House Education Committee
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Representative James McLean
Unverified
0:00
Rather to do the people's business, we're glad all of the educational stakeholders made it today. I think it was probably safer to be in War Rock than it was to be anywhere else in the state because of the inclement weather. Members, as you know, we try to accommodate members running bills on this committee and not, so our agenda is subject to ebbing and flowing. We are not aware of any bills that are going to be run today.
If there are some members of the committee that are prepared to run bills, of course, we will hear them. Mark and I have not been apprised of any. So it looks like our agenda is going to be pretty much having an opportunity to listen to Dr. Ritter, who is with the Office for Educational Policy in Fayetteville. But before we get to Dr. Ritter's presentation, I want to recognize Representative Brent Talley. He is going to introduce some special guests that we have. Representative Talley, you are recognized, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Brent Talley
Unverified
1:01
It's my pleasure to introduce you today. We've got as our guest the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges Leadership Group is here in the audience with us today. There are 28 participants of this program. They come from 21 different colleges across the state, and they are part of a one-year program in leadership training. So great to have you with us and join us
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:26
today. And thank you, Representative Talley. I think that we all know, especially those of us that represent rural areas,
how important the two-year colleges are, not only to higher education, but to the continued economic growth of this area. I can speak for myself. UACCB, the community college in Batesville, is a dynamic presence in Independence County and is a very, very important part of the economic growth that we have sustained and are currently have in Independence County. So we appreciate two-year colleges, and we're very glad that you're here.
We also want to recognize Representative Bruce Cozart, who has a very, very, very special guest. Representative Cozart, you're recognized. I
Chair
Unverified
2:11
would like for you all to welcome my wife today, Debbie. She's right behind
Representative James McLean
Unverified
2:24
me, so thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Cozart and I have many things in common, including the best haircuts in the legislature. I'm also glad to see that we both overmarried, so thank you for being here, ma'am.
Members at this point, as what we have done all session long, is that we are trying to We bring people in who can give us different perspectives on education in the state of Arkansas where we are, pre-K, K through 12, and higher ed. And as word has gotten out about folks coming to the committee and presenting, we've had folks contact us wanting to be a part of this, and I think that's a reflection on how important this committee is, not only in policy, but in a lot of other areas as well.
And with that, I would like to introduce Dr. Gary Ritter, who is with the University of Arkansas Office of Educational Policy at Fayette Villanova, and it's part of the College of Education and Health Professions, and it is essentially a research center. They do a lot of educational policy study. They are a resource nationally for educational professionals. And we are very, very proud that Dr. Ritter is here with us today. He is someone who is looked to, his opinion is sought, and we are honored that he's here.
Dr. Ritter, you are recognized for your presentation.
Speaker 10
3:58
Thank you very much. I don't know. Do I press the button? Yes. How's that? Oh, that's too much. Okay. Thank you very much, and I appreciate the haircut call out as well. Thank you. So we are at the Office for Education Policy. We're happy to provide evidence when asked and provide data on K-12 education statistics. We are a research center within the University of Arkansas. We're supported by the university.
We're supported by local districts with whom we work. Sometimes we have grants from the Arkansas Department of Education to do evaluations. And we're interested in just making ourselves known to the education committees of the Senate and the House so you know that we're here in case you have requests on studying the effectiveness of different educational interventions, digging into data, and all those sorts of things. So very briefly, we thought we'd give a short talk today on our annual State of Arkansas report card
where we share some stats on how the state is moving with respect to educational achievement. and we also decided that we'd get into this confusion a little bit about, well, are we 5th or are we 49th? And I'll let you know what we're talking about here as I move through this briefly. And I understand you're very busy and I have a 15-minute time limit and I will most certainly stick within that and I'll be glad to answer questions afterwards if you'd like. So, first of all, I briefly want to describe what the OEP is and what we offer
and let you know that we're here in case you do have questions and in case we can be helpful, let you know where you can find our work, tell you a bit about this Arkansas state report card I've described, and then get into this question of are we fifth or are we 49th, which is interesting, and it's come to light each year when Education Week's quality counts tells us we rank very highly, but then our student performance measure isn't as positive, and I wanted to get into that a little bit. So, briefly, that's our website for the Office for Education Policy. We're housed at the
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, but we spend lots of time in Little Rock working with the ADE, and ideally during the session, we like to spend time in Little Rock, again, with the hopes that we can be as useful as possible. We offer education reports. We do broad statistical analysis of student performance, of funding, of everything across the state. We do short policy briefs describing, let's say, the new ESEA waiver ruling on how schools are ranked or the Public School of Choice Act and its relation to the Seattle court ruling a few years ago.
We try and do policy briefs as issues become relevant. We also have data sets. We have a blog, news from the Capitol, all those sorts of things. And this is just what our website looks like, and it's easy to find if you just do a Google search, UA space OEP. You can find us. And we have databases for those of you who might want to look up the data for your schools or districts and those sorts of things. We offer report cards and everything, and that's all up there, and I'll just leave that up there, and the websites are there for you to look at,
and I'll be glad to answer questions on that. what we're working on right now and what will come out next week is something we've done annually for the past few years we've been in business since 2003 but in the past four or five years we've done an annual report card on Arkansas public schools just sharing the data because throughout the year the Iowa test scores come out at a certain time then the benchmark test scores come out then the NAEP scores come out and throughout the year all these data come out and education stakeholders get to follow those results.
This report card just sort of compiles those so they're in one spot and hopefully accessible to policymakers and stakeholders and parents and administrators. This one's coming out next week, and it tells a nice story about education in Arkansas. There's some good news certainly to be shared, and our report card shows that. Certainly on our state exam, on our benchmark exam, we have seen that grade three through eight students have continued to achieve growth on the benchmark,
and we picked 2005 as a starting year, and I know it's a bit small and a bit busy there, but essentially what you'll see is all the black lines on the graph are the 2005 data, and then the gray and red lines are the most recent two years. And essentially at every grade level and in each subject, you see lots of growth over the past few years. So that's most certainly good news. For example, in math, 55% of the students were proficient or advanced in 05-06. It's up to 78% as of the most recent testing year. And in literacy, the story is the same, so that's most certainly good news.
Now, that's our state test, and some are concerned that our state test isn't as useful in terms of national comparisons. If we want to engage in national comparisons, the best exam to look at is the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card. And the NAEP also tells a good story, not as positive, not sustained growth throughout, but definitely tells a good story. For example, if you look at the graphic on the left, our math exam for grade four students,
over the past 20 years we've received a lot, we've seen lots of positive growth. The first number is, or the number there is the percent of kids proficient or better. And as you can see, in 1992, we weren't doing very good at all. By 2011, we are essentially at par with the national average. A couple of decimal points below, but essentially at par with the national average. That's a good story. That's a positive move in the right direction. We have also seen, in grade 8, upward movement, not as solid.
So we're doing better, according to NAEP, with our younger students than we are with our middle school students. there's still a reasonable gap between Arkansas student scores and the national average in grade
Speaker 15
10:03
8. Then we hear the Quality Counts Report, which I'm sure
Speaker 10
10:07
you've heard about. A national organization called Education Week, a national newspaper, does quality counts each year. And for the last couple of years, we've had really good news about Arkansas. Arkansas ranks fifth a couple years ago. It was up to sixth. Now it's fifth.
And the states in front of us are the usual suspects of states you would expect perform quite well in K-12 education in Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, and we're right behind them. Our overall score is a B-minus, so Ed Week has a tough grading skill, perhaps. There are four A's and then the fifth, or pardon me, one A, a few B-pluses, and then we're chiming in with a B-minus. The concern with that, and the reason there's been, you know, critics say, well, we're not really fifth, this doesn't make sense,
is the education week metric has several different components. And those components include, as listed on the slide in front of you, standards, accountability, and assessments, transitions and alignment, measures of the teaching profession, the chance for success index, school finance, and K-12 achievement. And, of course, some of the reasons there are criticisms of our ranking fifth, perhaps, is that we have a D in K-12 achievements. That's obviously not as positive as our overall ranking.
So what we thought is, how do you make sense of this? We have some folks saying, this is great, we're fifth, and others, you know, the sort of thank goodness for Mississippi kind of comment, right, that there are some stats that don't show as positively for our system. The main one we'd often hear is the fraction of BA degree holders we have in our state. We often sit at 49th with that. So I think the question that we think is worth asking is, let's try and make sense of this. And the way we phrased it kind of glibly is, are we 5th or are we 49th?
And the sneak preview of the short answer is we're going to be somewhat in the middle of that. And it's good news, however, though. I think in each case, we'd have to say that we're performing above the national average, and I'll walk through that. So we're going to try and suggest a strategy, a better way of assessing our results than EdWeek because EdWeek has a lot of different categories. And as I've heard many say, folks at the ADE have suggested, there's lots of good news in the EdWeek report.
you see that we have good scores in standards and accountability assessments. We have good scores in transitions and alignment. So we've got policies in place to lead to good outcomes, but we're concerned because we haven't led to those good outcomes yet. And so that's what we're trying to look at. Now, we've got lots of different scores here, but for the sake of time, we'll just look at fourth-grade math scores in NAEP. And the story is roughly the same in eighth-grade math and in fourth-grade literacy and in eighth-grade literacy.
But we'll just show fourth-grade math right here. And if you could see over on the far left, overall, in both math and reading, you see, our scaled scores on NAEP are slightly less good than the national average. We have a 238. The national average is a 241. However, our surrounding states are at a 235. And that might be a better comparison than the nation as a whole. because certainly we know that socioeconomic characteristics and the poverty status of students
influences how well kids do, and Arkansas has a disproportionately high number of poor students compared to the rest of the country. But if you look at us compared to the country, we're performing a little bit below average. However, NAEP does a nice job of separating achievement scores for students who are categorized as low income, So those would be kids who are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and students who are not categorized as low income. For the sake of brevity, we call it higher income.
It doesn't necessarily mean the highest income kids. It just means those who are not categorized as free or reduced lunch. And as you see, if we break it up, you'll notice that for both types of students, both higher income and lower income in math, we'll focus on math again, our kids do better than their peers nationally and certainly than their peers in the surrounding states. So in math, our kids score a 230 versus a 229 are low-income students. And our higher-income kids score at par
with the higher-income kids across the country, 252 versus 252. Now, you might have a curious look. How in the world can we do less well on average but both of our groups do better? And it's a statistical term called Simpsons Paradox. Essentially, it means we have more poor kids than the average state. So on average, we do less well than the country. But when you break them up, with each group of kids, we actually do better. But we happen to have more of the groups who struggle.
We have more poor kids than the average across the country. So that's positive news, and that's a useful piece of information when you break up the data. Or if you want to look at over time, you know, we've instituted lots of reforms since 2003-2004, the Lakeview and the subsequent legislative responses to Lakeview. We've had lots of legislative reforms. So how have we done since 2003? Well, in math, we'll stick with that.
Overall, we've had gains of nine points as compared to the nation who've had six-point gains. So that's positive. and both our low-income kids and our high-income kids have outgained their peers. Our low-income kids have gained 9 points, our higher-income kids have gained 13 points, and in each case, in math, they're outgaining their peers. The story is slightly less positive in reading, but nevertheless, we've seen positive gains. So finally, that tells a different story.
That suggests we're doing a little better than average, so probably not fifth, but definitely not 49th. Another way to look at it is we could do some simple mathematical procedures to control for our level of poverty. We can control for the median income of the households in the state. We can control for the number of poor kids. We can control for those sorts of things and do some statistical analyses there. And when we control for scores, if you notice that second from the bottom line,
the difference score. How well did we do versus how well we were expected to do given the socioeconomic characteristics of our population? I won't spend lots of time here, but I'll just suggest that I'll just show you that in every case, fourth grade math, fourth grade literacy, eighth grade math, eighth grade literacy, our schools and our kids are doing better than would be expected given the socioeconomic characteristics. So all of this suggests to the question, are we fifth or 49th, the answer is no. And the answer is we're probably somewhere
between, depending on the test, we do do better with our youngest students than with our middle school students. It looks like we're roughly in the middle and probably on the positive side of the middle. So that feels to us to be a more realistic picture of where we are. And finally, while we're talking about report cards, one other interesting thing, and perhaps we're weighing whether we're going to do this or not. One thing we're thinking of at the Office for Education Policy, in meeting our mission to make data and make numbers and make school
performance transparent to parents, have them understand what's going on, we've been trying to write policy briefs so they understand what the heck's going on with the new ESEA rankings, where schools are either priority schools or focus schools or needs improvement schools and all of these different categories that are somewhat unclear to parents. And we've had some discussion about possibly looking at a report card, a graded report card.
And we're not sure we're going to do this. That's just a picture of mock-up we're playing around with. And I guess I'm bringing this up to get some feedback if this is a good idea or not. We're unsure if it's a good idea. If we were to do a report card, I imagine we would weigh the results at a school level, probably 50-50 between performance, where are we at today, are the kids achieving or not. But we'd also weigh in growth. And the reason we want to do this is ESEA does a nice job of combining both performance and growth.
And we also think that when folks look at the test scores, if we just look at percent, proficient, or advanced, it clearly doesn't tell the whole story because some districts might be dealing with more economically disadvantaged kids and doing a great job. Others might have affluent kids and just coasting and not doing a great job. So we think it's important to look at growth as well as proficiency. So these are some things we're thinking about at the Office for Education Policy, And we wanted to let you know about one of the recent reports we've done and also let you know that we exist.
And if you have questions on what reforms are a good idea, whether schools, you know, we've had school districts call us and say, hey, we're thinking of using single-sex classrooms instead of co-ed classrooms. What's the research on that? We're thinking of using block scheduling versus the traditional scheduling. What's the research on that? These are the type of questions we'd like to answer and we'd like to be available for school districts. And we just wanted to spend a few minutes, and we're thankful for your time to let you know what we do. And I see my clock that I have on my calendar.
My computer says I'm at 15 minutes, so I will stop.
Speaker 3
20:02
Thank you very much. Dr. Ritter, thank you so much. Excellent
Representative James McLean
Unverified
20:06
presentation. And this is the type of data that this committee, I believe, needs in order to illuminate the policymaking process and the decision-making process. And I believe we do have some questions. Dr. Ritter, if you'd be so kind to hang around for a second. Madam Chair, you're recognized for a question. Thank you for being here, Gary.
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
20:32
One question, and this is pretty encouraging data. I mean, to be honest, I'm fairly pleased to hear this. But I don't, I want to know how it reconciles with our very high remediation rate. And if you can speak to that for just a minute. I
Speaker 10
20:51
haven't looked at that question directly. However, what we are looking at is, in this case, our grades 4 through 8 data. And we do see that we do better with the youngest kids than with the middle school kids.
So it's quite possible that if that pattern continues, we're doing slightly less well with high school students, which might lead to the remediation issue that you're asking about. So
Speaker 24
21:12
we have not addressed that directly, but that's the best response I can get. So if you were
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
21:18
going to do a grade, would it just be on the fourth and eighth grade? If you were going to do some sort of
grading, or would you include additional data? So
Speaker 15
21:28
if we were doing school-based or district-based report cards, we would likely use... So what
Speaker 10
21:33
we showed in trying to assess how are we doing compared to the nation was using NAEP data.
If we were to assess school districts or school grades, we would likely look at, and what we had up there as our mock-up, was looking at ACTAP data, the tests that we can compare that each district and each student across the state takes. And in that case, I believe we would look at the geometry score, geometry EOCs, the algebra EOCs, the biology EOCs, all the way down to the grade three ACTAP. So we would look at the whole gamut, which means we would be able to say a little more about high school scores.
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
22:10
And then a quick follow-up. I was being smart up here with my chairman. and say it's
guessing that uh... we had more poverty kids and that was the reason we were doing better i also wonder that that you know just this is a meandering question that is poverty thirty five thousand mark and saw are you not doing a little bit better than you are in california or in new york if it's thirty five thousand as a household income do you know i do you know what i'm saying that arkansas kids i mean yes i
mean that's you know a lot of
Speaker 10
22:44
poor kids Certainly cost of living would factor into what you can
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
22:48
do with $29,000. Right. You're not living quite as miserably in Arkansas as you might be elsewhere. I don't know.
Speaker 10
22:56
That just – that was just – No, I think that's absolutely right. And when we look at cost of living ranks across the country, surprisingly, though, Arkansas is roughly in the middle. So, yes, being at poverty or being below $35,000 in Little Rock, Arkansas,
is much different than being below $35,000 in San Francisco, California. But on average, surprisingly, we're roughly, in terms of cost of living, at the middle. Not as low as I might have thought. Yeah, thanks so much. Thank you, Madam
Speaker 6
23:25
Chair. Representative Lauer, you have a question, sir? Yes. Thank you,
Speaker 38
23:29
Mr. Chair. Dr. Ritter, thank you very much for, you know, really confronting head-on a question that a lot of us have had. I
Speaker 40
23:36
mean, a lot of us were kind of beat up by some of these statistics during campaigns, you know, that we're doing so well, and yet the achievement gaps seem to be pretty apparent.
The NAEP comparisons that you're talking about, or the NAEP studies, how close are they in being able to compare apples to apples in terms of the testing standards? I assume that different states are all over the map in
Speaker 38
24:01
terms of the tests that they use or the assessment tools that they use. Is that correct?
Speaker 10
24:08
No, actually with NAEP, that's why folks use NAEP to compare state by state. NAEP is the same exam given across all 50 states. However, it's only given to a representative sample of students.
Nevertheless, the statisticians and the psychometricians at NAEP go out of their way and they spend lots of money and energy to make sure that the samples are representative. So very few, there are lots of critics of different educational statistics. Very few folks quibble with NAEP. People believe the NAEP scores do compare apples
Speaker 40
24:40
to apples. As we move along, as we have transitions from, like, say, No Child Left Behind to Common Core, does it make it more and
Speaker 38
24:49
more difficult to be able to longitudinally compare
and actually show improvement or go in the other direction? It does make it more difficult,
Speaker 10
24:57
which is why it is useful for those of us who are interested in following the state overall to have the NAEP, which isn't changing. So while we're switching from Common Core and we may have a PARCC assessment in a few years, which is connected to Common Core instead of the benchmark and ACTAP assessments, that is difficult to look at longitudinally. So the fact that the NAEP exists and is out there, we do have some tests that stand the test of time and continue to show up so we can look at achievement.
And we can also look at things that don't change, such as graduation rate and those sorts of things, where the metrics can remain
Speaker 3
25:36
the same as well. MR. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank
Speaker 43
25:42
you. MR. Thank you, Representative Lowry. Representative Hobbs, you have a question, ma'am. MS. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I didn't realize I was in the queue, but thank you. I appreciate that opportunity. Did you compare
Speaker 10
25:54
charter schools versus the other schools? MR. On this, we did not. I mean, but we've had different studies looking at charter schools versus traditional
publics. And the general answer is charter schools, in terms of achievement, are often much like traditional publics. Some perform better than would be expected, and some perform less well than would be expected. MS. And when you did
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
26:14
those comparisons, did you also look at that poverty
Speaker 10
26:18
measure? DR. Yes. When I said would be expected, one way you can look at that is you might look at kids' prior test scores and kids' characteristics as control variables to see how well they do in the future, and then you come up with kind of an expected score for each child or
for each school, and then you can compare the school's actual score to its expected score. And so some individual charter schools struggle, some individual charter schools do great, just like some individual traditional publics do well and some individual traditional publics
Speaker 41
26:50
do poorly. MS. Makes sense. Thank you. Thank
Speaker 3
26:54
you, Mr. Chair. MR. Thank you, Representative Hobbs. Representative
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
27:01
Viviano, sir, you have a Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ritter, I appreciate the presentation and a lot of good information.
As you looked at some of this data, did you do any comparative analysis using the cost per pupil that's spent in these states? Was that a factor in any of the results? In this presentation, we have
Speaker 53
27:24
not. We do have some comparisons in looking at spending. And we've done
Speaker 10
27:30
in the past, not with the most recent data, we have not. The rough story in terms of spending is we also spend at roughly the national average
when you control for cost of living, as was asked earlier. So nominally we spend less than the national average. But after controlling for cost of living, we spend roughly at the national average. Okay. The other
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
27:56
thing, you know, you gave us the, you know, are we fifth, are we 49th, and you said somewhere in the middle. Is it helpful for people in this state, politicians particularly, does it help the education effort by standing up and quoting a statistic that is
not necessarily true, in your opinion?
Speaker 10
28:19
Well, part of the reason we're here is I'm not sure if I didn't dig into it, if I would know what is or isn't necessarily true. So in my view, I think I'm interpreting your question correctly. In my view, what is the most helpful is having the correct data and having an understanding of the correct data. So, for example, the 49th isn't untrue. We are indeed 49th in terms of the percentage of population with a BA degree. But I'm not sure that that tells us the success of our education system, but that is a true statistic.
The fifth is a true statistic. We are fifth on quality counts, but it's helpful to know what exactly they're measuring. And so I think transparency is the most helpful thing. So being clear in what we're quoting, I've heard Commissioner Kimbrell say that that's good news, that Ed Week says we're fifth, but he quickly points to the D and says we've still got a lot of work to do. And so it's the interpretation I would make of, you know, the Ed Week 5th, for example, is we have lots of, I guess, policies in place that could lead to positive outcomes down the line, but we're certainly not there yet.
And we certainly need to be considering other policies, innovative policies, whatever has the best chance of leading to improved student achievement. And let me also highlight not only did we have a D, but even some of our good stuff where we said our low-income kids beat the nation and our high-income kids beat the nation, there's still that gap between our low-income and our high-income kids, which those of us who care about equity should be troubled with. And we should – so there's all sorts of things we need to work on. So I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I think transparency and evidence is the key.
Speaker 41
30:06
So sharing as much evidence as possible is
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
30:10
the right answer in my
view. One final question. Yes, sir. Your policy group, I know you do a lot of research and looking at other states and what they're doing. Is there innovative areas of education that is being done in other states that you believe Arkansas should be looking at more closely than we are perhaps
Speaker 15
30:35
today? I think there are lots of neat things going on
Speaker 10
30:39
in a few different places.
I mean, I have my own biases for what I think might work or not. Some are just my own views. Some are evidence-based. It does seem like there have been really great gains for poor students and for Hispanic students in Florida, for example. Florida has engaged in reforms surrounding transparency of data, sharing data with families and parents. This seems to have been associated with gains for the poorest students over the past few years.
My strongest bias, though, is we should be innovative, be willing to try new things, and be willing to scrap them if they fail. So we should try new things and keep very close track of the impacts of the strategies we're trying. I think that's one thing we don't do as good a job of, and I don't mean in Arkansas. I mean, in education period, we try a new program, and it's exciting, and everyone loves the new program, and, you know, the new computers are shiny, or the bells and whistles are cool, but then we stop paying attention to what happens.
Speaker 41
31:48
And I think, and also it builds up a constituency. We like it. We like the
Speaker 10
31:54
new computers. People are happy with it. And I think we need to be a little more willing to keep really solid track of what our innovations are doing and go in with the idea that half the time we're going to scrap these. Even if some people like them and even if we like the shiny new computers or a constituency develops around it, we need to be willing to scrap things that don't work and try new things that do work. Because even if I like it or even if we tried new teacher's aides, for example,
and I like having them around, if they're not working, we've got to try other things to try and improve
Speaker 15
32:27
the achievement of kids and improve their life outcomes. Sorry, I can't be more specific than that. All right.
Speaker 57
32:33
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Deffenbaugh, you have a question, sir. Thank
Speaker 58
32:37
you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Ritter, I wasn't going to ask
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
32:41
this question, but since you brought up Florida, do they still... I know that Jeb Bush talked about by the third grade, if they are not up to standards, they don't... if they don't pass, they don't pass.
Are they still doing that out of
Speaker 10
32:56
curiosity? Florida has a no social promotion policy, and it has led to lots of controversy. The research appears to be clear in my view, although I will acknowledge there are many dissenters. I think the weight of the evidence is in favor of this being helpful. And it is not – the policy in Florida isn't if you don't pass this test, you're necessarily held back. It just flipped the switch in terms of the default.
So currently, in most states, in Arkansas and lots of states, the default is a child moves on to the next grade, unless someone makes a case that, gosh, we need to keep him or her back because they need to learn more. In Florida, the default was flipped, which said that if the child is achieving below level and doesn't have those foundational skills of math or reading, the default is the child stays back, but there are still lots of opportunities for parents or teachers to say, well, that one test actually doesn't reflect his reading ability.
Look at the grades, look at this. And so lots of students move on to the next grade even if they don't pass. But the default is now it makes it easier, for example, for a school to keep a child back if the school believes that the child doesn't have the foundational skills in reading or math that he or she needs. Okay, thank you.
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
34:16
One more question. Can you put the – you had five characteristics that caused us to be ranked number five. Can you put that back up there just – Yes, sir. That's all.
Speaker 3
34:27
I just wanted to see it. Thank you very much.
Representative Eddie L. Armstrong
Unverified
34:37
Thank you, Representative Diffenbaugh. Representative Armstrong, you have a question? Yes, I think part of it has been answered, though. But what's the major fallback from fourth through eighth grade to achievement of the students? And do you plan to do
Speaker 10
34:52
any research on that? That's a great question. We have not dug into that very deeply.
Lots of folks have hypotheses about it. I believe it's possible that a lot of the Lakeview reforms, encouraging smart core, making the standards more rigorous. I don't know how many of you remember, but in 2005, we actually increased the rigor of our cut scores on our test, which seemed counter to almost any belief that any state would do because, you know, we were ranked by the fraction of kids, proficient or not. So every incentive would suggest, well, just lower the bar so we look better.
But, in fact, we've increased rigor and we've increased standards. And a lot of folks believe that for those reasons, it's taken a while for the kids to get through the pipeline. So the positive impacts of this are being seen with the younger kids and may well soon be seen with older kids. So the older kids were already in the pipeline before some of these potentially beneficial changes were initiated. So
Speaker 67
35:58
what you're saying, we could see this trend change in that fourth to eighth grade level?
Speaker 15
36:04
We certainly could. And it's also worth noting,
Speaker 10
36:08
yes, that we are not alone in terms of struggling with middle school compared to elementary school. Across the nation, we see a similar story. Higher fractions of students achieve proficiency in elementary school than in middle school across the nation. So this isn't an Arkansas-specific problem, and it might be the case that lots of states like Arkansas are undergoing changes
to try and improve the education delivered to their students, and it's having a
Speaker 41
36:39
positive impact at the lower grades but has not yet made its way up into
Speaker 3
36:45
the higher grades. Thank you, Dr. Ritter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Representative Armstrong. Representative Douglas, you have
Speaker 69
36:52
a question, ma'am. Yes, on the – thank you, Mr. Chair. the different categories that we're
Speaker 71
37:01
graded in that you had up there. You have the alignment with the curriculum, the teacher profession, those things.
If you had to say which one of those is, you know, look at that from two viewpoints for me. Which one is keeping us down at a D in achievement, maybe, and which one is moving us up? Or can you pull those out and say, you know, if we're doing so well in those other categories, what is, you know, why are we not showing the improvement on the achievement if we're getting such great reviews on the other categories?
Speaker 10
37:43
Well, the first thing is Education Week is pretty rigorous about achievement. So lots of states are getting Ds with respect to achievement. And the one thing that would be keeping our nominal grade low for achievement is a figure they call chance for success. And that's one of the reasons that this Education Week rating is a bit baffling. Chance for success means they include on there details of the characteristics of your population. So the number of poverty kids, if you have fewer poverty kids, you get a positive here.
If you have a higher-educated populace, you have a positive here. So it seems to me that they're giving Massachusetts a high grade because they happen to have easy kids to educate. That seems to go counter to – so this rating doesn't certainly tell us how nice of a job our schools are doing because that C-plus is averaged into our grade. So if you took a state like Massachusetts and had every single grade just like ours, except for a chance for success where they had an A, they would have a higher average grade,
even though we'd somehow be doing more with tougher students. So the chance for success doesn't make a lot of sense. And that's probably holding our nominal achievement down. A positive piece may well be, in my view, the enhanced clarity of the standards, the SMART Corps and the assessments and accountability that are starting to go along with it. In my view, that is helpful. Second question
Speaker 71
39:20
would be the school finance.
If we get a C on that, it's kind of my understanding that we spend about the same per student as a lot of the states out there. So what is factoring into that finance that's getting us such a low score? Well,
Speaker 75
39:39
again, a C isn't necessarily low by their
Speaker 10
39:42
rating metric, and we do spend nominally less than the average because we have a little bit lower than average cost of living. So that is part of what's knocking it down.
They also look at equity measures, although we have positive, relatively positive, better-than-average equity scores because since Lakeview, we've done a nice job of ensuring that poorer students have access to additional funds in an attempt to compensate for the challenges that the poorer students face. Who's to say if it's the right amount or if the students need more or less? But it's certainly the case that our legislative bodies have gone out of their way to ensure that poorer students no longer receive fewer dollars based on the zip code they live in.
In fact, in Arkansas, the last time we did an analysis, the average poor student received slightly more, a tiny bit more, than the average not poor student in the state. which is, you know, you might say, well, that's not enough. Could be. But 20 or 30 years ago, people would say, just as a matter of fact, one real problem with education funding is that it's determined by zip code because it was so much dependent on local funding that folks with stronger local tax bases would have far greater educational resources.
Now our legislative bodies have gone out of their way to ensure that at least the resources in terms of dollars and cents are roughly equal for poor kids
Speaker 12
41:09
as compared to not poor kids. I've gone a bit afield of your question,
Speaker 71
41:14
and I apologize. Well, on the school finance, do you see a correlation between, really, the states they're spending more and their achievement? So
Speaker 10
41:23
there's no clear correlation there. However, I would caution that I don't think the next step would be to say, well, therefore we can spend less, because I think part of the reason
our poor students have gained over the past eight or ten years or have at least held with our not-poor students have been the whole recipe of Lakeview reforms, some of which is more equitable funding, some of which is the standards and alignment, and it's hard to say which is which, but I'd be uncomfortable with an interpretation that says, oh, well, then we can just spend half as much and we'll be fine. MS. Definitely. MR. I wasn't suggesting that was your interpretation, but. MS. No. I think we have time for one more question.
Speaker 79
42:05
Representative Lowry. MR. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On the issue of school finance, because
Speaker 40
42:14
I know we, every time we hear a report, we end up cycling back around to the adequacy issue. And I had referenced a study several times during my campaign that one number that is very real and puts Arkansas in the top ten is a study that was done by the Center for applied economic research at Montana State. They were looking at researching Montana as compared to other states
and said that Arkansas is number six in the nation in terms of efficiency, looking at financial inputs and also looking at educational outputs. The score there, school finance, I would assume, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that that is looking at inputs, not necessarily measuring it as inputs versus outputs. That is
Speaker 53
42:59
indeed looking at inputs only. So you could
Speaker 10
43:01
have a weird situation. Imagine a state that is equal in terms of standards and accountability, transition alignment, and the teaching profession,
and they're all equal there, so there's no difference. But one state has great student achievement, spends very little, and has very economically challenging kids. Well, that's only a plus, unfortunately, for that state on one out of those three measures, even though that seems pretty good, if you somehow are having high achievement despite spending very little and despite having difficult kids, as compared to another state that spends a lot, has easy-to-educate kids, and low student achievement, by this odd ranking system, that state would look a little better.
And so some of the things in here don't make sense. So we suggest in the policy brief where we highlight this that just came out yesterday, feel free to download it. And if you want, we'd be glad to send it around to the committee. this we sort of highlight we think these are useful measures, but the way they're combined sometimes is not all that helpful. And one other reaction, if I may, to your question on efficiency of spending, one concern that some have had with the very egalitarian
and helpful spending in terms of poverty money. So, you know, for each poverty child you receive $500. unless you're 70% or above poverty, then you get $1,000, unless you're 90% or above poverty, then you get $1,500 per student. That seems to be very helpful for the districts that have concentrations of poverty in terms of additional resources. But we've been looking at this a bit, and these strange cliffs where you get additional money for being at 70% as compared to 69%
or at 90 percent as compared to 89 percent, as if there are huge differences, that doesn't make sense. So we would suggest, and we've been looking at this, that one way to make that funding stream more efficient, instead of having these odd bumps and steps, to smooth it out. Because the funding is useful and, I think, wisely put together in that it acknowledges that concentrations of poverty are when additional resources are needed. But we don't think that these bumps, again, that suggest inaccurately that 71 percent is twice as difficult as 69 percent,
that just creates strange situations where districts who look a lot alike are treated a lot differently. So one way we could make that funding stream, which is a $200 million funding stream, it's an important funding stream and it's aimed at the neediest kids in the state, we can make that more efficient and more effective if we smooth that out. rather than have
Speaker 3
45:48
those odd steps in it. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Larry. Dr.
Representative James McLean
Unverified
45:53
Ritter, amazing presentation. Members, we're going to e-mail this presentation to you so you can have it
and you'll be able to dig into it and really go after these numbers, which I think are absolutely fascinating. And as a layperson, as someone who has children in the school system, To me, this tells me, regardless of rank and number, that, albeit there are issues, we're heading in the right trajectory as a state. So that's very positive news indeed. It doesn't mean we need to rest on our laurels, but indeed, from where we have been historically to where we are now,
I think that is something to be applauded from past policymakers who have really, really done excellent work. And, Doctor, thank you so much, and hopefully during the interim you can come back and speak with us again and continue to share this data with this committee, with the legislature. We'd be glad to. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Members, the agenda as of now, Representative Hobbs, I believe you're going to present House Bill 1248 on Tuesday.
Is that correct, ma'am? Okay. Representative Hobbs will be presenting 1248, possibly next week. There are some amendments that she's working on currently. Staff has not heard from Representative Gilliam-Link or Wright on the House bills that they have. Hopefully, maybe tomorrow or early next week we'll hear from them so we'll be able to get the process rolling in regard to those bills. We have heard from Representative Alexander, House Bill 1352. He is in the process of amending his bill and working with stakeholders.
Hopefully, maybe next week, the committee will have an opportunity to hear Representative Alexander present that bill. Otherwise, committee, we have no other business to take care of. We appreciate you being here today. We will entertain an adjournment motion.
Agenda
No agenda available.
Documents
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Speakers
Representative James McLean
Unverified
Representative Brent Talley
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 10
Speaker 15
Speaker 3
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
Speaker 24
Speaker 6
Speaker 38
Speaker 40
Speaker 43
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
Speaker 41
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
Speaker 53
Speaker 57
Speaker 58
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
Representative Eddie L. Armstrong
Unverified
Speaker 67
Speaker 69
Speaker 71
Speaker 75
Speaker 12
Speaker 79