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I'll get you boys to sit down, girls. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to a nice, rainy Monday morning. Hope everybody had a safe trip here. Today, we're good. uh we're going to talk about issues related to adequacy um i'm going to have some more
committee discussion this morning but first off we have two people that would like to make a little bit of a presentation representative beck here somewhere don't see him representative beck are you in the back where you at there you come you are up first on your desk you will find a little sheet that's totally different than your agenda yes we're going to let you sit down front so everybody can
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
7:05
see you and question you if they
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
7:08
want to represent beck you are recognized thank you I always wanted to say people come down here I'm Rick Beck I'm with I want to thank the chair
for allowing me to present this and I'll start out by saying that where this data came from was really my personal search. I listened to this group as a whole, and we talked about a lot of issues on both sides of this. But I didn't see any new data. As a matter of
fact, I didn't see a lot of data. All I saw was a lot of people giving their true opinions of this, but
I really wanted to see how things were performing.
So one of the things that I'd heard quite often them was that the APA group had had a lot of experience doing what we were going to ask them to do and that they would do a good job for us. And I trust that my colleagues were telling me straight in that, but I didn't see any data for that. So I went back. If you remember when we started this journey, we asked for references from anyone that would present something. So with that, I went back and I looked at the people who gave us references. And I would say, well, how did it work out for them, right?
They paid this company to do what they were supposed to do. How did that work out
for them? Well, we couldn't use that data because those companies had been very recent. And anything that, some of them hadn't
even adopted the recommendations yet. And if they had adopted them, we really hadn't, there's no data showing either side of that. So we went back and I looked at four other states. So what I'm going to do today is we're just going to start with one chart. and my intentions here are to explain the chart.
And I think after I kind of give you the details off the chart, you can go back through and make your own decision as to what the data shows or doesn't show. So what we're looking at here is the results of the National Assessment of Education Progress results. These are test scores that are done comparing students nationally on fourth-grade reading, fourth-grade math, and then again, 8th grade reading and 8th grade math. So what I wanted to do, just like I mentioned earlier,
was to say the people who have adopted the APA standards, were they doing
better as tracked against this national average, or were they doing worse? So with that, I'm going
to ask you to take a look. I think the very first chart is the... I might... Hold on
just one second. I might get another... Chart that shows a little. If you
don't mind, the second, on the back of the first page, the second page, is the eighth grade math.
And the reason I'm going to start with this is because it actually shows, it's easier to demonstrate exactly what the chart's showing. Okay, so this data is, and I have the raw data if you want it, actually reflects scores from 1998 up to 2019. okay the these the assessment scores so if you look at the chart you'll see that Arkansas is listed first and Arkansas is only on there for a
point of reference APA did not help us with our
last adequacy but it's just a point of reference for us but the following four which is District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and PA did adopt APA's studies, and so they're very valid charts. Now, so let's take a
look at the District of Columbia, which is the second set of bar charts from the left. What you see is the lighter color gray says 0.76.
What that number represents is prior to them adopting the APA recommendations, how were they tracking as compared to the national average? Now, what that number tells you is this. It tells you that prior to adopting the recommendations, that every time that District of Columbus was, or the average, I should say, were tracked, they advanced higher or better towards the national average by a factor of .76.
After they adopted the APA, they advanced, that's a darker covered chart, they advanced at a rate of 1.06 every time they tested. All right? Now, you'll also notice that there's this zero line that the charts go above and below. Now, what that line represents is this. To make the chart easier and to make it show exactly what we wanted it to show as far as the data, the before and after data on this, we subtracted the national average out.
What that does is that puts you at zero. So everybody is tracked. If the national average, I'll give this example. Let's say that the national average in one of these went up 3%. And
you as a state went up 4%. then the chart would only show that you advanced 1% because the whole nation advanced 3%. Does that make
sense? Okay. Now, so that's what the zero line is. So when you look at this line, and I'm going to use PA all the way over to the right,
you'll notice that before they were advancing at a rate of 1.21% each test cycle. All right. That's the average. And then after, they actually went to a negative 0.20. So that shows that from 2007 until 2019, they actually tracked at negative as compared to how the national average was advancing.
Another thing I'll bring up on the chart that you should look at is this. You'll notice that each state has a year by it. 2000 going across from left to right, Arkansas was 2003, 2013, then there's 2001, 2006, this is the date that
we tracked the after, so in other words, anything before, in the case of PA, anything before 2007 would be on the
before chart, and anything after would be, from 2007 to 2019, would be the after.
So I think that's close to everything I wanted to say. My intentions are not to sway. I know what I think the data says, but my intentions are to do this, is to show the data to you. This is a national standard average. I will if anyone wants to look at the actual raw
data that this is derived off of we certainly have it, there's quite a bit
of data so it is just what it is, it's just showing before and after the adequacy was adopted as compared to the national standard average and I'll take any questions are there any questions chime in chime in
Speaker 29
15:06
on your I see all the mics dropping down there that's
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
15:12
not a good go ahead reps of Deffenbaugh
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
15:20
punch back in Dodson yeah thank you Mr. Chair okay representative Beck you know still let's go back to dc there on 2013 0.76 you know as a decimal or if you change it to a percent that's 76 percent better is that what that
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
15:47
means i don't get that no thank you for bringing that to my attention i should have that's
percentage points that means that they did 0.76 percentage points better i'm sorry all right
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
15:59
Thank you, Mr. Chair. On the before and the after, is this a snapshot of a particular point in time on the before, or is it like an average over the course of the last
decade prior to the before, and then an average from like 2013 to current? Yeah,
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
16:27
that's a good question. What the data actually shows,
it is the average from the point that whatever the recommendations were adopted.
So, for instance, if you look at, staying with eighth grade math, we'll look at D.C. here. Their information, they were adopted in 2013, so the after chart would be the average per test cycle after 2013 to 2019. The before would be 2013 back to 1998. Now, to elaborate just a little bit on that, there were a couple of, and it says that at
the bottom, there were a couple of states that didn't test all of them at the very beginning. So some of the states, we only have data starting like at 2000, but it says that at
Speaker 46
17:33
the bottom of the chart. Thank you. Senator Sturge Thank
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
17:36
You mr. Chair represent mecca I had I guess a similar question so the darker Bar is the average then of all these test scores put together from however when they started till now over the NAEP scores
So it's like 2000 2003 2005 all put together yes sir and I guess my question I mean obviously you're trying to present a causal relationship because of this this caused this I guess my question would be has nape changed over those years or has other factors that you've become aware of change I mean because we don't have the same assessments we had back in 2003 we've changed over the years and you know but I guess my question would be NAEP is supposed to have changed since then as well correct as far as their
frameworks or what they're testing I mean I get it's a national test but they've
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
18:28
changed over time as well and that's a good point and that was why we actually
subtracted out the NAEP score so what happens is let's say that that NAEP did something that made it much harder or you know shifted everything down to that would not affect this chart because the baseline of this chart is is whatever their average was nationwide. So if something affected these scores nationwide, that would already have been accounted for in the baseline.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
18:55
Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. So Representative Beck, one of the things that I've noticed recently in just the last few weeks, two places, Washington, D.C. and Mississippi, raised their reading rates tremendously, probably better than anybody in the United States. So sometimes I kind of wonder, what does that have to do with, is it a lot of other things they were doing
besides what some of the recommendations were? Because I even see that with our own Department of Education is doing a lot of things. And sometimes they don't have anything to do with adequacy. But changes are happening in schools. And I'm not sure if it has anything to do with what we're talking about here or it has to do with the new kinds of things that they're doing in the schools throughout the state. Does that make sense? I think I understand.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
19:58
I'll try to answer that. If I miss it, you just come back at me. You're right. There's a lot of different variables. Even if you look at the data, and I was telling someone earlier about this, Oftentimes, you know, we want data to be 100% conclusive this way or 100% conclusive that. Data never, if you've got real data, it almost never does that. It's usually there's a blend or something. Now, if you look at these charts, you'll see that there's some really big advances in
some categories. It may be that that state, I don't know what the recommendations were that they adopted.
it may be that they addressed maybe a fourth grade reading level and that's what they were going after it may have been that there was another factor that associated with that but what I was trying to do is this is the reason why I averaged out over years before and after I wanted to show what the averages were before versus the averages after and just to see if we saw a change in other words and I don't know what they charged The states, in the going price now, is what, about a half a million or something.
We'll just use that for discussion. What did they get for their half
Speaker 54
21:14
a million dollars? Did they adopt it? Now,
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
21:17
it's worth noting that two of the states did not fully adopt the recommendations. And that's listed at the bottom. I think it's PA and D.C.
I did not fully adopt those recommendations so I
and I don't know what recommendations they adopted, but this the purpose of this chart is to show
APA Did what we're asking them to do for these people all right they adopted it Or they didn't or they adopted only a portion of it. This is the results of what happened as a result
of that Yeah, and I recognize there are a lot of different factors that could be coming to
play here But you have to understand something you're looking at a few data points. There are thousands of data points the testing from 2000 from
1998 to 2019 I feel very confident in the data the that we that there's enough data here you know sometime if you don't have a whole lot of different samples of data you know data can get a little squirrely on you there are a lot of data points that that are pulling to to these averages so that was in point i don't know if i answered your question or not but any other questions oh no senator elliott
Speaker 58
22:44
should i sit back thank you representative beck what conclusion are you
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
22:50
drawing from this data i don't want to give my my my because i the
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
22:54
intention of this was not i i told someone earlier this is exactly true and i and please this is
gonna don't take any of this personally we have been discussing this for a long time. It reminded me of my children. My son, who's now, they're both grown now, but when they were
nine and seven, they used to get in the back seat of the car, and I'm sure everybody can relate to this, and everybody is too, is not, is too, is not. And I used to stop them, and I'd say, is there any new data? Because if there's no new data, then stop arguing, because you're not going to change her mind, she's not going to change your mind, stop
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
23:40
arguing. The intention of this was to bring another data point. That's it. Let people make their own decisions as to what the data shows. But so is it going to be useful to us if, and making a decision, if we don't have some kind of data points that we can compare to whoever else we might be considering?
because wouldn't there be are there not any data points we can have from we can get from somebody who's i would assume from somebody who's not done this there are no data points available and that's a that's a good
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
24:18
point uh i was looking back and i was saying you know i would love to have data points on
both of our choices but but we don't okay and uh but this is the
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
24:28
data points on IPA. Well let me quickly ask my other two questions. If in places like in DC
DC and PA, Pennsylvania, who did who only partially implemented this, do we know to what extent they partially implemented it? Like what did they leave out? Do you have any idea from your research? I do not. Okay and my last question is, do you know, for the others who implemented this, what we mean by
implemented? For example, was it implemented with fidelity or did they kind of do implement light?
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
25:20
Well, in answering, I'll try to answer that as best I can. I don't know what
light means. I would assume that light would probably
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
25:32
mean partial versus... Well, let me give you a good example of light. We have had a dyslexia law in this state since 2013, I guess, and there are still school districts who say they're implementing it. That
means they've just hired somebody and called that person an interventionist. Then they say, oh it's implemented or we are using this program this program and it's not a program that's responsive to dyslexia that's what I mean by light if it's implemented with fidelity that means that they have done what's required if they had implemented this program with fidelity that means that they have done everything according to the testimony here they've done everything except for
Pennsylvania and DC they've done everything that was recommended by APA and they have done it right to the specs of what APA has done I would find that unusual considering that this is a recommendation and we tend to do these studies to get recommendations not something that we implement all of it necessarily. So that's what I mean
Speaker 75
26:49
by with fidelity. They take it and do exactly what
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
26:54
they was recommended that they do. Right. And it would be hard to, I think there's really two levels to your question. One is really related to, you know,
I think obviously if they only adopted, did a partial adoption of it, you know, you could say, well, you know, they didn't adopt the whole program so it didn't work. But if you look at the data, I would encourage you to look at the people who adopted partial versus the people who adopted all. And you'll look at that
data and it kind of shows that... But you see, that's not my question. I'm going to dance around to your question though. Thank you. All right. So that's one point of that. Now the other point that you make is, was it adopted 100%? Were there school districts, you know, the 50% of the school districts adopt what they said or not. I have no way of knowing that, but the point that I would make is this. This is data for the decision that I believe we're going to have today, all right? That decision that we make today will suffer the same consequences as what you're saying.
Will we enforce it to all school districts? Will all school districts immediately adopt it? I suspect probably not because that's typically the way things go here. So I don't think that's a factor either for or against this data. It basically says that the people who tried, whether they did a good job or not, I can't tell you that. But the people who tried, this is the results that they saw. And there are multiple points of data against a national standardized test result that's tracked that we have many years of data. Yes, I understand. I
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
28:36
understand clearly what you're saying. I'm asking about implementation and so many
other variables that are going to have some impact on what happens here. It seems a bit, I don't mind having the data, but I don't know how we can do anything other than draw the conclusion that the intent of this is to show that it wasn't all that useful. But that would be like taking something as complicated as students and teaching and testing and saying the one factor
although you've said it's not you know that's that we can't just say there's one factor you're saying that but the presentation clearly indicates something else that this is important enough that we can draw some kind of conclusions without including all those other variables that will have an impact on this I'm fine with having I'm fine with having the data because we just looked at this data at NCSL when we were there you know last week deep dive into it which is terrific but nobody pretended that oh and I'm not saying you are it's
just the conclusion I think we draw nobody pretended that we could take two school districts or two states and say do the same thing you're doing now and and say the big factor here was whether or not they implemented Augenblick or if they implemented APA or somebody else. That's my concern. I appreciate you. I
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
30:13
think that's a legitimate concern. However, I would tell you that what we're doing today is making a decision.
I would encourage what I would love to see,
What I'd love to see is like three weeks ago, maybe we should go back. Maybe we shouldn't vote today. Maybe we should go back and look and say, what happened here? You guys adopted this, and it didn't seem like it worked for you at eighth grade math. I'm
just going to throw something out there. Maybe we could get more data that would help direct us, which might even point us towards a decision of APA. But I will say this, that I haven't seen any data yet on either side, you know, and I was quite surprised that, to be honest, I sat right there and I said, I was surprised when it was presented to us that they didn't present this type of data supporting them.
because you know you think if I was trying to sell you a study the first place I would go would be to someplace I had done a study to tell you how successful that study had been in that school district and they have lots of places they could go but they didn't and that was one of the reasons I probed for the
data thank you um rick i think a lot of data that we're probably missing is how this was implemented once it was
their study was put out whether the legislators that had that study done actually listened to it put it out correctly and also did their department of ed
do their job in presenting it out and i'm I'm not saying they did or didn't. I'm just saying that's some data that we would really know to make sure that this is where it's showing what it's showing. Who messed up? Who didn't mess up? Did they do everything perfectly? Did they not?
And I'm not trying to dispute what you're trying to do. I'm just looking at what I would want to see to see where this came from, and I think that's what some of the others are saying too. We do have some more questions. We're going to move down to Senator
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
32:36
Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Beck, I think I almost feel deja vu. You and I have had this conversation before, not necessarily about education, but about a lot of things. You being an engineer, you tend to want to put things in some kind of statistical model,
something you can measure and quantify. And I don't know, I kind of agree with Senator Elliott, I don't know that everything can be calculated in a manner like that, although it's certainly important, and as Yogi said, you can observe a lot by just looking, and it's clear that you've looked, and I appreciate the work you put into this because I think it's at least a partial guide to us. The real question I have, and again, this is maybe to the engineer side of your experience and anything else,
as one of the things that when I look at the chart carefully and I force myself to analyze it, a lot of times these things kind of blur you're talking about a baseline of zero which i assume is no achievement no loss of achievement just everything stays the same and then below that line is where there's somebody's kind of dropped in the achievement level and above that line is where they've increased in achievement level but all in all we're looking for example i'm looking
on page three right now uh the bottom line is one that's one percentage point below no achievement and the top is uh two percentage points above achievement so what i'm i'm seeing is that if this were a giant chart that went from 100 drop to 100 increase it would be on a much larger sheet of paper. We're talking about an increment of two above nothing and one below
nothing on this chart. And probably as politicians, we tend to see polls more than anything as trying to analyze data. But you know how polls, they talk about a measure of accuracy and the fact that it's within the margin of error or something, these aren't big swings in either direction. I mean, in the whole scheme of things, they're not.
I'm not saying that half of a percentage point, those are real students. That's real, assuming it's absolutely accurate, which, again, is an assumption that may or may not be appropriate. But what I'm seeing, and tell me if I'm, What I'm really asking is, am I wrong in thinking that this is really not a big swing? Even when you see the dark part go below the line and the gray part go above,
it's just not a whole lot and perhaps might even be within what in political polling they'd
call the margin of error. Could you elaborate on that? Thank you for
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
35:46
that question. I probably should have done a little bit better job of explaining that. It is not zero. It is the line that you see across there is what would have happened during that period. It's the
average that would have happened across the total United States.
It says zero, but it's really a line that says that that's where the United States was. That line, zero line, could be and probably would be close to 30%. proficiency. Improvement or just proficiency? It would be about 30 percent. So
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
36:23
this is a chart of deviation from the national norm. This
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
36:27
chart is to show what I was trying to, let me back up and I think it'll answer your question. The purpose of
this data was to show what was the difference
between accepting APA's recommendations compared to the national average. So you're right in that the chart just shows typically one or I think maybe two percentage points at one point. But this is the average per test cycle. So using your example of the .29, that would have been multiplied. well that's in Arkansas so that's probably not a because that was just a point of reference but
we'll use that that would have been point that that's 0.29 that we've lost per test cycle since 2003 to 2019 so it's you would actually multiply that times the test cycles so it's it's larger than that but the what I was really trying to do with this chart is to really boil this down in a very simple way and say this is what was happening nationally this is how these states did before this is how they did after every point that's been brought out or about well we don't know how
they implement it legitimate questions legitimate questions all right but those would be the questions that we should ask before
we vote on it um because what we do what i've heard us do here is give opinions, very knowledgeable opinions, but they're opinions.
Look at data. This data is a lot of data points, a lot of data points, that are averaged out to show the change before and after the policy.
It shows that change based around how the national average on the same test was done. so
that's what it is i don't know if i got answered your question or not i am comfortable with the you know as i mentioned earlier i am comfortable that we have enough data points that this is derived from a lot of data points i'm comfortable that we have enough data points to show that this is legitimately statistically legitimate
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
38:48
so you don't think there's a margin of error that's measurable here you think this is about as good as it gets and it's it's
as accurate as any kind of data points because of
the input, amount of input that's gone into it.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
39:02
Right. Probably there's only one point that I would take exception to, and I didn't like it, and I listed it at the bottom. As an engineer, I'm very much, I want to show data. I want to show you what it is. I want to, if there's a little bit of a problem with the data, that's what's listed at the bottom. And you'll notice that there's one group that we do. oh, Maryland, we do not have a lot of data points beforehand.
They adopted in 2001, and our data system only starts in 1998. So that shows that, you know, I'd like to have more data points. So we have several data points there, but I'd like to have a few more data points there. But I don't think that that is the before, not the after, so I think it's probably okay. Thank you, Representative. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Speaker 99
40:05
Representative Beck appreciate the effort here and the collection of the data. I, too, am
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
40:11
a big data nerd. I love looking at stuff like this. One thing that I'm missing here, you can clarify, what is the gap in the time between implementation
Speaker 101
40:20
and the new test results that's a very good question
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
40:30
for the most part it is the next test cycle which would have been two years so what we did was i actually purposely delayed
two years before i started taking the after data because if you really think about it if someone were to adopt changes and the funding's changed and all that it would take a couple years for
that to take a point. There's one D.C., I believe it was D.C., that there was only
one year elapsed before we started taking data points, and that's just because of when they adopted the study. But the rest of them were at least two years.
Speaker 104
41:12
Follow-up, please. Data always tells a story, and there's certainly a story here, but I
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
41:20
know just for me personally, for anyone who spent any time at all in the public school system, you know that when you're looking at data, that you have to factor in that no two classes are the same. If you really want to look at reading progression, you don't look at what this year's fourth grade class did as compared to last year's fourth grade class,
because those two classes are not the same if you really want to look at the progress of implementation you have to compare what a student did last year as compared to what they did this year and so looking at a looking at a class of fourth grade reading and saying well they scored X and then two years of legislature two years of implementation another year of a test cycle now you're five years down the road and saying well we've implemented this let's test fourth graders and see how they're reading now there's not a lot of validity to that
because those two that that's a whole different specimen base of what you're testing and so there's a there is a large potential margin of error here when you look at the results of what one group of students did as compared to what another group of students did five years later it's not going to be a a guaranteed positive
Speaker 106
42:46
outcome, and we see that over and over with ACT Aspire.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
42:51
I appreciate your point. I do not agree with it. I would agree with it if there were one or two data points like you mentioned. Thousands of data points go into this data, not one or two. This is not one class. This is a whole state's worth of fourth grade class, using in your example, of fourth grade readers over a period from 1998 all the way to 2019. So the fact that it says that, well, one class
could be off, I agree with you 100% with that point.
But this, and this is what I mentioned earlier, the amount of data that's here is statistically, I think it's true. Now, there have been some
decent points made here that, you know, how did they all implement it well or whatever. And I can't answer those questions, but I did not cherry-pick any data. We took data from the people they had done the study for and said,
okay, these are our four, pull the data in, let's take a look at it. And so I do believe the data is small. I disagree with your statement that these margins have no statistical validity. I think you're wrong about that. Well,
Speaker 104
44:11
that's, we can just agree to disagree on that. Okay, that'll work. What concerns me about adequacy, though, is looking at the child today and where we
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
44:21
are as a state today with our abilities and our system to educate that child today.
Our goal is, through this, to find out where we're missing it, where we need to make changes, So that that student has a better chance three, four, five years down the road of being successful. It's not taking that student today and then comparing another student five years
Speaker 109
44:46
down the road in the same class. It's just not apples to apples, but thank you
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
44:52
for putting this together. I agree with what you're saying there as far as the classes.
But again, you have to understand, multiple classes here. are a lot of there's a lot of data here that feeds into this the the data I think is very accurate is if you take the parameter that this data is showing I believe that it's very accurate as to how these people did before and after one of the things I would and I would tell the complete committee to take a close look at this don't get hung up on you you're going into how you teach in school we are hiring a company or we're we're going to debate as to whether or not to hire a
company to decide whether or not they can best judge how we should fund our schools to make sure that we educate our children this is a study that says of the four states that you did the exact same study for this was the results of their before and after so this is really not about children as you would, people want to take, and I understand that, you want to take the children but it's not about children, it's about how well APA did their job.
Representative Beck, I heard you say something about the study. The exact same study, or did
they do the exact same study we are asking for? Well, I mean, we have specifications. They were asked to do a study, They
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
46:21
completed that study. Those recommendations were followed or not followed. And that's, it's really a decision. You're just talking about the studies they've done. Some were followed, some were not.
It's true of their past history. Okay. I didn't think that they were probably doing the exact same study we're asking for.
Speaker 118
46:38
No. I would not know that. Representative Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. With all the data points, I think we're seeing a trend. You haven't used that word. We may not predict individual scores in individual schools, and there may be a slight margin of error here or there, but in general, your study indicates a trend that we're seeing. Would that be an accurate statement?
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
47:06
If I can qualify that just a little bit.
You always do. What it shows is you're right. You're right in that it takes the general. But what it's shown is if you look at the data, there are some deviations within the data. There are states that did poorly in one attribute and did better in other attributes. It very well could be that
maybe APA told them, you've got to fix this, and they adopted that and it worked. That could
be a possibility. It's just the data showing how everything shows.
I mean, it is the data on how these states did after they adopted the APA recommendation. thank you
for that question do we have i'll ask you another question do we have data that shows what we uh have after we did our study in 2000 and what was it 2003 we have data that showed that that make even difference in our adequacy study we did then it's the first line on the chart i mean that what is that
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
48:13
percentage growth it's a very first line okay it's very it's very
first bar chart. Point one oh. Yeah I put it uh which which on which
fourth which class. So does that prove that we should never do a uh a data study or do I'm not do a data study but never do a uh consultant anywhere since it's not
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
48:38
working for any states anywhere. Just asking your personal opinion. In my personal opinion it shows that the studies at best do not these companies do not have the secret sauce that you
take what they say and it works it shows that and that and that's
just not apa i'm not i'm not digging on them because if you look at arkansas it did it did this we see we see a dip in arkansas in some attributes and
some attributes arkansas did better i believe but i mean yeah so different different people did that study so right okay you
Speaker 126
49:14
ready for another one sure can i walk out of the well thank you chairman um and thank you representative beck for your efforts thank you for that um rather
Speaker 127
49:26
than going to the statistical analysis of what you did and breaking that down in terms of how you come to some of this there's lots of questions about that but i won't deal with that obviously you're presenting something to us we have to make a decision so you're giving us information so what we have to determine is is that information reliable to help us make a decision what makes this unreliable is the things that you consider you continue to say to questions of implementation who of whosoever recommendations that were made recommendations were made
you're in this case apa's recommendations were made in various states you have others listed as well because of the dissimilarities of the variables and because you do not know and none of us know whether once those good or bad recommendations were given to a particular state what the state did with them now you're asking us to utilize that they were hired to do study and then the final results of growth or decline over a period of time
to make a decision of their of us making a decision of whether or not to choose them because that's what we are we're in a choosing position other than that we just have no conversation but we cannot determine what's critical to this if I go to the doctor and the doctor give me a good give me good advice as to what I should do about my health and I don't do that and I die it's not the doctor's fault the doctor didn't do a bad job I did a bad job in implementing what he
gave me I didn't take the medicine I did it as I chose to do it so therefore we can't use that to say that's a bad doctor because Murdoch died you can't do that or that's a good doctor because Murdoch lived necessarily what I'm trying to say is because of what you don't know all you're presenting you don't know you're looking puzzled but you say you don't know the doctor gave them recommendations we don't know how much they used we don't know what the
Department of Education did we don't know what the politics of that state did we don't know what happened with those recommendations so if I would get if they were given something proper they could have helped if implemented at 100 percent then this will become more of a usable document now explain what you did not understand about what I was saying when I see it that it was not as prescribed possibly well I was having a little trouble with your example if it
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
52:12
is simple example in the world if a doctor recommended
that you did something and you did it and you died that might indicate now
that there's an issue with that doctor not necessarily that's a sample size of one and that's always dangerous but if that doctor made recommendations to thousands of people as to how they should do something and all of those people had negative health influences as a result of their recommendation then that would indicate
that maybe that doctor is not the
Speaker 127
52:47
best doctor in the world. But the thing we don't know, Representative Beck, that you acknowledge that we don't know, is how much any of them have used what they gave them. We don't know how much. We don't know if they use seven of the ten, four of the six, or nine of the ten. We don't
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
53:06
know that. So therefore we can't use this data. Well, two of the states reported that they did adopt the recommendations. Two of the states said that they only partially adopted it so we do
Speaker 127
53:16
know that two states. Implementation adopting and then utilizing
we as a legislature can adopt something right but then when it's given to the various departments for utilization and implementation sometimes things are done in total sometimes they are not. So I think the point is clear that I'm making is that when it's prescribed or recommended and we don't know the usefulness of that or how much it was used, then we can't
determine, we can't use the end result as being the only answer. That's all I really had to say. Well, and
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
53:57
I appreciate that. And obviously you don't believe the data and that's fine. I understand that no
Speaker 127
54:03
that's not what I'm saying it's not what I'm saying you is not drawing a conclusion that you're that we are here to make today because if we were just giving giving this in a different form then I could deal with this but this is whether you're saying that or not by you being here for this decision today this is painting a picture of somebody that's a candidate for
this this consultant opportunity and so by you painting this picture of them through this statistical analysis you this is conclusive if we just used it but what we're saying to you and you're hearing it from so many that because of the things you don't know about what they did in terms of the actual implementation of their recommendations you don't know and we don't know now the The end result can be because the user did not obey recommendations.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
54:59
We just don't know. I do agree with your statement, but
again, this data is the result of the study that was ordered in APA. You're right. I cannot tell you whether the states were faithful in every school district did that. That's the point. That's the point. That's the point
with any decision that we make here. This is data to make this decision that says that you should look at the data
and determine whether or not their recommendations were helpful. But you
don't know if they took the medicine. Two of them said they did, and two of them said they partially did
it. Okay. Thank you, Chairman. I'm going to ask that nobody else punch in. We've still got quite a few over here. I'm going to let you all get to you, but we're going to have to move on after this. But I'm going to recognize Senator Hammer at this time. He's been waiting patiently. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
56:01
Representative Beck, just two questions. The five states that are taking into consideration in this report, they are not all apple-to-apple comparison as far as the data being the same in all five, but the data sampling and points of data are large enough that it would not influence the results very much across the board on any of them because it's such a large data point gathering is that a fair statement in my opinion yes okay then secondly on the basis of that when i look at the results that are given
dc seems to be the one three out of four categories they showed that by implementing the recommendations that they had gains one did not but in the other four states with the exception of page four Maryland 2001 all the other states failed to keep up with the national average on the basis of the recommendations that were
given to them am I interpreting that correctly I
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
57:15
haven't looked through the whole all the data I I'm hesitant I did not want to make a determination of the data I want to I
want to explain what the charts show and let everyone make
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
57:27
their own determination okay but my understand what the chart is showing is that in DC in three out of four areas they made improvements but in all the other states with the exception of one category which is found on page four for
maryland they did not they fell behind on the basis of the recommendations and i understand there's a sidebar argument about the purity of the data but i just want to make sure i'm interpreting the chart right that is what the chart shows that is correct thank you thank you mr chair
Speaker 142
58:00
representative birch you are next thank you mr
Speaker 144
58:05
chair and thank you representative beck because i wouldn't have been aware of this study but for your you're pointing it out and when I first looked at I thought
it was an independent study something completely out of the blue to look at the efficiency of these adequacy studies but in fact it was prepared for the Department of Education in Maryland to look at adequacy studies and the evolution of them and what to first ask for isn't that true do we say that I don't understand isn't it true that this comprehensive study that would you are quoting from was prepared for the maryland department of education so that they could look at what kinds of adequacy studies best resulted in and the questions that adequacy
studies should ask and look to so that they could get the most out of their
Speaker 145
58:52
future adequacy studies isn't that true let me try to answer that
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
59:01
yes yes or no well i i
want to maybe get a qualification here the data that was put together was not from all the other states was not from
Speaker 147
59:11
another report it was put together for the department of education in maryland i i
Speaker 144
59:15
just read read through it so it's a yes answer unless you're reading something different my second question all the
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
59:23
data on the chart was were points it's it's simply the points absolutely points for four
Speaker 144
59:31
or five four states right but this study actually looked at 39 different adequacy studies out of 24 states where are the
Speaker 149
59:39
other 20 states reported for us today i i looked at i have the
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
59:45
raw data if you'd like to look at i looked at the data from these
Speaker 144
59:51
states only and and so did the department of
maryland's education and they came up with a conclusion that i just wanted to point out that the statistics that we're talking about that the how we move statistics we can all argue statistics always I just want to point out that there are actually 24 different states that were studied we're looking at four and what the conclusion of that study was was here are the best practices to ask people that are doing adequacy studies to get the best results and the nice thing about the study that you pointed out to us is now we have some very specific conclusions on how we can make
sure that whatever group we look to we make sure that they in fact use some of these the the focused improvement how you look at professional judgment panels there are four specific areas that it says you need to be looking to and we can look to okay apa is doing professional judgment panels and going around specifically because we asked them extensively about how they would do their study they would be fulfilling what the recommendation of this study is that you're reporting to us So I just wanted to say thanks for putting that all out, and I'll be looking for the other 20 states that weren't reported to us today that are
Speaker 149
1:01:03
reported in this review that you're talking about.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:01:07
I can tell you that I did not see
the review that you're referring to. My review was done strictly off of the data points for the test. The change in values and everything was done strictly off the data points for the file. Now, I'm not saying that there's not another
one out there that has more different. I
Speaker 144
1:01:27
just Googled a comprehensive review of state equity studies since 2003 to look at the statistics. I'm just saying there's more states out there besides these four that have been studied.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:01:39
Yeah, someone else may have done. I went back, and the
criteria for the states that were selected were the ones that most recently did APA. I was looking at them because that was the company we were looking for. Or that we're trying to consider
that that was the reason I look for the data, but I I'm unaware of the other report. I'm sorry. Thank you Thank you madam chair And and and thank you
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:02:12
Representative Beck for taking my question. I'm trying to understand the efficacy of your of your debate you are saying that because these and these individual states did not do as well it is predicated on recommendations rather than implementation and I think that's where you and I have a problem because I can recommend but if I don't implement I'm not going to get a good result so So did you go deeper into what recommendations were implemented that caused DC to be above
the norm and the other states to be below the norm? Because it could be that the efficacy of your report hinges on, as Representative Murdoch was saying, and not trying, said it very well, the implementation rather than the recommendation. And we continue to act as if these states implemented everything that was recommended to them by APA. That's a problem for me. Secondly, what do we have in the way of showing the difference made between the sure recommendations on public schools?
Do we have a similar chart to show what difference they made in the states to which they went? So that if we are going to be considering these two entities, we ought to be seeing, or I would have anticipated, since we're making a great deal about you being the engineer, you would have engineered a study between the two that were proposed. what did Shul do and what recommendations did they make and did
their recommendations make a substantial difference between the recommendations that APA made and the study cannot tell you I don't care how many little squiggles we have what the implementation was. Comment from
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:04:21
you. well thank you I you're right I
did not look at any others and the reason I didn't was because based upon some of my other colleagues statements that the
other group had no prior had been I heard statements like they were just put together for Arkansas and all that so I did not look to see if they had done any previous because according to my colleagues here, they were just put together for Arkansas, so they would not have any previous data. When I went to look at this data, and I appreciate some of my colleagues are giving me more credit than I think is due for going out there, I went out to look to see. I was trying to make my personal decision as to whether or not AP was
worth the money. AP bothered me a little bit when they were at three quarters of a million dollars, dropped down to a half a million dollars and said we're still going to get a good deal. So I said, well, let's see what they did. And I went out to look to see how they did. You're right, I did not look at the others, but that was based upon I was operating under the input from my colleagues that they didn't have a record, so I did not go out and look at that. Again, as far as the implementation, I know that keeps coming up.
the implementation that factor keeps coming up I did not look at that but I think that would be a great thing for this committee before it votes to take a look and see how it was implemented I don't have you off, you're still on well I didn't
do it Let me put the yellow again. You know, you and all George is for cutting me off.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:06:20
You're actually on. No, I'm not on. Are you waiting? I'm waiting, but I'm not knocking. All right, are you on? You got a bunch of energy now. Yes. Well, now, we'll just see about that. Sing it,
sing it. Here comes Santa Claus. Here comes Santa Claus. I guess, Representative Beck, I am concerned as we look at this.
One of the reasons that the bid dropped was because of the specificity of what we wanted changed. So, am I correcting that, Mr. Chair, or are you even listening to me? Oh, well, it's par for the course. Madam Chair, is it not true that we changed the scope of the study and that's why the cost went down? Thank you. So, I just wanted to make that point. They went from here to here, and the last thing we got here was that we wanted to do both of them,
which means then that if one is in opposition to the other, then we have a lawsuit ready to happen, and we have what we say are expert witnesses on either side of the same subject. So just wanted to make that point. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Lowry. This
is the last one, just to let you
Speaker 168
1:07:46
all know. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're going to move on. Representative Beck, thank you for your work. Welcome to the criticism I
Speaker 169
1:07:54
used to always hear from my debate students
of how unfair it was that all the negative side has to do is come up with some wild anecdotal or hypothetical situation to shoot down all the research that the affirmative side has presented. One example, for instance, of an indictment that is off record was saying that there were 39 studies and you cherry-picked. there were 39 studies but they weren't all done by APA the Mackinac Center says that APA has only done 13 of them between 2003 and 2014 so you actually
pulled a pretty representative sample of four out of 13 39 includes all adequacy studies from all firms not just APA the the main question I wanted to ask you is And I understand that there are a lot of, there's been discussion about all the different factors that cannot be explained in looking at these trends. But isn't that the reason why a baseline is established to look at all trends across the country, what the national average is, and then where these specific states came down in terms of that baseline?
because the baseline actually does factor in statistically all possible changes that may have happened, all causal relationships that may have happened. Is that not correct why a baseline is used to try and factor in all the other elements that might be part of either educational gain or educational loss? That is correct.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:09:42
And to elaborate a little bit on that, during the point in time that this data was taken, there were some things that went on in education that we pulled back now.
And what you'll see is if you actually look at the raw data during those periods, you're going to see some dips occurring in overall reading and math scores as a result of, I feel like as a result of those changes that we put in place. Now, the reason you're exactly right, the reason I subtracted out the national average was to say that whatever happened happened to everybody, or should have for the most part happened to everybody. and it would mitigate any changes associated with a national trend or anything of that nature.
So that's why I did put the baseline and
Speaker 169
1:10:37
put it above and below the baseline. Thank you. And let me just do one follow-up, and you can respond to this or not, but it seems like to me all of the indictment of not factoring in, not being able to factor in all of the different elements of implementation, for instance we you know we've had reading success programs but we're finding out that school districts have just not been implementing them it seems like all of this criticism that
we've heard from those who are saying you don't have a way of factoring in all this other stuff seems to be an indictment of us even assessing our students because uh you know whether a little Johnny had a cold the day he took the test and we didn't account for that so I guess our fellow legislators are saying well we need to just forget assessments period because we can't factor in all of the other causal relationships that are there and I think that you've done a more than adequate
job of being able to show us a baseline and actually put into play that it does adjust for the dips and the rises and all of the other environmental and external influences that could affect performance. So thank you, and if you have any follow-up to
Speaker 168
1:11:57
that, I'd be glad to hear it. Is that the last question? You're welcome to respond to
that, but I'm ready to move on as soon as possible.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:12:10
I would like to just close, just real brief. Go ahead. All right. All right.
Thank you. Colleagues, this data is exactly what I presented to you. It was originally put together for myself. When I saw the data, it was very complicated. There are thousands of points here. Hats off to BLR for helping me out with this. They helped me put this report together because I wanted to be able to show the before and after, the AP test there are a lot of other factors and we all recognize that and that is why I said I'll
put the data in a format that I can explain to the group hopefully I've done that for you guys you can use the data or not or you know you might say it has validity you might say it doesn't but I can assure you it has a lot of points going to it it's based against a national standard test that we get. I would argue that the people who would say that this is not valid or the people who say, well, we don't know how implemented and things like that would say then what good is the
national test? Because every argument that you can say against this report, you could also say against a national assessment. That national assessment is no good. So my question would be is why would we do that? But my intentions were really not to put any my opinion on this. I don't know if I've done a very good job of that or not, but it's there for you to take a look at. There was no intention. I did not cherry pick any data. I went to BLR and I said, I want to know who they did. The first people I looked at were the people who gave us recommendations. Those were
the ones that we went and they recommended APA. So I thought, well, great. Let's go back and take a look at that data. I did that and I found that there was not enough time. They had not implemented it quick enough and they didn't have enough time to really get any after data. So then I went back and I said, well, give me the most recent ones back from that. And that's where these states came from. They were not cherry-picked from any data. I did not look at any data before I selected the states. The states were just the last states and they're just for AP.
Thank you. And if you have any more questions,
they'll add for words. We appreciate your information. love picking on you also at this time uh senator
hammer you are recognized to come down and he has a little bit of stuff he wants to talk about and just for your information that apa and shuls both worked in maryland on their reports up there so they have shuls has done something in maryland is that correct senator
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:14:54
sterch thank you senator hammer you
are recognized and let me brief
everybody uh you should have got an email this morning with some information that senator hammer sent out about illinois and nevada if you didn't it's on your email i don't have copies to hand out to everyone so if you want to reference something he's going to just talk about it briefly and then we're going to move on try to keep everybody in their seats today to see if we can do what we want to do if we don't want if we don't do it then we don't do it so um senator
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:15:28
hammer you're up thank you mr chair members committee i'm not here to uh persuade you or anything i appreciate the opportunity just to share maybe a concept with you be glad to answer
any questions uh having sat through some of the meetings with y'all and trying to be diligent about the issue at hand i asked the bureau of the whenever the two companies or the various companies submitted their bid they included references and my question to the staff was i'd like to look at the states where they did work but they didn't list them as references because to me that's where you can really kind of find out some behind the scene things because whenever we put in a job application we never put down where we got last you know fired last
will always put the shining stuff so the staff just independently I didn't direct them they picked out four states and we were able to get responses from two of those states one was the Illinois State Board of Education and the other one was the Nevada Department of Education and they asked them seven basic questions and the reason that I asked them to do this was because regardless of whether the committee recommends selecting a consulting firm to do an analysis
of the adequacy issue what I would like to just ask the committee to consider is what would it take in order to have a second opinion kind of like we go to the doctor and we don't like the opinion that we get or we have questions about it before they do surgery we may go to a doctor for second opinion obviously we're not going to pay that second doctor as much as we do the one that's going to do the surgery but in situations of severity especially dealing with this subject I just wanted to know what would it cost
to get a second opinion and so what we found out was that actually in the state of Maryland where APA did some of the work that there was a entity a private entity that paid to have an analysis of the recommendations of APA in Maryland and the cost was an estimated they didn't want to reveal the exact contract price because it was a private entity but they did reference that it was in a range of 10 to 15 thousand dollars to have a second look at the recommendations that apa put out i'm not here to debate is apa better than
shules that's not my place nor would i insult the committee by trying to tell you that i'm just simply asking and giving you a point of reference that if you do choose to pick one of the consultants it might not be a bad idea to have a second RFP for another company, not the one that gets the original one, but to have a second company do a recommendation or a review of the recommendations that are given. And then that way it could be done through the competitive bid process. I did ask Jill to draft up what it might look like so you could use it as a point of reference to get
the discussion started. But for the money that we're going to be spending, if you choose to go that route I don't think it would be too big of an ask to say well let's have a second opinion and here's what might happen by that just say there's 10 recommendations that come down from APA and whoever does the review of APA's work and brings a report back if seven of the 10 areas were agreed upon that's great set those seven to the side and then we could focus our attention on the three that were not agreed upon maybe use our staff or the Department of Ed to help us do a
drill down on those those three and that would help save some of the money that's just a friendly suggestion I would offer up before you and your deliberation to consider did the legwork to give you an idea that this has been done before in another state Nevada I think it is was the state that did that and if I may met mr. chair it was the state of Nevada and this is what they said could I read just real quickly thank you the seventh question that the
staff asked was are there any important questions I should have asked but I didn't and the answer of the Nevada Department was she indicated that they have a complimentary contract with West Ed she said the reason they do this is so the Department of Education can demonstrate that they have more than one quote player at the table and that way people know that they are getting unbiased opinions. This demonstrates the department is not, quote, selling one point or view of view, but rather is getting multiple points of view. So like the Bible says, there's
nothing new under the sun. Nevada has done what I'm proposing to you this morning, and I would just say that for the additional pennies on the dollar compared to the overall contract, it would be a good checks and balance system for y'all to consider. I'll be glad to answer any questions, and
thank you for your time. I have one question. Senator Sturge. Thank
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
1:20:25
you, Mr. Chair. Senator Hammer, I was driving in when I got the email that you just referenced.
I was going to see the two states that you said gave us more questions, or answered the seven questions back to us. Anything glowing that you noticed bad about them, good about them, anything beyond what we already
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:20:45
have been given about their references? Sure. and again we asked four states we got two to respond of those two states that responded the only criticism that was really given um was that they suggested that somebody else edits their report because their grammar punctuation and penmanship was not very good
that was the criticism that was given about the report by apa imagine what they'd say about the legislature i'm married to an english teacher she for the most part proofs all my work for us send
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:21:17
it out or i answer for it at the end of the day thank you senator hammer for your information members i appreciate what
y'all are doing the deliberation thank you committee i'm going to give you some options of what could happen or can happen today we had already selected a contract with apa that we could have a motion i'm going to tell you how
the motions would have to be today to do anything we can have a motion to move to recommend alc reconsider the apa contract if if you don't want to do that if you wanted to contract with shules you would have to expunge the boat by which blr was authorized to contract with apa and then move to authorize BLR to contract with Shul's. That motion to expunge would take 14 in the House
and 5 in the Senate to expunge. If you want to contract with both, you would have to have a motion to authorize BLR to contract with APA and Shul's. Those are the options you have if you want to do any
of those. I'm going to take Representative Dotson, you
were first in line Thank you Mr. Chair
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:22:41
I wasn't able to make the last committee meeting I was out of pocket so I didn't get to comment on anything but just wanted to give my perspective on it we've had a lot of discussion on one consultant, two consultants back and forth APA, Shoals, and the like, and, you know, after hearing all the back and forth and discussion
over the last several months, you know, my opinion has changed from going from just exclusively, probably none, to get a balanced approach from both consultants, and so I'm supportive of hiring both consultants to get a good, balanced perspective. I don't like the fact of possibly spending a lot more money, but I think when we're dealing
with something as large as education in the state and the future of our kids across the entire state that making sure we get the best recommendations. We don't know which one's going to give us the best recommendations. It's our job to make the decision after we get those recommendations, but to try to figure out what the best practices are and what the perspectives are from various folks, I don't
know that one side or the other is necessarily right or wrong. I think we're all in education together. It's not a partisan issue. It's the future of our state, and so I want to make sure that we have perspective from everybody, and so that's what I'm advocating for, and I'd make a motion
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:24:54
Let me hold for just a sec. I guess the third of the options that you mentioned there would be a motion to hire
both consultants. All right. We have a motion to hire both consultants. Is
there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any other discussion?
you have discussion center I have a bunch of people that was signed up do other things I'm well okay these are all discussion motions
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
1:25:53
I got people in here okay representative Eubanks thank you mr. chair my only question is I think since this motion has already failed in council is it gonna are we gonna get a
different result by sending it back to
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:26:13
them again We don't know. That's a different committee. Representative Lauer, you have a question or
Speaker 169
1:26:21
comment? Well, I actually do, and it's kind of along the same lines of what Representative Eubanks was just asking. I was not president of ALC. I was at the SREB meeting when that took place. But my understanding of what took place in ALC was not a motion to send this back to the Education Committee, but a denial of the contract.
And as such, for us to take it up again would require new motions, not expunging of previous votes. And I think to do otherwise is gaming the system. I know that that's the motion that you would prefer that we have to act on, that the House has to come up with 14 votes to expunge a vote that is no longer in force. That motion to send a recommendation of whether it's APA or whether it's APA and Schultz is dead.
It died. Now, we can continue to take this up meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting, but the bottom line is if it's been killed at the ALC level we can only take it up if we take up a new motion and that that is that's the input that I have and I just think in terms of fairness we have we have voted on this thing at least four or five times and I think that we have to recognize that there's a point where where motions die and the not only did the two contract
motion die at ALC but so did the motion or the substitute motion to only hire APA and as such we can only take up a new motion we cannot go back and take up a motion that has been killed so I'll probably have more to say on that later but I thought I would interject
that at this point I believe the motion, if the first one I mentioned would be a motion to recommend ALC reconsider the contract.
So that would actually be a new motion. We would still have to pass that here to get there. But which motion would they be considering? The one we sent to them originally, APA. That's for APA. I'm just saying, we're not voting on that
Speaker 169
1:28:43
right now. We're voting on something else. well i would just think in terms of the the layers that are involved here you cannot bypass policymaking the subcommittee no
we're going policy it would go to policymaking it would go back to policymaking again
Speaker 169
1:28:57
well then i would say that if alc rejected the motion that came out of
policymaking that it would go back to policymaking rather than skipping over policymaking and coming all the way back to education. Well, there was actually two motions
at ALC that day, and they both died that day because the original. Correct, and both motions were
Speaker 169
1:29:17
also made in policymaking. So just in proper sequencing, you send it back to the subcommittee that submitted that motion rather than going all the way back. Oh, it would go back to policymaking, yes. That's
where it would go. It would have to be reconsidered there.
Speaker 169
1:29:32
What I'm saying is that policymaking would have to take up the two motions that were rejected by the full ALC if it comes back all the way to us then we only take up new motions and the new motion is whether to recommend APA or whether to recommend APA and Shul they have to be new motions voted on by the house and the
senate and that and that's basically it but I'm taking mine from BLR that's
I mean not BLR but from from from the head person
that we do this with through our RFP and that's the way they said that works now it would be a new motion basically but it would be also a motion it would be the same motion they would be reconsidering the same contract and we and as such should be and we'll see how this should be a fresh motion it should be a fresh motion well it could be a fresh motion but it's still going to be the same contract same contract we have a motion on the floor we were discussing another one
motion on the floor is to authorize bill or to contract with apa and schules that is a motion I had a different
Speaker 198
1:30:58
motion, but I think we can go ahead and vote on this one before I'm going to mess with anything else and just make us be here for an extra hour with substitute motions and all that. I'm so tired of all these motions. It's driving
me nuts. I would appreciate no substitute motions if we don't have to. Senator Chesterfield.
I just dropped you off, but I didn't mean to. If you want
to. Yeah, I meant to do it. No, I didn't. That's right. You
good? You're not good with me, but I mean, you're good. All right. Seeing no more discussion, we're going to do a roll call. It will separate Senate and House. Unless you don't want to do a roll call, you want me to call it? I figured you'd want to do a roll call. Let's start with the House.
Speaker 202
1:31:53
Representative Meeks. Representative Meeks not responding. Representative Deffenbaugh. No. Representative Deffenbaugh, no. Representative Eubanks. Representative Eubanks, no. Representative Lowry. Aye. Representative Lowry, aye. Representative Dotson. Aye. Representative Dotson, aye. Representative De La Rosa? No. Representative De La Rosa, no.
Representative Grant Hodges? Representative Grant Hodges, not voting. Representative Beck? Yes. Representative Beck, yes. Representative Sullivan? Aye. Representative Sullivan, aye. Representative Speaks? Aye. Representative Speaks, no. Representative Vaught? No. Representative Vaught? No. Representative Burch? No.
Representative Burch? No. Representative Allen? No. Representative Allen? No. Representative Kavanaugh? Representative Kavanaugh, not voting. Representative Garner? No. Representative Garner? No. Representative Evans? No. Representative Evans? No. Representative Murdoch? No. representative colzart no while she's tallying that i can
tell you by listening it failed so that motion failed so
that does mean i i guess the senate doesn't have to vote on that if they don't want to so we'll go on to uh another motion if someone has one i've read you the motions if somebody has a motion you're welcome to chime in.
Speaker 198
1:33:51
I have Representative De La Rosa. I move that we send the recommendation that we originally made back to ALC and respectfully request that they respect our
original decision. That would be a vote for contracting with APA with their contract that
they propose to us that good enough for y'all so basically it could be a new motion or it could be same thing so all right we have a motion and a second any discussion seeing none we
will call the roll and we will start with the Senate wait a minute you have you have discussion hold on
just a All right, I didn't see you chime in that quick. Go ahead.
Speaker 169
1:34:40
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I recognize now that this is a new motion, so I apologize for my rant or whatever.
You know, we hear over and over again that we need to make decisions based on empirical evidence, and I think Representative Beck did the best job he could in terms of bringing that information to us. But there's plenty of other information that's out there that looks at adequacy studies, and they have not, the Mackinac Center for Education study has done a study of APA's recommendations,
and it's not a very glowing recommendation. For one thing, it says that APA, their tour de force is that in the 13 states between 2003 and 2014, that they have made recommendations, adequacy recommendations, and each and every one of them, they have recommended funding increases. The Mackinac study points out that the bulk of existing research finds no statistically significant correlation between increased spending and student performance.
We have received our own study. I believe it was Senator Hester that had requested in the last two years an analysis done by BLR that would look to see if there is a statistically significant correlation between increased spending and student performance. And Richard Wilson, with BLR at that time, presented that to us and said it is a null hypothesis. There is absolutely no relationship between increased spending.
So if APA has a track record in 13 of the instances where they have done adequacy studies, every one of them recommending increased spending, then they are cutting against the grain of what the research shows is truly about adequacy. You know, one thing that we hardly ever discuss is that adequacy is also about efficiency. And the Mackinac Center looked at, they said that in Michigan, for instance,
APA identified 54 Michigan districts as notably successful, but 19 of those achieved similar results while spending less money. I think that this is an indictment of APA in terms of their track record. All those states that said, you know, we had no problems with them, positive references, whatever. However, the point is, I think Representative Beck's study is very appropriate that in those
cases, they recommended funding increases in the cases that he presented, and not only did they have funding increases, but they had lower student achievement. And I just think we need to take that into consideration. we can do a study. We should be doing a study using the legislature because that's what the Lakeview case dictated. That's what the Supreme Court dictated. That's what we're under right now is that we have the responsibility
not just for voting on the final analysis but actually doing the study. And I think to go outside of that is to be looking at a framework that, based on the historical basis of what APA has done, shows lack of success. And I'm not so sure that I want us to be liable as a legislature
for a group that has actually shown 13 different times recommendations where the research cuts against that. so I know we've heard it enough yay and nay and I would just ask that you would vote no and let's get really serious about us doing the work thank you representative Lowry
there was reason for the legislature to do their own study why did they do one with Odom and Pacus
originally that was that was done originally by the legislature they didn't do it their self they didn't come up with original you don't have to respond. I'm just going to, I'm going to state my own statements here. And if we had time to do that, that would be great. About half of you in here have campaigns that you're going to be working on through November. You're not going to have time to do this. So we've, we've talked about this. We beat that drum pretty hard, but we also, this RFP does not have any money numbers in it. We told
them specifically, we do not want money numbers. We want results. We want to figure out how we can do results figure out how we can make things work but we do not want money numbers attached to it so that's not supposed to be in there I don't know why it would be in there and everybody keeps thinking it is but if I'm wrong then I may be wrong but I think we can also direct them again to make sure that doesn't happen because we're not looking for money numbers we I agree we know that money does not give you better results does not make kids do any better you can pay a teacher
all they want in the world for money and they're not going to be a better teacher because you pay them more so i understand that so that's why we did not ask we asked not to have numbers attached to the to their recommendations so that's just my my two cents on that i
have two more set up here Senator Elliott Thank you,
Speaker 209
1:40:39
Mr. Chair and your comments will go a long way
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:40:43
toward making mine briefer and I'm sure you will appreciate that but I just want to point out that I think Representative I forgot your Representative Lowry Representative Lowry, I almost call you Representative Mark, I think Representative Lowry does have a point about the efficiency, and that is a part of what's required of us constitutionally, which is one of the things that really is confounding for me, because we went from changing from APA or considering something else because that costs too much money.
and then we have a motion on no let's spend that much money just a little bit even more so we can have two studies and that's not efficient use of the taxpayer's money um because when we would not what we just actually said to AP APA basically that's we're not going to spend that much money that's when they redid what they had to do based on on our narrowing the contract but I also want point out that you know there's there may be a correlation but there certainly
is not a causation between a report that somebody gives us an adequacy study we just cannot make the case that we either do very well or we don't do well and the cause of that is the study because the study the study is there I doubt even if there's a correlation because of the other factors that are included so I want to point out that I think everybody in here is serious we're
not up here just spending two hours or three hours or whatever it's been today just to be up here and we are going to need the study and it's not as if we don't want to I don't think that we don't want to do what's the best for for our kids and I have to agree I don't think our committee is in any position to to do that so I hope we will end this today and come down we we have the two options here and come down on the side of let's get the study and get it going
and move on because nothing's gonna be perfect but I know from 2003 when we want to do this study we knew we didn't have the capacity to do it we don't have the capacity to do it again here 16 years later that's pretty empirical evidence. I hope we'll follow it. Thank you. Senator
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:43:41
Johnson. Thank you Mr. Chair and I'll
try to be brief on this. I appreciate the whole the whole committee and not just today. I think this is a very positive thing although it doesn't feel that way sometimes that we sit here and we deliberate and pray for a favorable result. Mr. Chair and before I even bring this up I'm going to preface by saying after you did this you apologized to me. When we first started talking about this I indicated some problems with the process and you alluded to the fact that I was
a freshman and inexperienced and I certainly stipulated to that and you later and I didn't think it was necessary but you later apologized for that and again don't think an apology was necessary because you just stated facts but I countered your comment with the fact that even though I am a freshman senator I've been in and around this legislature in this process for the greater part of my life and certainly remember 1983 when the Clinton administration and that
time the first lady who later became a senator and secretary of state was involved in the process and we doing all the things we've tried to do from time to time to improve education in our state. So I went back to talk to some of the people from that period of time that worked on that including the person who actually wrote the legislation and the sponsor of the legislation on having an adequacy study and that was former Representative David Matthews of
Northwest Arkansas, a Democrat, and I don't even think he would would have a problem with me saying a liberal Democrat, and former representative, former Speaker, former Senator Shane Broadway, who was a sponsor of the bill. And both of them pointed out to me that they didn't see a mandate or anything that we turn to some outside entity dump this on them and then have to go up or down on their advice and I and I that was my whole point then and
I'm right back I've gone full circle I've looked at one or the other or both and I'm backward where I stand I just I think that we don't need to add to abdicate our responsibility now that the committee has decided not to get two separate sets of advice and I was willing to even go the extra mile dollar and spend a little extra and get two consultants with two different perspectives with the idea that you can't get too much advice. I also think about how if the Defense Department is in a procurement process
and they need a new fighter plane, they don't go to Lockheed and say, give us a fighter plane. They go to Lockheed and Northrop Grumman and maybe Boeing or whoever, and they get prototypes and they pick and choose based on the competitive designs. and hopefully come up with a better product for the nation's defense. And I'm hoping we could, I hoped through that process we might could have come up with that. But the committee has decided not to seek multiple perspectives of advice.
So I go back to the thing that you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, about that there's no specific dollar amounts in the RFP and it's specifically prohibited that they do that. But, you know, if we're going to buy a fighter plane and we say we need a fighter plane that goes 3,000 miles an hour and can make a 28G turn and has a climb rate of this or that and all that, that has a dollar amount on it, regardless of whether we write it in there or not.
So we're looking at, I'm afraid, writing a blank check or having a consultant tell us we must write a blank check and then someone in the joint budget is going to have to sit there and come up with numbers or people of ADE or BLR are all going to have to have input of this is what X, Y, and Z costs. That bothers me. But that's why I'm at the point now that I'm not ready to abdicate our responsibility to make those decisions.
I think we need to look to the next year over a process similar to what the Retirement Committee has done, going around the state and having hearings where various stakeholders can come in. The fact, and you appropriately point out, Mr. Chairman, the fact that people are going to be campaigning, it's hard to get people to show up I appreciate all those facts but that doesn't change the fact that we are responsible for making this decision or at least making this recommendation to ALC to
to hire somebody or not hire somebody and so for that reason I am going to vote no on this motion and I would suggest that perhaps we need to rise the occasion and do this job ourselves with the assistance of our ABLE staff and go back to something that, as Mr. Matthews said to me, we never envision bringing in some outside consultant to do something like that. Let's go back to the original idea that we will do this without having some possibly, I emphasize the word possibly biased
consultant that comes in with a knee-jerk bias toward the answer is spending more money. It may but that's something with all the stakeholders involved these two committees and the General Assembly must make a decision so I thank you for the opportunity to speak to that and I thank all of my colleagues for their heartfelt feelings those I agree with and those I sometimes disagree with I don't question your your motives at all I know every single one of you want to do the best thing we can for the students in our state thank you you filibustered that
real good this is my last one we have got to move on I know people keep popping in but we we're gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 127
1:50:00
make a decision we're gonna hear one more Reggie Murdoch you're up thank you sir appreciate the honor um to the to the senator that just spoke I I that's you were so nice and what you said that was very nice the way you talked to us about us but appreciate that it was very accurate let me be very quick because what you what you espouse is something that I've been saying in my 10 years here now
and the third time on the education committee and inadequacy comes up, the only mention or the major mention is money. And then we go backwards from the money. There is no way that we should as a body ask for an independent study and review of what we've done and tell those doing this study that they cannot discuss dollars.
As you just explained with the aircraft and the capacity of the aircraft, all of these directions have dollars, and they do not need to be sent back to us where then we come up with a predetermined number and then work backwards. That's what we've been doing that has yielded this inadequate activity. Please. But we do not have the capacity as legislators to do it. We don't have the time at all.
Ladies and gentlemen of the legislature, please, let's do our job. Allow them to do a real study, whoever we choose. But do not make it whereby they can't tell us the truth about what we have not done, Whether it's money-related, of how we've actually distributed the dollars, all of that determines adequacy. How are you taking that out? And because a particular firm that has applied to do this,
because they have a history of telling states that they have not spent money properly, that's not their fault. That's good if that's the case. please we should not go forward and handicap the consultant with you can only tell us this much about ourselves but because it costs dollars and because this is going to cost
let's just go in and do it the right way or let's do this let's leave this alone let's not even spend six, seven hundred thousand dollars you guys, if we're not going to get the truth and deal with the truth. Please, for 10 years, I've been begging, let's get the truth and then let's address it. The late view decision said for us to deal with the consequences and not consider the dollars. The first thing, and we're going to
have an RFP that says you can't include the dollars. How does that make sense? We're setting ourselves up for additional legal and we're sitting here on the mic, on the record saying don't tell us about the dollars. Wow. Please ladies and gentlemen, please reconsider and let's do things the right way. Thank you.
All right, we're going to call for the vote. Senate will be
Speaker 31
1:53:38
first on roll call. What's the motion? Pay a motion.
Speaker 217
1:53:48
Number one, APA recommendation. Y'all
Speaker 202
1:53:50
ready? Senator Chesterfield? Yes. Senator Chesterfield, yes. Senator Hendren? Senator Hendren not responding. Senator Cheatham?
Senator Cheatham, yes. Senator Eads, yes. Senator Johnson, no. Senator Johnson, no. Senator Sturge, yes. Senator Elliott, yes. Senator elliott yes senator English yes six okay six they
needed five of six and one no and
one non-voting which is not
here all right move to
Speaker 202
1:54:41
the house side Representative Meeks? Representative Meeks not responding. Representative Deffenbaugh? Yes. Representative Deffenbaugh? Yes. Representative Eubanks? Yes. Representative Eubanks? Yes. Representative Lowry? No. Representative Lowry? No. Representative Dotson? No. Representative Dotson? No. Representative Della Rosa? No. Representative Della Rosa? Yes. Representative Hodges?
Representative Hodges not responding. Yes. Representative Beck? Yes. Representative Beck? Yes. Representative Sullivan? No. Representative Sullivan? No. Representative Speaks? Yes. Representative Speaks? Yes. Representative Vaught? Yes. Representative Vaught? Yes. Representative Burch? Yes. Representative Burch? Yes. Representative Allen? Yes. Representative Kavanaugh? Yes. Representative Kavanaugh not responding.
Representative Garner? Yes. Representative Garner. Yes representative Evans Representative Evans. Yes representative Murdoch Representative Murdoch. Yes representative Cozart. Yes representative Cozart. Yes That is 12
three no's Looks like it the motions carry we will send that recommendation to to AOC
to policy committee and what else I got to add? You are your own. Please come
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:56:23
to the policy meeting which will be Wednesday at 11 a.m. And that
policy meeting is this week I believe. Wednesday at 11 a.m. i'm sorry
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:56:34
what day wednesday at 11 a.m it's on
the calendar 11 a.m if there's no other
business today i don't think we have anything on the agenda without a objection you are adjourned You
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Opening Remarks by Committee Chairs
C. Issues Related to Adequacy Consultants
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Representative Bruce Cozart Chair
Unverified
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 29
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
Speaker 46
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 54
Speaker 58
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
Speaker 75
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 99
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
Speaker 101
Speaker 104
Speaker 106
Speaker 109
Speaker 118
Speaker 126
Speaker 127
Speaker 142
Speaker 144
Speaker 145
Speaker 147
Speaker 149
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
Speaker 168
Speaker 169
Speaker 91
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Speaker 198
Speaker 202
Speaker 209
Speaker 31
Speaker 217