that. I can't necessarily speak to what has happened in the past with ADE, but we agree with you that we have to improve public education in the state of Arkansas to be the state, the competitive state that we want to be nationally. You didn't address the charter part
Representative John W. Walker
Unverified
1:07:53
showing that there is no demonstrated record that charters are the panacea. And I'm concerned that you and maybe the leadership of this group is trying to lead us in that path. Can
Speaker 21
1:08:08
you address that? I'd be happy to only about four percent of Arkansas public school students are in public charter schools so there's no way to improve public education in Arkansas without improving the overall public education system there is research evidence that shows that some charter schools can be helpful but the research
evidence is mixed and it relies on test scores which are only one measure of student performance so we have a broader conception of what's important and are in no way trying to push one type of public school as part of
Chair
Unverified
1:08:37
this study. Thank you. Representative De La Rosa. Thank you, Mr. Chair,
Speaker 207
1:08:52
we're here. Going back to the OEP, I was the one
that had asked the question previously about where the funding comes from, and you did answer the question as I asked it previously, but now that gives me another question. So it's not funded, hard funded through the university, so you raise money to fund yourself. Who funds you? Where is your money coming from, if you can say that specifically? Because I find that groups tend to do, they get funded for a reason, so I'd like to know who it is that's funding you. Well, as
Speaker 21
1:09:26
I said, the Office for Education Policy
is devoted to working on education policy in Arkansas and bringing research to bear to inform policy, to work with you all, to work with school leaders. Our funding comes from a diverse set of funders. I don't have a list here in front of me. We do have philanthropic support, but we've also had direct contracts with school districts and numerous school districts around the state to do projects specifically for them. Some of those are evaluations, some of them are helping them work through various challenges and issues that they have. We've also had contracts directly with the state,
with the Department of Education in the past and the attorney general's office in particular. So we've, over time, over our 15 plus year history, have worked with numerous organizations, have had contracts, philanthropic support from numerous organizations. So we've got a very diverse funding base. It doesn't make sense for an organization like ours to go narrow, so it's pretty diverse.
Speaker 207
1:10:24
That didn't really answer my question. I was wanting specifics on who it was.
So I'll go back to something that Dr. Schultz said earlier. You said you had a bipartisan group, and I find that to be an interesting word to use because education is not partisan in any way. And maybe you meant to say nonpartisan and said bipartisan,
Speaker 210
1:10:46
but what did you mean by bipartisan team? What I mean really is we have
Speaker 15
1:10:52
a diverse group of individuals who look at this from a variety of different lenses. And so I wanted to communicate that we're not of all of the same mind.
So even on the question related to school choice, we have different views upon the committee. And so when I assembled this team, I wanted to bring together a group of people with a diverse set of viewpoints to look at this issue. And so call it nonpartisan. But really what I wanted to get at is that this isn't a group that has a groupthink. that this is a group with a diverse set of ideas related to lots of different issues related to school finance equity all these sorts of things and so I think
Speaker 211
1:11:35
it really strengthens our team okay thank you
Speaker 213
1:11:43
mr. chair all right we are past our time I
am going to stop personal privilege for I think that's going
Speaker 216
1:11:57
to be in the last time not it's not for them if it's not a question for them that's nothing do you not want to
do that in our time the last hour we're
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:12:09
going to hear them we have well it is because I have already given you time to ask
questions and we everyone else has had time but we had one hour allotted per one so that's what we're going to stick to and we've actually went over and I'm going to give you time to close well
Speaker 15
1:12:31
I'll keep my my comments brief we really do appreciate the opportunity to present to you we really feel like we've put together a terrific team Josh has called it the dream team a terrific
team with a lot of skill and a lot of experience working on these issues related to this and so we're all about working with you being flexible and we appreciate the opportunity today all right
well thank you and uh we will uh ask it you will leave and now we will bring our other group in yes ma'am to any
membership here if you think you've been treated unfairly I'm sorry
but that's why they make us chairs we have to make those decisions It's a great time to go get a drink if you need one.
Speaker 5
1:14:24
if if you would just give us a minute some of them went to get a
drink and they'll be right back so y'all just have a seat and we'll introduce you in just a minute Thank you.
All right, everyone in the back, if you can hear me, we're ready to get started again. If you can kind of filter back
in. Somebody wants to walk back there and tell them. Estelle
can you tell them to come on in if
Speaker 204
1:16:45
they're back there we'd like to get started. Thank you.
all right for everyone's all the reps and senators you should have their presentation should be the second part of yours if you'll
look behind that green sheet you should find that so everybody's prepared and uh good morning and welcome to uh to little rock to the house of of Representatives and the House of Senate joint meeting of education this
oral presentation by a P&A consulting
is Miss Amanda Brown and mr. Jason Willis and if you would just introduce yourself when
you present and you are recognized to present thank you chairs
Jason Willis
Unverified
1:17:55
senators representatives thank you for the opportunity to come out and present to you all again
Speaker 236
1:18:01
I'm Amanda Brown with Augenblick Palaytian Associates or APA Consulting and joining me is good good
Speaker 238
1:18:10
morning my name is Jason Willis a director of strategy and performance with WestEd joining the bid with the APA
Speaker 234
1:18:20
pleasure to be here this morning so for today's presentation
Jason Willis
Unverified
1:18:23
we want to start by reviewing the study team's experience and qualifications, then providing an overview of our proposed scope of work, including key changes since the last bid and the last time we were here to present, what our proposed research strategies are, how those relate to each of the areas in the RFP, and then
time for questions at the end or throughout. Okay. So a little more on APA. APA, it was founded in 1983, we're a Denver-based consulting firm. So for the past 36 years, we've been working across the country around issues of school finance, teacher compensation, program evaluation. Our firm has worked in all states, and we particularly have a focus of working with state-level policymakers. So we've worked with legislatures, with departments of ed, boards of education, and that includes
both conducting studies and then supporting states as they think about implementing changes to their funding systems. actually developed a number of state finance formulas there's about ten states that have used either the entirety of their formulas based upon our work or specific components of it and a number of those are still in place today APA will be the primary vendor for this study and then our key staff will include Justin Silverstein who was here last time but is unfortunately had
another commitment with a client of ours we've been working in Maryland for the past five years so he was out there for a commission meeting but wishes he could be here. Justin is the co-CEO at APA he leads all of our school finance work and it's worked across the country over the past ten years on issues of school finance. Myself I've been with APA 15 years I do a lot of work around state level school finance particularly with stakeholder engagement and bringing educators into the process. Dr. Mark Furmanek will also be on the team. Mark's
background is coming from being a staffer both in districts and legislative staff. He actually was a part of the 2003 study with Pikus in Auden, so he has some good familiarity in Arkansas. Jennifer Piscitelli also has a background in being a government staff in the government's office and legislative staff as well as working for the Education Commission of the State. So really strong research background and then I'll turn it over to
Speaker 238
1:20:49
Amanda so WestEd is a nonprofit nonpartisan research development and service agency this organization's been
Speaker 243
1:20:56
around for nearly 56 years servicing nearly every state in the Union and supports those states through a variety of practice areas the practice area in which I work that we're bidding the study on with APA really is around state and school district finance and resource allocation. I will be leading out the fiscal
and performance data analysis, particularly some of the quantitative analysis that's associated with the bid proposal. WestEd also has a tremendous amount of access to other types of expertise. We retain experts in the area of curriculum and standards, teaching and learning practices, as well as family engagement practices that are also readily of access on this bid in the event, as there are several areas in the bid that really speak directly to the quality of teachers,
the quality of standards, teaching and learning in a curriculum in the classroom. So just to talk briefly about the team that we have bid on this project for WestEd. So myself, Jason Willis, I've been with the organization now for just over three years. Prior to that, I actually spent 10 years as a chief financial officer in large urban systems. So the practice of thinking about the allocation of resources is very real in my mind,
and the challenges that come along with that in helping to support students, particularly in low-performing systems, two of the three of which I worked in. We also have Raifu Dordoya. He's formerly with State Department of Education, one of our statisticians, PhDs that'll be working on the project for this proposal. Also, Lauren Outlaw, she is a lawyer by training that has been doing policy work,
both at the federal and state level over the course of the last five years. She'll also be working on the team for some of the various tasks that were assigned. Mari Shukuzawa is one of our more junior research assistants, but again, master's degree in quantitative and statistical analysis will be helping out on the team, has got a particular focus around low-performing populations, low-income, EL, and special education. And then Dr. Darius Taylor is completing his PhD,
also a statistician who will be helping out on the project. He tends to specialize around teacher and teacher quality issues in their interaction with student performance outcomes for school systems. So just to talk a little bit about some of the additional subcontractors that we have on this bid, includes Michael Griffith. He's an independent consultant that'll be focusing on many of the literature reviews that we've proposed in the study. Key to providing insight on the things
that Arkansas is looking to both in states from the south, but also some of the better performing systems in the country that we know of. Previously, he worked with the Education Commission of the States, and so has a very deep knowledge about the education policy landscape across a variety of issues in the United States. Also, Dr. William Hartman and Robert Shock will be helping with the work related to school and district size, particularly some of the elements around GIS mapping
that we've proposed in the bid to provide some real visualization around some of the information that we think will be valuable and important for this joint committee as well as the General Assembly at large. Finally, we've also bid the University of Arkansas Pine Bluffs School of Education, HBCU, located here in Arkansas, that'll specifically be helping to support the stakeholder engagement efforts, which are quite robust and deep that we've proposed for the bid itself.
So we wanted to take a moment just to talk a little bit about the joint experience of both APA and WestEd in conducting these studies across the country. This provides you just a list in the past 10 years of the studies that we've conducted with states from all across the country, in various regions of the country as well. And just to point out a few, some of these are, as you might define, traditional adequacy studies in which the state does ask for understanding what are the resources associated
with a set of determinant outcomes. However, many of these studies, the states were asking other questions that were really important for their education policy decisions. So to name a few, we're currently engaged in states like Utah and Pennsylvania in which they're asking questions about the structure of their system. So in Utah, for example, they invest a set of resources, and their question is, how do we be more effective with that set of resources and the configuration of those resources in our current school system?
Similar types of questions in the state of Pennsylvania. It doesn't rule out the possibility that additional resources aren't necessary or important in those circumstances, but for them, the importance of understanding how the existing set of resources are used relative to the way their system is structured is a primary question in those states. Also, a couple of other examples that really touch on teacher quality issues. So for example, in Hawaii's Department of Education, APA is currently engaged in that work,
really concerns teacher compensation and the structure of teacher compensation and how it has impacts on supply and demand issues that are happening within that state. And finally, just to mention, you might see the Arkansas Department of Education up there on the board, APA was engaged in a teacher supply and demand analysis for the state of Arkansas through the South Central Comprehensive Center as well. So I think important to lay out that the experience
that both APA and WestEd bring for the teams, or team brings to this bid really is broad-based and much more comprehensive than simply answering a singular question that sometimes these adequacy studies get boiled down to. And part of that is really working with the legislative committee, you all as a means to understand the dynamic nature of the way that things have been happening here in Arkansas and understand the relative answers to those questions.
And just to also mention, there's been some additional state agencies and clients that we've worked with prior to that 10 years. Just wanna put those in front of you and happy to talk or go into any amount of detail about any of those kinds of experiences that we had, that again, you know, here are plenty of examples in which it wasn't one single type of study, but really the state asking a series of very specific questions around some of their ed policies and the things that they really wanted to develop. And finally, just to sum this up, to say that these types of studies
have been statewide in nature. They really reflect the complexity necessary think about a school system across the state and manage that work productively to provide insights to legislative bodies such as yourself to make some really complex decisions about how to manage a public education system and thereby makes us in our opinion the most qualified vendor for the work. I'd
Jason Willis
Unverified
1:28:46
like to talk a little bit more about what we really feel are the
qualifications of the team based on this long history of working across the country on issues of school finance so the first thing we believe our team really understands the complexity and the breadth of topics to be addressed as you all know the the RFP is covering 30 different areas so it's very wide ranging in terms of its scope and what is the questions that it's asking and our team has experience with each of those topic areas not just reviewing it as we regularly review what's going on in other states but knowing how how does
the way that you approach school size relate to how you deal with isolation how you fund at-risk students how does that relate to English learners so really understanding how do individual pieces of school finance systems work collectively together both again from a research perfect perspective but also the fact that we've worked with states across the country to grapple with those issues and think about what are the underlying policy implications or kind of unintended consequences so we really have that conceptual framework too of
going with what are those aspects of school finance that will be addressed in this study as Jason mentioned we have conducted a wide variety of studies from structural reviews that are just looking at what are the individual components of a funding formula how do those compare to other states are there any gaps in the system we've also done equity analysis so looking at current systems or proposed changes and considering well how does that affect horizontal equity or vertical equity is it both providing a similar level of resources to students
that are the same is it providing differentiated resources to make sure students can get to the same place is it looking at taxpayer equity and fiscal neutrality of a system so we've deep dived into a dozen states looking at the equity of their systems we've also done of course a lot of work around cost studies or adequacy studies both looking at what does it take to meet standards broadly as well as what does it take to meet the expectations of specific legislation so number of states for example adopting educator effectiveness
policies well what are the cost implications at the district level or of new assessment or new curriculum and then studying specific finance system components so we've looked at cost of living factors within state size adjustments individual weights or adjustments for kids with needs so we really have a breadth of different types of experience to get to Jason's point about being able to answer a variety of questions for the committees and meet all of the expectations of the RFP the next point I want to make is our
experience also has given us the ability to understand the amount of time and effort that's needed to undertake a study of this size and to produce the quality product so we believe we've allocated the personnel and hours needed to do this well so between APA and West Ed we have nine different staff members and nine key staff members sorry and five additional staff members to provide almost 4,000 hours of support on this study we've also brought in the three additional subcontractors and working with a local university partner to
provide additional support so I think that one of the primary questions I imagine as you review both bids is why ours is more costly and that is because we simply put more hours of time because we feel that that's what's needed to get the job done at a level of quality to meet Arkansas's needs. And then the last piece is part of that time commitment is really making sure that we are responsive and collaborative with our client throughout the process.
So we feel we have the capacity both in the staff allocated as well as the network of experts that work at our firms and that we have relationships with to address any additional research needs or questions that arise as the committees work
Speaker 247
1:32:51
through this process we feel we produce actionable digestible
Jason Willis
Unverified
1:32:55
work products so not only are we doing studies but stakeholders and policymakers are actually able to take those recommendations and make policy based upon them and we work on an
ongoing basis with a number of clients to provide technical assistance as they consider implementation so if you looked at that list that Jason provided prior clients you'll see a lot of duplication we have ongoing relationships for example in Maryland we did a study for them in 2002 and then again in 2014 when they were revisiting the adequacy of their system and then have worked for the last few years to provide technical assistance to a commission that they had so we really pride ourselves on being responsive being collaborative being able to maintain these ongoing relationships because our goal is to
both provide the best information possible for you all but also provide that capacity building for folks to be able to address these issues further in the future without requiring a full study and the last point I'll make here is that our firms are nonpartisan we do not come into this work with a particular angle that we're looking for we really let the the work guide us so does Jason's question we or comment that we answer a variety of questions not just what additional resources might be needed but working with states to work
within the constraints of their expectations so if it's staying within the current box or using the current mechanisms how can we tweak those to be most effective for students schools and districts versus coming into it with a clear perspective we let the work speak for
Speaker 243
1:34:28
itself so just to give you a tour of the next kind of portion portion of the presentation in terms of the study overview we first wanted to address some of the key changes since the last time
that we bid on the work we were here in the spring received some very active feedback from this body and want to make sure that we're very transparent about the changes that we have made to the bid in response to a lot of those questions and comments and then we'll talk a little bit about the key research activities that we propose to address across the 31 required study areas that include the seven methods that you can see there on the screen. I do think it's worth noting one of the things that we did see added to this RFP was the
presence of educator panels that we think really offers an opportunity to ensure that there's a robust amount of stakeholder engagement, which, you know, being a statistician and quant that I am, have come to really appreciate the necessity of balancing the approach of of using both statistical analysis but also hearing from the field. And Amanda will go into some additional detail in this, but the proposal itself lays out kind of a three-pronged approach
in terms of stakeholder engagement and educator panels, and includes listening sessions in four different locations across the state of Arkansas, eight total sessions, two in the same location across the project itself. In the past, we've had success in bringing hundreds of attendees to those sessions to provide feedback from both professionals that work in education, but also parents, families, and others that interact with the K-12 system.
The second prong is concerning the educator panels themselves. We propose 16 in total educator panels that include work with teachers, but also other educational professionals within your school districts here in the state of Arkansas. We would anticipate nearly 320 educators that would be engaged in those multi-hour sessions. And then the third prong really associated with surveying. In the past, APA and WestEd have been able to capture
feedback from thousands of educators on a series of questions that have been constructed, but also include parents and others. And specifically, we think it's really important to leverage both your networks here in this room, but also the professional education associations, superintendents, chief business officers, school boards, teachers, and other associations that might allow us access to market and bring people to the table to provide their feedback
on Arkansas's current public education system. We also think it's important, responsive to some of the comments and questions from last time, to establish an opportunity to reach out to networks of churches, pastors, other places within Arkansas in addition to the business community as well. So a couple of key changes that were made to the RFP, just to note them. So we removed these different components from this bid
that were directly responsive to the changes in the bid that occurred between the spring and this fall. So we're no longer implementing the professional judgment, cost function, or successful schools district approach that would have developed those adequacy cost estimates as structured in the former bid. Further, we removed any of the work concerning the examination of cost of living differences across the state of Arkansas, again, per the bid that you all constructed.
And finally, removed any examination of school boundaries or attendance areas. Though there is investigations around school and district size, particularly isolated schools and impact on cost, that remain in the bid and we can offer some detail on that should the committee desire it. So a couple of things that the study team will be doing. I talked quite a bit about the educator panels and other stakeholder engagement opportunities. We'll also be conducting case studies, specifically of over a dozen successful schools
that are identified through the quantitative analysis that we'll be using in the proposal. And that'll look at any number of circumstances of those schools, both high need and other types of profiles of students in those case studies. We'll also be helping the state to identify a process for routinely reviewing adequacy. This is an experience in which we have supported states in the past, and I think it's important to note here that part of the goal of doing that is to help states
in some ways become self-sufficient in those investigations. There are some states that now have their, you know, your equivalent to your BLR that now conduct those kinds of investigations that provide that information to legislative bodies and other executive bodies as a means to help them stay on task and stay focused on how policies need to evolve and change over time relative to the circumstances of how kids need to learn. Third, we'll review the current funding matrix,
including the identifying resources that are not currently addressed. It's the way Arkansas currently constructs its allocation of resources. And so we'll be looking at that. Fifth, comparing current legislation to recommendations of the prior study. So to get a compare and contrast to see what went above and beyond. but also where there seem to be some gaps between what's in current legislation compared to the prior study. And we'll also be looking at the impact of vouchers,
policies for remoteness and isolation, and also examining teacher salaries in relationship to class size and other factors. Just a note, we understand that the voucher program here in Arkansas is just getting started. It's only three or four years old, but even that provides an opportunity to understand for those set of just a few hundred students, how their educational experience is shifting as a result of the introduction of an education policy like that. So just to spend a few moments
on the fiscal and performance data analysis, so this is the heavy quantitative work that we've referenced before. We've proposed to implement a time series analysis using a multivariate regression analysis. So in really plain speak, We're gonna take a lot of data about students, about how you spend money on your schools, about where those places are located and the configuration of resources. We're gonna put it into a statistical model
and be able to understand as we isolate certain variables what the relationship is between other types of variables. And in particular, we'll be looking at identifying growth and achievement among student groups, including their progress and remaining gaps, analyzing the impact of concentrations of poverty on student outcomes. Some of the emerging research in this field is actually suggesting that this is a, quite an important factor to consider. That the relationship is not necessarily linear,
but in some cases exponential in nature, depending on the needs and issues that are associated with students in those communities. We'll also be looking at the relationship between spending and variables that include these kinds of outcomes for kids, graduation rates, ELA, and math assessments. You can see some of the other factors. And we think this kind of method and technique kind of sits at the frontier of this kind of work nationally that makes it both different and methodologically more sound
Speaker 234
1:42:33
than other approaches that might be proposed. So I wanna highlight some of the other research activities that we're
Jason Willis
Unverified
1:42:47
proposing in addition to that fiscal and performance data analysis. The first being reviewing what best practice research is available, what are states doing nationally. This is really kind of our first research step in almost all of the RFP areas that you'll see. Our goal for the 50 state review will be to look at
what do states do across the country with paying special attention to your SREB states. And then feedback we heard at the last presentation is that you want to highlight a comparison not just to the states near you, but also to states that are considered top performing nationally. So if that's the direction that the committee still would like to take, we would develop that set of kind of leading states nationally to use as another comparison. And any research that we show will both show all 50 states and then particularly highlight those two groups of states.
So then case studies. So in the prior bid, we proposed case studies as a part of our successful schools approach. So we're very excited to still see them as a part of this RFP, even without approach. We think it's really important to get out to schools in Arkansas that are doing well to try to learn from them. What successes are they seeing with their staffing, with how they structure their day, with what sort of interventions they use? So we're proposing conducting a series of 12 to 16 different case studies with schools identified through that performance analysis
with particular emphasis on states that have high populations of economically disadvantaged students, English learners, to see how are they serving those students, how are they essentially beating the odds. So to conduct those case studies, we will go in and spend a full day doing interviews with school leaders, small groups of teachers, instructional leaders, other support staff. We'll be using a case study protocol that we've developed and vetted in other states. so in a handful of states we've gone and done these case studies before so we
have that experience to build on to know how to ask the questions to get good information around staffing and non personnel resources again the strategies how they're using their professional development or instructional time their use of data their school culture so we visit all of these schools really spend a lot of time getting to know what's working for their schools see if there's common themes that we can bring back to the state then Jason spent a good amount of time talking about our approach to educator panels and
stakeholder engagement we really think this is important for the state both for hearing from the people that are on the ground as well as helping make sure the study team is providing recommendations that fit within the context of Arkansas that makes sense for everyone so that includes both those open listening session then doing targeted educator panels with teachers with school principals school leaders superintendents CFOs and business managers to get a really robust set of perspectives on issues of say what resources are not in
the matrix what issues are contributing to attraction and retention issues related to that college and career readiness definition and then the online survey so we structure our approach to make sure we do our best to get out to different communities around the state but it's often helpful to pair that with an online survey to then make sure that folks that are not near a public meeting or a panel can also participate and as Jason mentioned we're currently doing this similar approach in Hawaii we've done this in Nevada and Wyoming so we
have experience bringing thousands of educators voices to the table so we think it's a very valuable element of a study and we were glad to see it included here the next piece is a district survey so distinguishing between the online survey that's really open to educators to the community to parents with a targeted survey to each district and the purpose of this one will be to address any gaps in what data that's available so that could include what size policies did they have in place what impacts have they seen of
their size in the offerings they can provide in the extracurriculars how have they seen the best use of funds for economically disadvantaged students addressing what are their existing capital needs looking for relationships between that and equity across the state in those areas and also CTE program availability so anywhere that we think that there is not already data collected by the Department of Ed we want to make sure we can collect that data directly
from districts so that's the point of this effort and finally the last activity is really a broad catch-all of additional kind of qualitative and quantitative work much of you'll see much of the work in kind of section 3.0 point C involves this additional analysis that's modeling impacts of vouchers the uniform tax rate enrollment change any of that fiscal modeling of how does it work currently and how could it work if you took an alternative path
is really in this kind of bucket of activity this also includes that that GIS mapping to really visualize the data so if you're talking about what's the impact of size on educational offerings you can actually see it visually across the state of where programs offered where gaps where they're not getting say a a broad range of AP courses or CTE programs this also includes any interviews with Department of Ed staff any follow-up interviews that we need to do with district staff to supplement what we're getting out of the survey
information and then any other data analysis such as the equity study that we were proposed to look both at the current system and if you did any different tax policies and
Speaker 251
1:48:44
with that I'll turn over Jason so we wanted to just provide as
Speaker 243
1:48:49
a way of heading into our closing, a crosswalk of both the types of methods you can see across the columns there with each of the 31 identified tasks that were required in the RFP.
So I'll just touch on one or two of these in each of the slides. We talked quite a bit about number one there in terms of recommended methods for routinely reviewing adequacy and specifically some of the states that we've helped in that effort include Wyoming, Maryland, Nevada, and Arizona. With some of those states, again, as I mentioned, kind of taking up some of the tasks associated with doing this work ongoing. The number six there around review of resources
in the matrix that uses some of the fiscal and performance data analysis, the case studies, the panels, the district survey, and some additional quant work. In particular, we've had some experience doing this, APA specifically in the state of Wyoming that's really compared some of that current legislation to some of the approaches that are currently used in the state that again look for some of that overlap where resources are directed based on the matrix, but also places where there's opportunities for improvement.
And then in this set, you can see another set of tasks. I think the place that I wanna focus is really around that kind of set of one through six that in some form or fashion are really associated with the size of schools, size of districts within the state of Arkansas, and that in particular are looking at access to educational opportunity, right? So how resources flow to schools and to school districts that create those kinds of educational opportunities for kids, and specifically we think that the GIS mapping
could be an extraordinarily helpful opportunity to visually display what parts of the state are creating some of those opportunities more than others, and how things like the size of the system, school district or school are having an impact on access to some of those opportunities. Last thing I'll mention here on this slide is around the class size requirements, student-teacher ratios, and salary variations. And again, some of that statistical modeling will create some of the insights for that that timed appropriately with some of the educator panels
and other stakeholder engagement could provide us with some of the qualitative analysis necessary to corroborate what we're seeing within some of the statistical analysis as well. So
Speaker 234
1:51:28
the section 3.0 point C really covered a broad range of topics. There were
Jason Willis
Unverified
1:51:34
16 different areas, so you'll see this one over two slides. Our approach is very similar across a number of these, both implementing that literature and document review
and doing that additional fiscal modeling and impact modeling. So there's a couple that I just want to highlight. We think the inclusion of looking at the economically disadvantaged proxy is particularly relevant. In light of CEP, we've worked with a number of states as they consider what alternative definition do they use now that there's less ability to rely on that free and reduced lunch eligibility data collection so we help support DC in 2013 or 14 as they looked at developing a multi-characteristic
definition we've been working with Maryland as they look at an alternative proxy so Maryland's looking at using Medicaid eligibility while DC is using SNAP or TANF eligibility coupled with students being in homeless being homeless or in foster care so there's only a handful of states so far that have taken up this alternative method to looking at counts so we think it's very timely and appropriate that Arkansas is looking at this right now so in in this one we both want to look at how our identification rates changing in
Arkansas over time are we seeing a difference related to CEP how have other states been addressing this what impacts have they seen particularly in states that were kind of early adopters of moving to CEP what would the impact be of alternative proxies in this state a fiscal impact if you considered a narrower definition or a broader definition that might increase or decrease the number of students that fall within that category the other piece we'll be looking at in this area is the impacts on equity so again both
of the current system of any alternative tax policies or changes you might make in the system how does it affect equity in a number of different ways including both equity of student access as well as taxpayer equity then a number of these areas are looking at the impact of enrollment change addressing attraction retention of staff which we have experiences just to mention we're working in Hawaii right now looking at their system and we've worked at a number of states about how they approach teacher compensation and then resources for student mental health issues so the the remainder the ones I really want to
highlight we've talked a lot about how we'll do the case studies and the educator panels which were required under this section the a new one for this RFP versus the prior was looking at the impact of vouchers so as Jason mentioned it's a relatively new program there's only about 260 kids that participate as of the last current year so we both want to see what data we can collect about performance or costs associated with what's happening in Arkansas but then look nationally to see the other states that have adopted
vouchers how do they define it because we know in Arkansas it's a pretty tight definition of being either in foster care or having an IEP and then there's a number of kind of sub criteria so it's pretty tightly defined and in other states it's broader so we want to both look at what do other states do and what would be the impact in Arkansas from both a participation perspective a cost perspective if you change the definition and the other new piece here was the comparison of prior study recommendations to legislation and we do
have experience doing the same process in Wyoming Wyoming has a resource allocation model that's based on the evidence-based approach of Pikes and Auden their model very slightly from study recommendations so the last time we did that study we both compared what was in current legislation what the prior study had recommended what our additional approaches recommended and really made a resource matrix to crosswalk where those differences were so we have really good background in the the model that was used to build
Arkansas system and how you would think about comparing that to current legislation. And then finally the last piece is really what is the kind of ongoing relationship look like between if we were selected APN West at the committee and what does our reporting look like. So our goal is to as mentioned to be as responsive and collaborative through the process as possible. So that includes being available for any additional research requests from the committees providing monthly updates being present in person for all
committee meetings as needed assisting with any draft legislation and we can provide summaries of specific topic areas as our research is completed so shorter white papers on particular topic areas so you are learning as we're going and it's not waiting till the very end that also allows us to to take your feedback in sooner make changes if we need to and be responsive through the process as far as big reporting there would be the draft final report in September and the final in November of 2020 and with that that's the conclusion
of our presentation we are happy to take questions
All right, we'll get started. Senator Chesterfield, you're recognized. Yes. Thank you,
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:56:58
Mr. Chair. Again, at 1.3, have you or anybody else in your company contacted members of this committee or the BLR regarding this RFP or the vendor selection process from the time the RFP is posted until the intent to award is issued? we have not other than the
Speaker 234
1:57:19
occasional question to Jill about process all right thank you the
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:57:25
Lakeview case is a driver in public education in this state it is the driver how will you approach what Lakeview was then and correlated to what it should be now that's a great
Jason Willis
Unverified
1:57:43
question the primary takeaway that I turned from the Lakeview findings is that it's really up to the legislature to set what adequacy means and we know you have a kind of a three-part definition of what adequacy is so what we're hoping to bring to the
table is really responding to that need that it's not our job to set what does that look like but how to support the committees on information so that they can make those choices so that's what we're really hoping to bring to this phase of looking at all right thank
Speaker 243
1:58:14
you sorry can I senator can I just want to add to that so I think in addition to what what Amanda is saying that as we understand the Lakeview case part of it was looking at the definition of adequacy in the state of Arkansas but also comparisons to other states how you
compared to other southern states or states of highest educational quality in this in the country we've we've offered some of that in the RFP response that we'd be conducting but I think as the RFP lays out it's very much in line with the Lakeview case looking at issues around remediation needs or where students are lacking educational opportunities we've talked about that in both rural but also other parts of the state and in particular looking at some of your educational professionals so looking at salaries the retention of
teachers that all have significant impact in some cases on the outcomes of kids so all of those things we
Speaker 241
1:59:10
think are inherently proposed through our response to the RFP that would be directly responsive
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
1:59:23
to the Lakeview case thank you chairman and thank you for being here as we look at the the execution of
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:59:33
your plan of how you deal with the assessments of the varying districts Because we are so different in the state and as we try to find adequacy across the state, how do you specifically for poverty-laden districts, districts that are deemed underperforming, if you will, based on our current metrics, how do you plan to approach them from the standpoint of assessment specifically as a deal with local, you know, your interviews,
you're dealing with staff the local community do you really plan to get into the community and truly find out the dynamics and the different dynamics versus norms and in some comparisons to what they're doing in Kentucky Louisiana wherever we're unique and just kind of explain to me if you will in detail how plan to address that thank
Speaker 270
2:00:32
you yeah so it's all-star representative so I think
Speaker 243
2:00:36
a part of this is doing this work and I think this really speaks to our experience having worked in other states that the focus is first on the state is understanding the context in which the state is operating its public education system understanding how you know the voices of educators the voices of parents and families think about and perceive the quality of the system where there's variation in that system and it's only after getting a sense of what that looks like that then there might be opportunities for looking at other
states based on that specific context in which in this case Arkansas is trying to kind of reach for a higher quality public education system so I think about it as kind of a step in stage right so first thinking about the state itself here in Arkansas and what we can learn both from our quantitative and qualitative investigations and then using that as the primary reference point to look to potentially other states either in the south or across the country that might offer some opportunities for learning.
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:01:42
And then I will add to that what I think I also hear in your question is making sure we're, which we propose, really getting out into the community and understanding the story behind the data, what's missing, so that's why we propose really doing those panels in different parts at the state in different communities, providing that online survey to make sure everyone has access to participating. So it's our intent to make sure that we're getting to all communities and making sure their voice is heard. Thank you.
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
2:02:13
Senator Sturge. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm over here, kind of to piggyback off of what Representative Murdoch was
talking about, but I wanted to look on a part of the RFP response that you had, when you talked about the educator panels and stakeholder engagement, you mentioned these four listening tours or listening sessions around the state. And then when I looked at the different parts of the study, so you broke it down in Section 3A and 3B and 3C, there's just a couple of times where that's going to be used as far as in the study itself.
So I kind of want to make sure that I hear it right, that it's going beyond just those four listening sessions. Beyond just the listening sessions, you're going to be bringing in community members business members and so forth as well as what you mentioned i believe the online survey for those who may couldn't have made it or more input so can you kind of give us a little more
as far as how much will the schools be involved the community be involved and business
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:03:11
leaders be involved sure thank you and yet we nested all of our stakeholder engagement approach under that
educator panel kind of bucket but to your point our approach is really broader than that we both want to engage in those in-person eight sessions that we have in four different locations or at least four subject to committee feedback on that and then those targeted sessions with educators but we really want to use both those listening sessions in the online surveys as opportunities for other stakeholders so the parents the community members do have a voice at the table and as Jason mentioned in our experience we've been able to get thousands of people to participate in the survey and participation is always all about
getting it out to the most folks using the right channels so working with the committee to establish what's the best way of making sure we're getting this in front of everyone so they can participate and share their voice and to the other part of it we are using those panels to address a number of areas across the study both use of the resources in the matrix what the college and career expectations should be in the state particularly that's That's helpful when you think about CT offerings or what the business community thinks.
So we really want to use the stakeholder feedback to touch on as many areas as are relevant in the study that we think folks can provide good feedback on. We really want their voice to be heard. I think that's something that APA and WestEd have really pushed for, is making sure that the community is involved in these decisions. One follow-up? ask
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
2:04:45
you mentioned in the study team experience that you're currently doing a project in Utah and when I was finishing up my MPA degree that was one thing I
never thought I'd hear we always talk about Mississippi or Louisiana or states that border us but for some reason Utah kept coming up as a good comparison for Arkansas and so I was kind of interested in what you're doing there because as far as I guess geographic wise it would be very similar you'll have pockets of population centers and and then rest will be rural and so can you kind of tell us a little bit about what you're doing in Utah as far as what I just mentioned and then far as what piece or what pieces you may be doing as far
as a study like this in Utah I will actually turn
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:05:28
the lead on the Utah study we're working jointly
Speaker 243
2:05:32
but so the engagement with Utah is with the Utah State Board of Education the primary motivator was is really a review of what they describe in that state, their minimum school program. It's their, it is the equivalent of their funding formula for public education. And part of the driving motivation is the dramatically shifting student demographics and the kind of desire of the state to really identify how resources are aligned
to achieving what they describe in that state, the kind of profile of a graduate. And so they have a stream of investigations. I think we have 15 different lines of investigation that are going on in Utah, that are happening everything from, as I mentioned before, looking at their current set of resources that they invest and how that aligns to the needs of students by school and district. And we're also looking at helping to collect information from the community and schools
about this profile of a graduate and how that kind of matches against the resource sets that they're looking at. We have another set of investigations that are looking at the contributions of local systems as a proportion of what the state is putting in for their funding of public education as well. And we're also doing some fair study of some other comparisons, particularly around looking at how they're counting students. So they had some questions about their enrollments
and how enrollment funds certain types of students and they're looking into other types of school choice opportunities, accelerating students through high school and wondering what the impacts on the funding formula is to create appropriate incentives for school systems. And all this is nearly a two-year engagement with the Utah State Board of Education. And I think a lot of the things that Amanda had mentioned before about how we are engaging Utah is the way that we would want, if we're afforded the opportunity to engage the state of Arkansas.
that we've been delivering kind of shorter white papers with results up front, just getting, it's almost like a litmus test, like hey, we're starting to see these things show up. And so we've actively been engaging both the Utah State Board of Education, but also legislative leaders from both the Senate and the Assembly side in Utah.
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
2:07:51
So you're currently looking at their funding formulas as well, how
they're spending, what they're spending, but then making policy recommendations, or at least somewhat of recommendations on where to go from
Speaker 243
2:08:01
there. That's correct. At the same time. And there's two phases to the study.
The first phase, a report is due a little bit later this fall. That really is a description of their system. They haven't had a study done like this in nearly 25 years. So for legislative leaders, they're really looking at the opportunity to say, like, what is the system? And then phase two really looks at assessing the system and offering some design criteria around how they might think about changing that system relative to where their student demographics are moving and to what they desire of their students. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:08:39
Senator Elliott. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for answering a lot of my questions in your very comprehensive presentation. So I only have two quick ones I think, Mr. Chair. Is it clear to you or do you understand that you are supposed to make recommendations to us without regard to cost but that you're just supposed to tell us what the best policies are in your research
Speaker 243
2:09:11
the revised RFP it removed most of the components associated with what you traditionally would consider kind of costing out right on the cost of the system hence the removal of those three approaches of professional judgment cost function and successful schools there are remaining components that really do talk about how resources are aligned to the needs of students and what we've seen in our investigations with other states is that sometimes there's a direct alignment of dollars that are flowing to students that have those
needs and in other cases not and in the in the context of how a state allocates their resources could be extraordinarily useful in redirecting existing resources to serve the needs of those students but to answer your question directly Senator our understanding of the changes in the RFP is that we would not be providing an aggregate amount of dollars that would be necessary for Arkansas to achieve a set
Speaker 236
2:10:08
of outcomes. Just piggybacking on that just a little
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:10:11
bit we do understand then in the resource matrix review it does ask for costs associated with any gaps we see
and also any of the fiscal modeling we
Speaker 236
2:10:20
would do on specific components will demonstrate what would the cost impact be in in particular
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:10:26
areas yeah you will you will demonstrate that but you will demonstrate that based
on first having given us answers to what's the best policy according to what we know right now the
second question is for the educator panels will those be are those generally open to closed to other folks so
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:10:47
we're proposing kind of two different
approaches so the listening sessions would be open we tend to prioritize educator speaking if that's the target of the sessions but generally it's open to anyone that wants to come it's also open to the media it's a very public forum for sharing feedback we are also proposing those series of kind of targeted educator panels and we had thought about potentially working with professional associations in the state to identify who are the best folks to to be on those panels so I think those are more closed sessions versus the
public feedback so we're trying to do both balance yeah yeah
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:11:31
because I I do I do appreciate that because it's I think it should be pretty clear if you don't have those sessions closed educators of any across
the board are not going to feel comfortable in saying what they really need to say exactly I have
two people left on the list and that's going to close us out on our questions and give them time
to close and we'll be in our time restraint so represent Dotson you recognize thank you mr.
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
2:12:00
chair going back to your your your team I guess of people that you put together do you have any Arkansas based experience in your team as far as doing this type of study or analysis or familiarity with the state
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:12:24
of Arkansas? Mark Furmanek from APA was a part of the 2003 study in Arkansas APA also has experience in Arkansas looking
at that teacher supply and demand most recently and then in I think 1998 we we also supported a cost study in the state of Arkansas. So that's the experience from APA and the WestEd side, I
Speaker 247
2:12:46
think Jason might have something to add. And then also we are bringing on that local university
Speaker 270
2:12:53
partner. WestEd has also done some teacher quality work here in the state of Arkansas over the course of the last five
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
2:13:01
years. Okay. Do you have, I've been looking through the bios of everybody,
but is anyone on your team an
Speaker 243
2:13:11
economist? an economist yes we have several so both dr. Darius Taylor
Speaker 241
2:13:16
has a background in economics I also have a background in economics as well from the bank with my graduate degree okay and last question thank you has
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
2:13:29
anyone on your team ever done any sort of reforms with Massachusetts we have worked at
Speaker 247
2:13:43
Massachusetts at one point but I am not thinking off the top of my head what that study looked
Speaker 243
2:13:51
like it's been a number of years though West Ed doesn't have any individual that we've presented today that has done work in Massachusetts because as I mentioned before West Ed has been engaged with the state of Massachusetts for at least the last decade a lot of the work is focused around school and district improvement efforts surrounding a lot of their kind of recent reforms that they put into place. Thank you. Representative Walker
Representative John W. Walker
Unverified
2:14:30
thank you very much I have a habit of being last when I'm here
sometimes so that means that I either have the opportunity to ask the worst question or the best one But I would like to ask you, since somebody's got to do this, isn't this a fairly easy task
when you start talking about the command to provide adequate, equitable, and equal schools? That's an objective standard, it would seem. And where we get lost is in the minutiae and in the ways people parse items within a plan to try to address personal, perhaps, or individual considerations.
and then at least I'd like for you to address that can't we come up with something that takes out all of these individual concerns and really deal with what we've been struggling with for more than a dozen years now I mean it wasn't supposed to last forever and the schools should be equal by now and they should be equitable so why is that so difficult but from your perspective, based on your analysis,
and how will you help us make it easier by your studies within the next year? That's question one. I'll start.
Speaker 243
2:16:15
kind of two answers to that. I think one of which is really kind of tugging on my research and evidence brain, in that really over the past decade, even two decades, the advances that we've made in understanding
the relationships between how resources show up for kids and how those types of resources support kids is greatly advanced to the degree that there are questions that we can now answer about how resource sets are presented to students both in schools as well as out of school that have impacts on their outcomes that we couldn't have answered two decades ago. I think the other side of that question is really kind of where our work stops
as providing the evidence and the research to a decision-making body such as yourselves, that ultimately the decisions lie with you. Our job is really to reflect the state of public education, in this case, if we're afforded the opportunity in the state of Arkansas, to provide you with information about what that looks like, where there's opportunities for growth, and what the research and evidence is suggesting the direction might be for the state of Arkansas. So I think part of it is we've had tremendous advances
in the research and evidence base that are able to afford decision-making bodies such as yourselves with more clear answers about where impact can be had with those resources. The other side of it is, you know, really is more out of our hands that those decision-making bodies, it's really up to them to make
Representative John W. Walker
Unverified
2:18:00
those decisions on behalf of their constituents. Follow up, if I may. You might. Now
we know, we know that you may constitute territory or schools in certain ways to obtain certain populations and you
may do so within school districts themselves and the history of pullout programs shows that when you want to treat one group of people one way and another another way,
What you do is give them a label, and you segregate them without necessarily making it racial. I think Arkansas is famous for that. Can you address, will you attempt to address the pull-out programs in Arkansas? And I call pull-out programs those where you know that the underachieving population to begin with is poor and African-American. and so we pull the kids out of the schools
that used to be integrated in Helena and Little Rock and places like that and segregate them, you know the outcome is still going to be the same. Can you sort of commit to address that and the impact upon that and the overall achievement of equity, adequacy, and equality? So I can speak to this
Speaker 243
2:19:24
not having a full understanding of the types of data that we would have access to, I mean, notwithstanding the qualitative information that Amanda spoke to before in terms of what we would
collect around the state, from a statistical and quantitative perspective, if there are data available by school that would allow us to understand the percentage of time that certain student populations are in a general education setting, by way of example, we're doing this work in Maryland right now for special education students, looking at the interaction of their exposure to a general education environment and impacts on issues such as disproportionality, their opportunities for access to the curriculum.
And so those types of data, if they're available in the state of Arkansas, would absolutely lend themselves towards us being able to study those impacts across school districts and schools in the state of Arkansas. And perhaps Amanda, you wanted to talk a little bit more to some of
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:20:25
the qualitative work. Well, the other main point I wanted to make is that much of our focus across areas is really looking at the equity of current policy and alternative policies. And I think really our work, particularly around size and offerings, is thinking through that what are those differences
in educational opportunities afforded to different communities. So I think another powerful piece will be the ability to visualize that data to understand what communities are not receiving the same level of service. And then again, equity is a challenging question because equity means a number of different things, be it providing similar resources, meeting kids where they are and providing additional resources to get to the same place, and then also how do you treat taxpayers equitably and the contributions that they make to the system? So on the surface, it can seem a very simple issue,
but there is a number of complexities, and particularly when you get to the level of, to your point, the minutiae and funding systems, how those things interact can have a very large impact on the overall equity of the system as well. So we take that lens. All right.
Thank you for all the questions, and thank you. And you are welcome to close. You have, if you want to make a statement on your
Jason Willis
Unverified
2:21:38
class. I just wanted to thank everyone again for the opportunity to be here. We're really excited about the possibility of this work and really think we could bring our years of experience to best benefit the state
as you wrestle with these complex issues in your state to best serve your kids. So just thank you for
the opportunity. all right thank you thank you and we'll now it's time for all us to sit here and do some discussion so all
Speaker 142
2:22:02
right give them time to leave the room here
Representative Lowry, before I come to you, give me a brief minute. I have a
question I have to ask, or legal. I can find my question.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:22:51
I'll get to you in just a minute thank you mr. chairman I would like to make a motion I move that any action taken by the house and Senate education committees regarding the hiring of a consultant be taken jointly, meaning that the committee
shall not make separate decisions regarding the hiring of a consultant for education adequacy consulting services, and all actions shall require an affirmative vote of at least a majority of the members of the House committee and a majority of the members of the Senate committee. Thank you. I have a motion. Do I have a second? I
Speaker 139
2:23:44
have a second now discussion if you okay chime in
if you want to see I think
I had two already on there before that so I'm going to take everybody after that as discussion is that correct we can discuss this
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
2:24:05
before okay reps in Dotson you're recognized just a point of clarification to the chairs or maybe staff if this motion passes that means that it will be a majority of each committee so 11 votes in the House and five votes in the Senate in order to pass anything I am getting a yes okay so 16
questions yeah okay you want to ask a question on this okay you're already in there for us okay yes
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:24:45
I would ask that the chair lady repeat her motion because it seems to be the antithesis of what representative Dodson just said what do
you want to read that again I can read it to you it says I move that any action taken by the house and Senate education committees regarding the hiring of consultant be taken jointly meaning the committee shall not separate separate
decisions regarding the hiring of a consultant for education adequacy consulting services and all actions shall require an affirmative vote have at least a majority of the members of the house committee and a majority of the members of the senate committee. All
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:25:23
right I'd like to speak to the motion. I'm speaking in opposition because by doing that the senate will have no
real voice in this at all because we have limited numbers. You outnumber us 20 to whatever it is.
Speaker 225
2:25:40
20 to 8. That's the regular numbers. We have 20 and 8.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:25:47
It doesn't matter. The point is this. We have always had on board the right to divide the question between the two houses to get a will of the two houses. If we're going to do this jointly, the Senate's voice is already drowned out. because the Senate will always be outvoted on every issue that comes before this body.
That's one of the reasons we have in the rule that you will have a division of the body so that both bodies' voices can be heard, and this flies in the face of it. And I would suggest since it is a change in what we have traditionally done that it would take an extraordinary vote to pass this motion. It should not take a simple vote. but I would ask that we maintain the rules that have
governed us over the years because if we do not, the voice of the Senate is dead.
Madam Chair, would you like to speak to that? No. Okay. Anyone else?
Representative Walker, I see you're...
Representative John W. Walker
Unverified
2:26:55
Hold on. Let me get Representative Walker, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. in support of what Senator Chesterfield said, ordinarily you don't change the rules except by prior notice and extraordinary consideration.
Normal majorities would not be sufficient to just change longstanding rules. So in order to do that, I mean, in order to address this, motion, it is very clear that the Senate is in a numerical disadvantage, and our rules were not intended to put either body at a numerical disadvantage. Representative Walker, I believe
this is the rule. We are not
making exceptions to the rule. What we're trying to do is keep from being a separate vote i'll just tell you truthfully what we don't want we don't want to hire two consultants if you split the house and you split the senate and you vote separately you could hire one the house could hire another one then we've got two consultants hired yes necessarily it could happen it would have to go to alc then to make that decision I'm gonna let Jill speak to
Speaker 107
2:28:21
this thank you mr. chair the the way that this
motion is written it would still provide for a majority of the House committee to vote which is 11 to pass anything and a majority of the Senate committee what it is doing though is saying that any decision made would affect these two bodies jointly rather than one committee being able to select a consultant and the other one not or one selecting one consultant and the other selecting a different one so all it is saying is that whatever decision is made will affect you both together and you'll have one contract together or no contract
whichever you decide but the numbers of votes are the same as required under your House and Senate rules if that's
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:29:10
the case then why are we having the rule
I mean right now it would be stupid of the house and the senate to have two separate
agencies or two separate entities if the division of the body is the same what is the necessity of
Speaker 107
2:29:27
the motion I believe the chairs were just concerned with making sure there was one decision that
affects the body jointly and there have been instances in the past where with the adequacy study there were different decisions made by the house committee versus the Senate committee and this would ensure that if you are going to hire a consultant that it's one that will serve both bodies and you'll have one contract or none whichever whatever is the will of the two committees why isn't that the motion then that is how I read the motion that's not the motion okay thank you
i have a list of anyone else would like to speak to that are you
okay with what we talked about if you if you really want to speak
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:30:20
raise your hand anybody but joyce i'm just kidding joyce go ahead hey i can take it no
problem uh All things being considered, so if I could please ask through you, Madam Chair, if she could explain why the motion was here from her perspective in the first place, because
it's her motion. I think it's only fair to hear from her, because
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:30:43
I'd like to understand. I think what we're doing is just clarifying
what we have so that, as Jill said, we don't end up with the house voting for one contract or one one group and the Senate voting for another that we are in unison basically and it does take a majority. I think we have a majority of folks from the Senate are here and a majority of folks in
the house are here and so we could vote on those things on this whoever that consultant happens to be that we're voting on. there is so then in that
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:31:17
case as we said before there's no need for
us to vote on this then since since the reality of what the motion says seems to exist is that correct or not and who was confused before we got here i don't have clue who because because we had a motion before we got here so somebody must have already been con confused who was that actually me and
Speaker 70
2:31:42
And what was your confusion so I'd be
sure I'm not missing anything. Well, my confusion is not. It's my concern is that we would have a House
and Senate separation vote. Okay. And then the Senate would vote down and then our vote up someone. And if you separated your votes out and you voted for one
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:32:06
and we voted for a different one, we could have two consultants. Okay, my last clarification,
then, if all things are equal, then, so we could end up, whatever the motion is, if everybody votes the way somebody assumed, I guess we might vote, it could still, we could still end up with nothing, that's right, we could still end up with nothing.
Speaker 142
2:32:30
Sure, we can end up with nothing. Okay. Thank you, appreciate it. I just want to make
Speaker 149
2:32:43
sure I understand the motion or help to
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
2:32:49
maybe clarify it a little bit that we are going to have separate votes of the House and Senate, however, to award
a contract both bodies must be in agreement correct i mean that's really what we're talking about we will have separate roll calls but to award the contract both bodies must be in agreement okay thank you sir johnson i
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:33:26
got y'all thank you thank you mr chair uh this is a bit of a follow-up on representative
lowry's thing when the vote is taken it's basically and my words not official a division about a division but this is still something that has to still be acted on it's a recommendation to full ALC is that correct they would have to prove the contract I think that's but
but we make the decision but could not change the chosen contract no is that
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:33:58
correct I don't think so they could just yes or no
Speaker 344
2:34:03
that answers my question thank you mr. chair representative Deffenbaugh you have a question yeah yes
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
2:34:09
thanks i'm kind of dense here but uh if this motion passes then are we going to vote on both of them how you i don't understand how you got to do then we're going
to go into discussion mode about each contractor we'll allow time for discussion on the contractors and then we will make us take a motion to vote all right i mean
i'll take a motion at any time
if we're ready so but not right now we
Speaker 355
2:34:49
okay thank you resident murdoch okay so to make
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
2:34:54
it even more clear is once when there is a motion made for a particular contractor then the House will vote separately from the Senate
and there has to be a consensus, a majority of both houses to affirm the motion. Correct. Thank you. Representative Lowry, you want to
back in? At the proper time. We already
Speaker 264
2:35:23
have a motion. No, a different motion. A
Speaker 141
2:35:29
supplement motion? no no it will be after you deal with this particular all right with no more discussion
on this one um we'll ask for a vote all those in favor say aye any opposed no no eyes have it all right
now we're open for you have a motion already motion at the appropriate time let's do some discussion
Senator Chesterfield Senator Chesterfield you had a point of personal privilege you still want to say that your discussion
and I assume the chair is saying we're going
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:36:10
to discuss the pros and the cons of each of the individuals this is up to you
here's the deal I'm going to tell everybody here now you have two minutes when I check your mic in you have two minutes to talk so we're going
to run a timer I'm trying to figure out what
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:36:26
we're talking about. Well, that's whatever you want to talk about. You know, Representative Cusort, I am trying to understand the process. Do you mind just answering simply from me, are we going to be dealing with the pros and cons of each one as we go to debate?
Speaker 364
2:36:41
Yes, ma'am. That's what discussion is. That's
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:36:44
all I wanted to know from you. And is that counting toward my two minutes, the question I ask the chair? You start right now. Thank you. I would recommend that we go with Augenblick simply because the other contractor has no experience whatsoever. And I always wax concern about people developing themselves for a specific purpose in a particular time. They have nothing in their background. Shul has nothing in their background that deals with statewide agencies of education.
They have dealt with pension plans and some of the motions that they, the proposals that they have made have been draconian as far as teacher or as pension plans are concerned. But it has got to be a concern that we are going to hire somebody to do adequacy who would not have a scintilla of background. And that's why I think it's important to go with Ogden Blick and with that I yield back my time. Senator Elliott, you recognize.
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:37:45
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And to my members who are going to be voting here in just a minute, you know, we oftentimes talk about merit and we oftentimes talk about that we want to have evidence-based access, even if we don't observe it. I have no issue with Shul coming and making their presentation, but I would have a real issue if we were to sit here today and say to the public, we don't see the glaring difference in qualifications between these two entities.
I think it's even not difficult. I spent a great deal of time last night and had questions I didn't get a chance to ask, I might say. but out of a sense of fairness and making sure I could defend what I decide to do because we need to keep in mind, people, whatever we put, whatever we decide to do and whomever we decide to work with, this is setting the stage for us for at least the next 10 to 15 years.
This should not be done lightly. and for somebody who does not have the experience that is not what we need right now to go forward to do the things we need to do in this
day and time so I'm sorry you still no you go ahead no go ahead okay I just thought you were through I'm
sorry Rep. Lowry it was close thank
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
2:39:18
you thank you mr. chair I thought that we would probably wait until most individual motions were made
to discuss them one at a time, but since we're discussing them in the cumulative sense, I would just defend the Shull presentation. I think that they did demonstrate, one, that they have Arkansas-specific experience, but they also do have among their team, and again, this is what's important, not whether we ask one individual whether he has experience or not, but that we ask him, as I followed up and did, to expand for us or expound for us the contributions of the entire team.
And I think there's not any dispute that Massachusetts has one of the most superior K-12 programs and one of their main consultants has worked for three governors in helping us establish that and to look at equity and look at adequacy. And I think that that does give them substantial experience, but I think the most important thing is the fact that they do have, again,
they do have Arkansas-specific and regional-specific experience. And so I'm speaking in favor of the Shoal
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:40:38
presentation or proposal. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Murdoch. Thank you, Chairman. And
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
2:40:49
making sure that these comments are not being made to disparage in any kind
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
2:40:56
of way the abilities or talents or qualifications of the Shoal team.
We are in a position to have to make a decision, so there has to be some discussion, and the discussion sometimes may seem a certain way. But that being said, you know, sure, as they put together a team, they grabbed a group as Representative Lurie just referenced a group of people that have come together with varying experiences in the state and across the country. But what we're talking about is someone having an experience of work together and collaboration on such a project.
You know, if they had, if those individuals had worked together in the same room on projects of this magnitude, then certainly that would lead to them being a more credible possible candidate, if you will. Because that is not the case and they are coming together for a specific purpose at a specific time, then we don't know how they're going to collaborate. We don't know how they're going to get along. They don't even know because they hadn't done it. So it would be almost irresponsible, thank you, for us to make a decision for the information that we have,
the information that we currently have, to make a decision to choose a group that have come together for a certain time and for a certain reason and over. Now, if that was our only choice, then that may be something to consider because of the urgency of the matter. But with us having a choice of someone so experienced with so much noted and recorded experience at doing this as a team, then how would you look in the mirror and say to your constituency that I made a great decision based on the information that I have?
And that's all we can do. It's only information that we have. So, again, this is not to at all disparage anything about SHUL and that team. I'm sure they're great people and great professionals. But we have a different decision to make at a particular time and for a particular reason. Thank you, Chair. Representative Meeks.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
2:43:07
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm just going to essentially echo what Representative Murdoch said. and one of
the things that I like about the APA is when they give their
presentation it seemed like they were going to be more engaged with stakeholders across the state they were going to be more involved in our schools they were going to be talking to the people who are on the ground on a daily basis and they said that they've done this multiple times so they know the right questions to ask they're not trying to figure it out and I've also one of my superintendents back home has been monitoring and watching it and he also has recommended the APA group so with that I'm going to support the APA group and would ask y'all do the same. Representative Speaks, you recognize.
Representative Nelda Speaks
Unverified
2:43:57
Thank you Mr. Chair. The one thing that does concern me I do believe the last group did have the better things together but if you go down and you look at their strengths it says their subcontractors was was there was weakness and some of these things they it does kind of concern me that's all
Chair
Unverified
2:44:27
I have to say okay represents Senator Sturge I think mr.
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
2:44:33
chair this may be a question for Jill but I was wondering who prepared the question on the follow-up as far as the OAP for Scholes this question there I guess it was the last meeting about them being funded part of the UA system Jill Jill did well could I ask a question then I guess I'm trying to understand if they're part of I mean part of them is OAP is part of the UA system did that factor into their bid is that why it's so much lower is because we're already
to using state resources, or this is acting like they can't be used as far as state resources because they would be providing recommendations, not necessarily just data. That is correct, I believe. I can let Jill
Speaker 107
2:45:23
answer that. Senator Sturge, the document that you have, I put together, but it was based on questions asked by members during the last meeting. The answer regarding their funding, we asked the U of A system about that, and we were
told that they received no hard funding, as they put it, no general revenue. For the Office for Education Policy, it's entirely, their funding is entirely based on grants, gifts, and contracts. Okay. I appreciate it. I was just thinking, you know, if
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
2:45:51
they were part of the U of A, or at least, you know, a presence in arkansas it seems to me that it'd be a feather in their cap to be able to help us and that they would use it as a sign of esteem not necessarily for monetary gain but just to
be able to say that they were part of a big project with the legislature
Chair
Unverified
2:46:13
but thank you thank you representative hodges you're recognized
Representative Monte Hodges
Unverified
2:46:19
thank you mr chair i assume i'm allowed to give my
Speaker 376
2:46:22
two cents on not hiring a consultant at all so that's the position I'm going to take. Reason being I think we have an amazing staff here with BLR that has all the facts and figures that we need or will get them for us if we ask them to. I think there are wonderful staff right here that we can use. I'm also actively
involved with SREB that we pay to be
Representative Monte Hodges
Unverified
2:46:46
a member of Southern Region Education Board. They have their own staff with their own litany of research that's available to us. In addition to that we have Senator Sturge, Senator Elliott, Representative Deffenbaugh. We have a lot of talent and information right here in the legislature and I think we have frankly wasted enough time on this consultant business and I think we should just save the taxpayers a little
bit more time and save them a half million, $650,000, and maybe do what the Retirement Committee is currently doing and hold sessions around the state. We already have the research piece. If we want that stakeholder involvement, if we want to hear from our communities, let's do what the Retirement Committee is doing now and hold our Education Committee meetings around the state to get feedback that way. Thank you. Ripson, Dela Rosa.
Speaker 207
2:47:45
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In regards to the Schultz group, my concern with them, first of all, one of their team members, I did ask, they said they worked with Fayetteville, and I did ask somebody that I know in Fayetteville, I actually had a very good recommendation for that particular person. So that's one point in their favor. However, my biggest concern is that I don't know where their money comes from, and originally when I asked the question, I was concerned that we were going to be double paying, but
then once they said that their money comes from grants, gifts, and contracts, contracts is fine. You're doing the work, you're getting paid for it, but gifts, who's paying them? You don't give money for nothing. There's something that you're getting in return for that, which means to me there's an agenda there, and I don't know what that is. So that's my concern with them. Other than that, I really like them. But the fact that there's that big black hole of information that I could not get from them is my concern with them.
So that's my issue with Schultz. Thanks. All right. Seeing no one else
on the discussion side, what's the will of the committee? Representative Lowry, you'll have
to punch your button. let's hear your motion thank you mr. chairman
Speaker 381
2:49:13
my motion is to accept the proposal from the shul associates organization I have a second I have a
second Dobson has a second I know.
I'm just looking at any discussion on that motion. Senator
Elliott, you're recognized. Mr. Chair, I
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:49:39
have a substitute motion. Let's hear your
substitute motion. I move that we hire
the APA group. Second. That's a confusing motion.
You can have a substitute. We'll have to vote on a substitute first. right we have a second on that let me I kind of
thought this was going to happen so Representative Lauer I'll let you
Speaker 156
2:50:16
chime in well just a point of inquiry why can we not vote on
one at a time rather than replacing this motion actually it is a proper motion I believe am
I correct that's a proper motion the substitute motion is a proper motion we still have to take the substitute motion first if that fails we come back to your motion and we'll still have
to come back to your motion too there we go we're looking at
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
2:50:52
two so someone can make a substitute motion to replace to vote on
shul and then we could be going back and forth I mean I don't understand why we're not going first in let's just vote it if that one goes down then
Speaker 391
2:51:13
we go to the next one okay well I make a substitute motion to to vote
Speaker 255
2:51:19
on the proposal in my understanding here that just yet
Speaker 404
2:51:46
representative lowry you could make a substitute motion but it
cannot be the same motion as you made the first time that'd be a different motion that's the law that's the law that's
Speaker 350
2:52:00
law that's my law today there can't be a substitute to the substitute it can
Speaker 399
2:52:04
be a substitute substitute but it has to
be a different motion that you already made well that's already on the books but the initial motions already dead it's already
Speaker 149
2:52:13
been substituted no no no it's not we haven't voted
on it yet let me let me recognize let me recognize senator chesterfield had a deal first i'm going to recognize her and let her talk
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
2:52:33
and then i'm going to come to represent hodges mr chair masons is clear you can have a substitute motion and the substitute will be voted on
Speaker 413
2:52:43
if it's voted down And then it goes back to the main motion, which would be Representative Lowry's
Representative Monte Hodges
Unverified
2:52:48
motion. Simple of that. Yeah, I just said that. Representative Hodges. Mr. Chair, can I make a substitute
Speaker 376
2:52:54
motion to accept no consultant or to reject both consultants?
Speaker 414
2:53:00
I would like to make that motion. Okay. Do I have
a second? You're going to second two different
motions? so I'll take Senator Johnson's second on that all right any other discussion substitute motion number two is to know have any to not have any consultants so that's if we vote this up if there's a majority on this side and the majority on the Senate side that accepts the substitute motion to then we will not
have a consultant at all are you ready to vote you want more discussion you're recognized
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
2:53:44
yeah I do I just want to make the point that if we are
going to do a study it there's there's a reason we have taken the time to put an RFP out out there and we can't do a study in the same way we've been doing the review all these years
since we had the very last study and it's not to suggest we don't have great staff in BLR but the staff in BLR has a certain set of skills. They have a certain number of folks who are working in BLR and as you know, we already weight them down pretty much. So that has nothing to say about their abilities, but they are not prefixed to do this kind of study. And the same thing would be true about the SREB
and anybody else we're a part of. They are not set up to do this kind of thing because, for example, for SREB or somebody else to come in here and do the kind of study we say we want, they would have to just renege and not do anything else, just work with us. So I want us to be very clear that when we changed the law in 2007, I was not here then. We changed the law from doing a study to doing reviews. What we have been doing all these years are reviews.
That is not the same thing as a deep dive study that we've not done since 2003.
I just want to point that out. That's the reason I think
Speaker 66
2:55:28
this would not be a good thing to do.
Speaker 231
2:55:31
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator Johnson, you're up.
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:55:42
Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we were dealing with this in the spring, I made a point that perhaps we weren't going about this the right way and that we maybe didn't need to do this study this way or use consultants, et cetera, and at the time, you pointed out to me that I was a freshman, that I was inexperienced in some of this, and you later did apologize to me, and it was gracious and I appreciated it. However, I was around in 2003 or whenever it was when all this stuff was going on, and
Senator Bond, who was in the House at that time, came up with this 350 magic number of the size of a school district. I mean, I've been around this process. And maybe because I'm from the outside and looking in and hasn't been on the inside all this time, I really believe that what Representative Hodges has just said is probably the best direction for us to go. I mean, forget the fact that we save the taxpayers $500,000 or $700,000.
That's obviously important, and certainly that money could be used to augment the resources of BLR as needed. But I go back to the fact that we may need to look at this a little differently, and I appreciate his motion, and that's why I was proud to second it, And I ask my colleagues to let's, for once, not go down the same road. Let's try something a little different, and perhaps we can get some smaller amounts of input from these or possibly other consultants to augment the Bureau and do this in a little bit better manner.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your input, Senator Johnson. And I did judge you a little quickly that day, and
I was wrong. But I'm going to judge you again and say I disagree
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
2:57:43
with you. Senator Sturck, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Harris.
I just wanted to discuss Representative Hodges' motion. I appreciate his confidence in me and others, but I've brought this up before.
And Marty and several of the staff at BLR can back me up, I hope. But BLR can't do what we're asking. BLR can't tell Joyce Elliott she's smart and James Sturch he's an idiot because they all work for us. So when we're debating solutions, we all have 28 different ideas of where this process should go. To me, we have to have someone that can look at it from outside eyes, a better perspective, well-rounded. I really think that we're looking at a process that's not just around the adequacy framework.
Why we started this was to go beyond what we're doing. BLR does it every two years and they study what we're doing. We're trying to figure out what we should be going beyond that or what is working and what is not. And I don't think from my conversations with BLR that they're prepared to do that or could do that because they can't give us policy directives. They can only go by what we ask them to do. So for that reason, I can't support Representative Hodges' motion and I just ask that we keep in mind why we're here and what we can do and what we can't thank you mr. chair
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
2:59:08
representative Meeks thank you mr. chair I'm just gonna second what senator Sturt said that our BLR does not have the time or resources to do this what we're asking these consultants to do is actually go out to the individual school districts to talk to the teachers to talk to the superintendents our BLR is not tasked to do that and i also think there's great wisdom in getting someone from outside who's not involved in this day in and day out because it's too easy to get caught in the rut
and not see the forest for the trees and the only way you get beyond that is to have somebody come in from the outside to take a look at it and as far as the you know the half a million dollars or 700 million excuse me the half a million dollars or three quarters of a million dollars that we're about to potentially spend here while that is a obviously it's a sizable chunk of taxpayer dollars that we need to be good stewards of at the same time we spend two and a half billion year dollars every year on education in this state and a 500 000 investment to make sure we're spending that
two and a half billion dollars the right way i think that's a very small price to pay and i suspect if we make this investment that they will come up with ideas for us that will help us and pay back that half a million dollars in dividends going forward for the next 10 years or 15 years however long so I strongly am opposed to this and think like the scripture said there's great wisdom and a multitude
of counselors, so let's hire us a counselor.
Speaker 187
3:00:45
Representative Birch. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to echo the last two speakers with
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
3:00:54
regard to bringing in someone who can do some of the things that we can't do, but I also want to point out that whenever we go around the state and we bring in folks to come and talk publicly, we get the folks that want to talk publicly at those meetings. We get the people who want to be very loud and want to be heard and want to be in the newspaper and want their name to be projected often, and we don't hear the voices of, in this case,
perhaps the teachers and the superintendents and the people who might be more willing to talk to consultants that are really going to ask them tough questions, and then we'll put that information out to us, not anonymously, but as far as names go, anonymously. I think that part is very important. if we're going to ask the state what the stakeholders that really have the knowledge of the needs and some of the needs that we've added additional to this not just what blr's been looking at we're looking at school safety and we're looking at mental health we're looking at issues that we weren't facing perhaps 10 years ago and to get those real answers would be important to get
Speaker 421
3:01:54
those specialists that will look beyond our public
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:02:02
meetings thank you representative dodson Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, I've said it before in this committee, and over the last couple of years I've had the opportunity to participate in other task force where we've hired consultants, fired consultants and had a wide variety of testimony from a number of folks. And I continue to believe we have some of the best staff that can compile research and make reports of any I've ever seen or worked with.
I do believe there are plenty of advisors, if you will, maybe even this Office of Education Policy out of the University of Arkansas, since it's part of their mission and mandate, would be willing to come and testify before this committee and give recommendations without us having to pay them half a million dollars to do so as well. So I support this motion to not hire a consultant, but I think both of the consultants that we've heard from today are eminently qualified to make good recommendations.
I think both have assembled teams that can do the work that we're asking. If this motion fails and we are to vote on one of the consultants, I think the one that does it the most affordably, for half a million dollars, we don't need to spend a whole lot more for someone who's just as qualified so I would probably go with the Shulls over the other one if we if this motion fails thank you all
Speaker 424
3:03:32
right last one representative Hodgins you're welcome to
Speaker 376
3:03:35
talk about your motion thank you mr. chair I just I just wanted to close by saying that I don't think at this point hiring either of these consultants is going to get anyone what they're wanting out of this process because if we're this divided on which consultant we're going to choose we're going to be just as divided on whatever that consultant that we do choose
Representative Monte Hodges
Unverified
3:03:59
produces so I think we're really wasting our time here and this is my third time going through the adequacy process and based on that history I think one of two things is
ultimately going to happen either we're going to do what we've done the last several years and just tinker around the edges and change a formula number here and there or we're really going to have to come together as a committee and as a legislature and work together to come up with a real solution. Because picking this consultant is trying to paper over a larger divide here and picking a consultant is not going to solve that problem. So I don't need a consultant from California or Missouri to talk to my superintendent or
to talk to my teachers or to talk to my community. That's what the people voted for me to do. that's what the taxpayers are paying us to do is to go out in the state that we represent the people that we represent and talk to them and get a solution I don't need an out-of-state person to tell me how to do that so again I say let's let's save the time
Speaker 376
3:05:02
let's save the money and let's honestly you know get to work as a committee because if we can't come together and find a solution anyway
We're not going to find it by paying $500,000 for an out-of-state consultant to do it for us.
I'm closed. I have one left if you want to hear them. Mr. Burdock, you can
yield. I'm okay. All right. I'm going to say this right before we vote. That's all I'm going to say. This is about kids. It's not about us.
All right. All those in favor of the motion to not hire a consultant, say aye.
Aye. All those opposed? No. No. No's have it. Roll call. You do
understand it takes 11 and 5. I don't think I heard it that badly, but we will roll call it. Do I have another hand on a roll call, or what do I have to have? I have no other hands. If you want
Speaker 183
3:06:07
to hear a roll call, we're going to do a roll call.
Speaker 427
3:06:13
Senator Linda Chesterfield. Senator Hendren. Senator Hendren.
Speaker 428
3:06:21
Senator Cheatham. Senator Cheatham. Senator Eads. Senator Johnson. Senator Starch. Senator Elliott. no senator english no that would kill it right
there because one is already out
you good okay all right next motion was correct me if i am wrong
was to hire a pa is that correct that's right APA all right I'm going to call them I'm going to call the motion all those
in favor for APA say aye aye any opposed no the ayes have it we will do a roll call
Speaker 427
3:07:24
Representative Meeks? Aye. Representative Deppenbaugh? Aye. Representative Eubanks? Representative Eubanks? Representative Walker? Aye. Representative Lowry? No. Representative Dotson? No. Representative De La Rosa.
Representative Hodges. Representative Beck. Representative Sullivan. Representative Speakes. Representative Gates. Representative Vought. Representative Burch. Representative Allen. representative Allen representative Kavanaugh representative Kavanaugh
representative Garner representative Evans representative Murdoch we have 11
Speaker 428
3:09:03
We're almost ready. Senator Chesterfield. Senator Hendren. Senator Hendren. Senator Cheatham. Senator Cheatham. Senator Eads. Senator Johnson. Senator Sturge. Senator Elliott. Senator English.
uh that was only four votes so that that kills
it it doesn't matter it's the way your committee's set up in the five that you have to have or is it four it's five it's what you're have to have for your to carry same as ours all right we have our original motion that would be represented Lowry's original motion are
y'all ready that would be for Schultz all in favor
say aye all opposed no the noes have it ladies and gentlemen we do not have a a consultant. So is there any other information? Do you have a Senator Elliott you recognize?
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
3:10:47
Mr. Chair, is this something that if the legislative council chose to take up that they could? I don't think so. We are required to refer something to them? Just no. Well talking about right
now since we didn't do anything i don't think there's any action taken nothing we're required to send to them there's
no there's no contract so they will not review yeah that's what i'm saying
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
3:11:09
i i just i was just wondering we didn't choose a contract but if they would have the ability to do so that's all so the answer is no we can't is that what you're saying
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
3:11:24
so before we go so does this indirectly uh obviously i guess this brings representative Hodges motion into play if you will
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
3:11:32
no does it no so okay so what's the plan of action then for us to obey continue as
Speaker 440
3:11:41
we have for the last ten years just simply do the review
Well, if we hired one through the house, it would be only the house's consultant. So, or same way. So, we do not want to do that. So, you know, I'm just going to tell you, I am very disappointed for the kids of
Arkansas. It is very disappointing. I just want that to be my last statement. As there's no other business coming before this committee today, we are adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Opening Remarks by Committee Chairs
C. Oral Presentation by Shuls and Associates Regarding RFP for Education Adequacy Consulting Services
D. Oral Presentation by APA Consulting Regarding RFP for Education Adequacy Consulting Services
E. Discussion by Members of the Senate and House Committees on Education
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — EDUCATION COMMITTEE - SENATE AND HOUSE MEETING JOINTLY WITH ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION, Oct 8, 2019 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| APA Arkansas Draft Bid Presentation 10 7 19 | Exhibit | 27 | Official source ↗ |
| APA Follow Up | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| EX C2 100819 JtEdAdeq Meeting Summary | Exhibit | 3 | Official source ↗ |
| RFP Price Comparison.v2 | Exhibit | 2 | Official source ↗ |
| Shuls AR Presentation BLR190003 | Exhibit | 35 | Official source ↗ |
| Shuls Follow Up | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 1
Representative Bruce Cozart Chair
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 21
Speaker 26
Speaker 29
Speaker 27
Speaker 31
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
Speaker 41
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
Speaker 69
Representative Nelda Speaks
Unverified
Speaker 93
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 106
Speaker 107
Speaker 38
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
Speaker 122
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
Speaker 91
Speaker 142
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
Speaker 151
Speaker 156
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 84
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
Representative John W. Walker
Unverified
Speaker 207
Speaker 210
Speaker 211
Speaker 213
Speaker 216
Speaker 5
Speaker 204
Jason Willis
Unverified
Speaker 236
Speaker 238
Speaker 234
Speaker 243
Speaker 247
Speaker 251
Speaker 241
Speaker 270
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
Speaker 293
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 139
Speaker 205
Speaker 225
Speaker 70
Speaker 149
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 344
Speaker 351
Speaker 355
Speaker 264
Speaker 141
Speaker 364
Speaker 136
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Representative Monte Hodges
Unverified
Speaker 376
Speaker 381
Speaker 391
Speaker 255
Speaker 404
Speaker 350
Speaker 399
Speaker 413
Speaker 414
Speaker 66
Speaker 231
Speaker 187
Speaker 421
Speaker 424
Speaker 183
Speaker 427
Speaker 428
Speaker 435
Speaker 415
Speaker 440