Education Committee - Senate and House
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Thank you.
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Members, why don't we recess for five minutes while we get the technology side of things working better. recess.
Speaker 5
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I think our complaint settings are incorrect on may or not, I don't know.
Speaker 3
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All right, joint education will come back into order. Ladies, if you would
please go ahead and just introduce yourself, and then you can
begin. Elizabeth Bynum, with
Speaker 22
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Adrienne Beck, also with the Bureau. Leah Headley, Bureau of Legislative Research. You recognize?
Speaker 26
9:26
Good morning. Thank you for your patience. So today we'll be presenting some information related to accountability and achievement. In past years and past adequacy studies, this information has been provided across multiple reports and different presentations. This year, we've combined the state and federal accountability systems. Could you bring your mic a little bit closer to you, please?
Thank you. Is that better? Okay. This cycle, we've combined the state and federal accountability systems as well as student achievement reports with academic standards, which includes career and technical education, or CTE. And this report today will meet the following requirements. As identified in the adequacy statute, which you heard about in length yesterday, so the those separate reports were our attempts to fulfill these specific items as they've been amended to reflect the current accountability systems in place
so for around 10 years or so this since the passage of the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act in 2017 this adequacy study process has included a review of these systems as you can see in your tracking sheet which is tab 1a in your binders this is an excerpt of what's required to accomplish some of the broader duties which for these items include the meetings of the education committees to review what constitutes an adequate education as well as the method of providing quality of educational opportunity today this information will assist in this review as far as what
constitutes an adequate education we do have the working definition of educational adequacy which you also heard about yesterday our resource allocation presentations next month we'll go over part three but parts one and 2 of this definition will be related to the information provided today. So today is an overview and our roadmap for this presentation. As Jasmine noted yesterday, we'll be going over the statutory required topics, but rather than follow the order in statute, we'll be discussing them by topic and in sections and
discussing throughout the areas that connect and identify and align with parts of the definition of adequacy beginning with the academic standards the accountability system structured around those standards and then Elizabeth will get into related accountability measures as far as school performance ratings and district letter grades since those are not established in act 930 of 2017 she'll be approaching those as well as Adrian and providing detailed student achievement results related to the systems and then lastly is statutorily required it will be Elizabeth will take you through fiscal distress and facilities distress
So first, with Arkansas standards, to fully understand the Arkansas academic standards that we have today, we can look back at the ways that the state has established a state's curriculum and set up accountability systems in response to Lakeview. Specifically, we're going to review the state curriculum as referenced in the definition of adequacy and the expectations enacted in three different pieces of legislation. So, beginning in 1997, we have the Public Education Act, which established several specific
state goals, but overall for Arkansas to provide a quality educational opportunity for every public school student. The academic goals for students were to graduate academically competent students, and as Elizabeth and Taylor discussed yesterday, over the course of the Lakeview decisions, the Supreme Court and master's conclusions were identifying ways that the Arkansas General Assembly was working towards defining adequacy. This act was identified in Lakeview case to 2002 as well on its way. The following acts in 2003 the Quality Education Act
or Act 1467 as well as Act 1761 both were identified as a good beginning towards an assessment of curricula specifically with improvement to show in five to ten years and so as we are past ten years past those dates I will go through each of these acts a little bit in detail and identify the ways that they are related to academic standards. So in Act 1108, also known as the Public Education Act, the overall goal for the state of Arkansas was that its public
school education system will raise student achievement in a basic curriculum, increase graduated students as well as the courses required, and ensure overall that students are graduating prepared for society, college, career, and communities. Specifically, it identified that public schools in Arkansas should graduate academically competent students, qualified teachers, as far as several other goals, but overall make sure that they are supported and assisted by the state where necessary. As far as its public education students or public school students, they were
expected to achieve competency, meet required standards in several academic areas, as you see here. These were identified as well as several other skills and competencies and expectations for the public schools, which included requiring that they offer vocational courses and that students receive instruction in music and education as well. Music and art education, excuse me. So the Quality Education Act, also referred to the Omnibus Act of 2003, established our comprehensive accountability system that Elizabeth went over yesterday,
so I won't get too deep into those however as far as the curriculum frameworks that were developed those were in place as well as the requirements for accreditation and schools and public school districts to meet those standards for accreditation this act amended the 1983 act which required the state board to develop comprehensive rules criteria and minimum standards and so in 2003 they removed the word minimum and required schools to meet all of the standards for
accreditation. While most of this act was repealed by Act 930, also known as the Educational Support and Accountability Act, which I'll refer to as the State Accountability Act, several items including the fiscal and academic distress measurements remained in statute until the repeal of them in 2017. Following the passage of that act, as well as identifications from Lakeview and the Supreme Court, the adequacy definition was updated by the Joint Committee on Educational Adequacy to include the standards included a grade-level curriculum, a mandatory 38 units, all defined by the standards for accreditation, which specifically was or which was still defining what was to be taught at the high school level and taught to students broadly.
So now that we have a state curriculum, Act 1761 specified more along the identifications of content standards for coursework. This is where curriculum frameworks were reviewed by the State Board of Education and established ongoing review for both the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education and the State Board in which curriculum frameworks were meaning the content
specific standards per subject area in core academic areas that you see here. Though most of this act has been repealed in statute, the DESI rules governing this law and the DESI rules governing this law have not been revised since 2005. Statute still requires that each public school district provide written and assurance that the course content in each class and subject area is consistent and aligned to board approved standards and that is measured by the statement of insurance provided by each superintendent. So in the last several years, in the last 20 years, the academic standards have
and referred to by several different names as far as the accreditation standards that govern them. And talking about them fully, we need to understand that there are several different references, but they do identify what students are expected to learn in the public school system, as well as the criteria that they're expected to meet in defined specific areas. So that we don't have an exact definition of academic standards in statute or in rules,
we do know that the curriculum standards established so far are defining what students are to be taught. Over the years, academic standards has included a description of expectations as well as the, have included a description of academic expectations as well as specific courses that have been included to what students needed to be educated in to graduate as academically competent. We also have a description of these standards identified in the adequacy definition,
but as far as the Arkansas rules governing the standards for accreditation of Arkansas public schools and school districts, academic standards are defined as the curriculum that's provided to each student in the academic system of each public school district. There is a definition for written curriculum that identifies the sequences used to teach the Arkansas Academic Standards, but again, the actual phrase academic standards is not defined explicitly. However, as of the State Accountability Act, it did direct DESI to establish and define
academic standards that cover what students shall know and be able to demonstrate in each content area. These standards are both established by DESE and published by DESE, but the state board approves them. According to the Division of Learning Services, the standards and their courses outline academic expectations for the state. The Accountability Act defines English language arts as the academic standards for English reading and writing. And so with history, geography, and civic standards encompassed by social studies,
Several of these areas identified in Act 1761 of 2003, as well as the competencies identified in 1997, which include computer science and other technologies, as well as practical economic and consumer skills, can now be found in DESE's Arkansas Academic Standards, published on their website. They have additional standards related to those same skills and expectations for fine arts, health and safety education, and physical education, as well as library media standards and world languages.
Part of the Accountability Act was to make sure that these standards were periodically reviewed and revised to ensure that they were rigorous and prepared students for college, career, and community engagement, which is also referred to as college and career readiness and other parts of rules and statute. So while State Accountability Act called for the review of these standards, the rules identify what this review must entail, which includes review and input from Arkansas communities, as well as an assessment and consideration and study from external sources and national organizations.
Generally, this review has been provided on a six-year cycle, according to DESE. However, they are frequently updated in response to legislation or changes as needed. As part of the accountability system established, the core academic subjects areas were not identified in statute. However, DESI has kept these same content areas for the last several years. And they are each provided with grade span specifics and courses.
So, for example, social studies will include perhaps a kindergarten through third grade expectations and identify per subject area and academic course what that student needs to meet at each level as far as what's needed to progress to the next level of academic achievement. So lastly, we'll be reviewing the standards for accreditation. This is codified at Title VI in the Code of Arkansas Rules, and these standards all work to reinforce that the academic standards are available
accessible to all students and that all students have an equal opportunity and access to the state's curriculum. This is not an exhaustive list of the changes and revisions that have made to standards but I have provided here the more substantial changes that have been made. So in 2015 the legislature changed what considered a course to be taught as far as the required courses which were previously outlined in the rules governing standards for accreditation however in 2018 one of the bigger overhauls of these standards
included the removal of those specific content standards and so those identifications of geometry algebra concepts statistics that were specific that you saw earlier in those acts were now summarized in nine content I'm sorry any different content areas by grades by grade level and and of course is that were required to graduate as well as the course is required to be taught each year were also removed from the rules governing and DESI is now publishing those separately and each year okay so general generally the academic standards
do outline activity for students required instruction and the required curriculum as identified as an adequate education and the definition of adequacy currently the public school districts board of directors must adopt and a curriculum aligned to the academic standards but as I mentioned those standards are not explicitly outlined in these rules anymore they are however provided content areas by grade level which are kindergarten through grade 4 grades 5 through 8 and then grades 9 through 12 which are often referred to as just at the high school level because the academic standards prepare students
to demonstrate achievement they include a lot of the competencies that are published. All students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade are instructed and required to have annual instruction in English language arts or ELA, mathematics, science, fine arts, social studies, health and safety, and PE. Grades 5 through 12 also get instruction in career and technical education. These are pretty similar to the identifications or the content areas that DESI has established in their academic standards and in addition the standards for
accreditation provide equal act ensure equal access to a rigorous core curriculum by requiring AP course offerings in these core subjects of math English language arts science and social studies following the passage of act the Arkansas Access Act of 2025 and accelerating learning course will be able to be met be taken to fulfill that requirement to ensure that students are still getting access to a rigorous core curriculum as well as the core academic standards.
So career and technical education not included in DESE's academic standards as required for the review for this adequacy study. However, it is one of the topics that we've elected to cover at the request of the committee in past years. It is also consistent with the definition of adequacy, which was added specifically to include and reflect the standards for career and technical education as it was recommended in 2018. So because they're separate in grade spans, the rules governing the standards for accreditation
identify what's required for the middle school grade levels, which according to the rules governing a career-ready pathway to diploma, include four career awareness activities. This is new for the 24-25 school year. It was passed in 2023. The requirements for each of these activities is just to ensure that the student is participating in something that links what they want to do in life to what they do in school. According to those rules, there are several different criteria, but overall, the Division of Career and Technical Education approves which activities are provided at each public
school. Within the required units for 9th graders through 12th graders, DESI rules require that one of the pathways offered must be designated by the department as high wage and high growth. And the career pathways and CTE programs of studies were also recently revised in 2025 for full implementation in 2029 to make sure that these students are participating in pathways that are designated according to Arkansas's labor standards and statistics.
and those are the there were 16 of those pathways identified this past school year so back to what's included in the rules governing the standards for accreditation additional instruction in Arkansas history is also required for all grade levels it's embedded in social studies at the elementary level and then required to be taken as a semester course before graduation beginning at the seventh beginning with seventh grade there's also additional instructional time outlined for recess, which is consistent with the health and activity
academic standards, as well as music and visual and performing arts instruction for grades 1 through 8. Separate rules govern these sections, but in those rules, academic standards is defined as discipline-based documents approved by the state board for those specific areas of content. So visual and performing arts have their own standards and the instructional time for
Speaker 32
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all three of these is a minimum of 40 minutes of a school day you'll notice that these
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on these areas are broadly consistent with those academic areas of kindergarten through grade eight except we have computer science and foreign languages added and the academic standards for foreign languages are identified as world languages that language was changed in statute but has not been updated in the rules just yet. These CTE requirements requiring that three programs of study, which encompass three sequenced courses, are a new requirement for the 24-25 school year, also enacted in 2023.
Previously, they were requiring three different occupational areas. This one identifies simply just three programs of study that must be offered, one of which is one of those high-wage and high-growth areas. These are the same 38 units referenced in the adequacy definition that are required to be taught except where those uh sorry these are these same 38 units required to be taught and um identified in the accuracy definition however they are not the same required
courses they are just the areas that does these identified that correspond to those so the courses that the courses that uh correspond to those 38 units are published and approved by the state board every year schools must offer them according to the department's required high school courses publication they are published each calendar as each school year the process requires a statement of insurance that the academic of
standards and curriculum are embedded into single courses for changes made to embedded courses and the courses considered taught have been changed by act 1853 and so the chart in front of you shows the general kind of broad changes that have been made regarding these 38 units so because the definition of adequacy refers to them as units and the Department of Education refers to them as courses there's a little bit inconsistent language when you're
looking between rules and statute however they are specified that the courses are required according to the rules governing stands for accreditation For 25-26 school year, there are actually 38 and a half total required credits as identified through the courses. The list itself includes over 50 courses that schools were able to offer to fulfill these units. A half credit would be a semester course, and so while oral communication is required under English Language Arts, it is identified separately as an additional credit.
So the total amount is more than the 38 required units. However, because of the language change in statute, while schools are required to offer these courses, if no students enroll in those courses, the class is still considered taught as far as a violation of the standards. And so the curriculum and standards included in those courses may not necessarily be taught to each public school student each year because of the basis on student enrollment. And so it's a bit of a deviation from the definition of defining of what students are to be taught.
DESE rules still identify which units are included to be taught, but they are not technically taught. And so it's a bit of a different specific language. It's similar to the difference between curriculum frameworks and academic standards. But the distinction here is more significant based on what courses are actually offered in each school district. So this table is a summary of
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the required courses for high school students, both required
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to graduate and those courses that are required to be offered. As I just mentioned, these are the 38 and a half credits that currently are required to be offered at each public school in the state. The specific courses are published separately by DESI in the course catalog as an appendix each year. Only this table is showing you the difference between those two courses. Within the list of required course offerings, students could earn the minimum 20, 22 units required to graduate. The courses identified for both of these columns haven't changed significantly since 2015,
apart from that addition of two units, sorry, apart from the addition of two additional requirements for computer science and personal family finance standards. The course requirement for computer science, as you can see here, is not identified as one of the 22 units, but it is separate from these, and so with those two courses, we have a total of 24 that are required to be taken to graduate in public schools currently. The major differences between these two lists are that English Language Arts, ELA here,
and Science Fine Arts have fewer courses required to graduate, and so with these courses being considered taught in compliance with standards but
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not necessarily taught to every class in the state the minimum graduation requirements are more reflective of what every public school student in the state is being taught
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and the academic standards being taught in each of those student courses so as far as pathways to graduation we have two general pathways we have traditional and
alternative which has been defined for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Both of them are required to earn that minimum 22 units. There are alternate academic standards provided for the alternative pathway as well as an alternate assessment program which Adrienne will get into in detail when she goes over the assessment system. The success ready pathways you see here have been added for 24-25 year also. This is the first year that students were able to start that pathway. Desi has identified these two different ways as a diploma with merit and a diploma with distinction which is the difference
between the credential that's earned at the end of that graduation pathway. And so for further detail here, a credential of value is meant to be earned at the end of both of those pathways. It depends on which credential is earned. That makes that distinction between merit and distinction diploma. Success Ready generally is just identifying what students will be graduating with, which includes the knowledge, skills, and abilities, and habits chosen on their path, which DCTE has identified as anything that would result in including but without limitation
enlistment, enrollment, and employment. The standards for accreditation generally reinforce the state's expectations and beyond the statutory requirements, there are additional requirements for the career-ready pathways. And so according to rules, the minimum academic core required for graduation, that 22 plus those additional two courses required are also embedded with career and technical courses in these cases and so for the first time in 24-25 school year a career-ready pathway to diploma
was identified and this is more consistent with the requirement that schools offer the high wage and high demand jobs. As you can see here there's a difference in language and statute and in rules. According to DCTE their H2 designation is high wage high demand but the credential is also demonstrating um the arkansas layout the arkansas labor markets high wage and high growth fields so in addition to those graduation requirements we have a review of past legislation that are
related to the academic standards so um as i mentioned earlier the review of the academic standards is on a cycle but pursuant to legislation the social studies academic standards are going to be reviewed and updated by the 26-27 school year to include the following requirements based on the u.s government systems there's also an additional unit dedicated to the veterans and their families that's to be embedded in arkansas history courses which would include those units in social studies at the elementary level and then that separate course at the
secondary schools and lastly we have two acts that were embedded to be included in the academic standards wherever earlier at the earliest grade appropriate the firearm safety instruction is to be developed in consultation with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and the discussion of human fetal growth and development is to be made in discussion and in consultation approval by the Department of Health both of these are going to be implemented
and I'm sorry both of these legislations have not identified an implementation year but they have required that they are embedded and firearm safety has embedded in 2526 the discussion of human fetal growth development has not identified a specific implementation here but they are going to be implemented whatever relevant standards and so DESI's discretion they will identify which ones those will get implemented and at what point they get revised in the academic cycle. So in summary by applying the definition of
adequacy we've got two broad ways to describe and review academic standards for students in Arkansas. We have what's to be taught which is included in what's the state curriculum and the academic system implemented in each public school. What students should be demonstrating through achievement as measured by the standards included in the state's testing system for the adequacy definition, but also corresponds to the State Accountability Act. And so DESI's established academic, Arkansas academic standards are defining what students should know and be
able to demonstrate at the end of each course. And so comprehensively we identify the weights of the curriculum and standards are connected to each other and define what students are expected to know as far as the accountability systems in place to monitor that. We have the standards for accreditation and the systems that Elizabeth will take
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you through. Excuse me. So now we'll move on to our accountability systems. So as Leah just described
the standards and the curriculum frameworks are defining what Arkansas students need to know. What we want Arkansas students to be able to know and be able to do. The accountability systems are the methods for ensuring that students are actually learning what's in the standards. We do have a federal and a state accountability system and we're going to go through both of those. We're going to start with the federal law which is the Every Student Succeeds Act which we'll refer to as ESSA.
ESSA, excuse me, as we remember from the statute, and as Leah mentioned earlier, one of the requirements in the adequacy statute is for the committees to review the ESSA, the state standing under ESSA. I'm going to interrupt
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
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you for just a second. I think
we had a couple member questions, or at least one, so I don't want to get too far down into another presentation before we address those, if that's all right. representative Duke you're recognized
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
39:06
thank you mr. chair I know everyone's
surprised that I would have a question I didn't want to disappoint anybody today so my question is kind of a I guess I had a couple of questions about the act in 2003 and it referenced the waivers and then my understanding from your presentation is that
at one time they were not allowed to have waivers and and then is that because I know you said a lot of that's been repealed so was that portion of that where they could not they could at that from the app when it was repealed then they could ask for
Speaker 26
39:41
waivers in those areas yes so regarding the required courses and so anything identified as what a required course in the standards for accreditation from I believe it's act 1015 of 2007 that granted uh the authority to provide waivers for those courses and so from 2007 to 2015 they had waivers and they could request and petition the state board for a waiver for not off or not teaching and offering one of those required courses and so act 853 of 2015
repealed the requirement that they petition for a waiver and then just decided um and redetermined what a course considered as taught would mean and so that was if they could provide a schedule that included that
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course if they had qualified personnel to teach the course but no eligible student or any student enrolled to take that course then that would still be considered taught and they wouldn't need a waiver to submit saying that they couldn't teach the course because it was now considered to be taught because they offered and attempted to offer and teach the course to students. So is
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
40:41
that the only area the waivers or their ability to apply for or not apply for
waivers is that the only area that that was as far as the course offering that that addressed it did not any address any other areas of applying for waivers so
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there's there's separate waiver authority broadly in state
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statute for the rules for these yet for the rules governing standards for accreditation one of those waivers is the request to embed and combine curriculum courses or curriculum into one course and so that was the embedded content and so that still requires a waiver uh those are submitted to the state board other waivers as far as because because the
standards for accreditation include more than academic standards right so we have the requirement that they have library media specialists the requirement that they have guidance counselors all those um just public school system requirements each of those waivers um are covered and just broadly by waiver authority which is i think in rules just to find it
Speaker 32
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something that they can do for the state board okay so that
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
41:42
it was kind of waiver specific yes in that instance okay my next question is um i guess for the chairs and for staff i i would think if we could do it would be
helpful to have at least for me a kind of chart comparison of this is what because we went through those different acts and then you talk about well this is repealed and this is not and and i would find it beneficial if we could have it in a chart so we could see what was it 97 2003 and see when things came and when they went because there may have been some things that were there they got repealed that we might want to look at maybe we shouldn't have repealed that maybe that didn't go so great when we changed that but it's kind of hard to to see compare and contrast through i mean
the presentation was great and thank you so much because i know it's a lot of work and i really appreciate it I find it fascinating but just for me to glance and to look at and to kind of see analyze a little bit more if it would be possible to have it in that type of format I think that would be that would be helpful for me I know that is I'm hoping chat GPT world that would not I mean I know you do more than that but to be able to put in a chart that type of format would
be really great at least I think for us to utilize as we go forward and review if that's possible
if staff says it's possible and I'm sure that's great there they're
generally more competent than Chad GPT so I know
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
43:10
that yeah I mean I'm hoping it's not a significant amount of work it just that layout I think would just be at least like I said at least helpful for me to see
Speaker 26
43:18
how it's kind of progressed at a snapshot are you wanting the those transitions for the course curriculum and state
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
43:24
curriculum specifically I would just like the transit the laws transition and I don't again I don't know how encompassing that is because I know you mentioned that you didn't really go into detail all the different aspects maybe that were repealed and i appreciate that but and
so i don't know how detailed that is and that's why i was a little concerned i don't i don't want to put you've done a tremendous amount of work here already but it i would like to see by that kind of detail just because it helps us to see where we were why maybe one legislature changed something and another legislature may want to come back and either implement or maintain or tweak a little bit more and being able to contrast that progression in a chart form
I think would be a much easier reading at least this was great I don't want but it seemed critical of this at all
it's great it's just kind of the ease of comparing them I think you've sparked my interest to where I'd
Speaker 26
44:13
like to be able to do that a little bit more in depth yes yeah um I can say that the quality education act of 2003 which Elizabeth talked about yesterday um is very similar in structure to act 930 that established the current state accountability system and it's really in several instances is a matter of substitution of words and so curriculum frameworks for academic standards no child left behind for every student succeeds act and previously is the act tap which
is arkansas comprehensive testing and assessment and accountability program um substituted for the new system um and so yeah so we can go through those comparisons of because those have been the two systems that we've had so far is that it was 2003 and then out 2017 and so we cross compare those ones as well as the changes and requirements in each of those that that would be that
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
45:00
would be fantastic I really appreciate your willingness to work with me on that one thank you thank you Mr. Chair you recognize continue thank you
Speaker 82
45:12
okay moving back to the every student succeeds act
Speaker 20
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a few notes about how ESSA works. ESSA has requirements in a number of broad areas for states. Each state is required to submit an ESSA plan to the Federal Department of Education for review and approval. Arkansas's plan was most recently approved as amended in 2022. So the six categories that you see on your screen are the six categories that Adrienne and I are going to take you through in this section. For each of these categories, we're going to show you
what ESSA requires, what is included in Arkansas's plan for how Arkansas is going to meet that ESSA requirement, and then what's currently happening in the state. And we'll start with academic standards and assessment. ESSA requires that the state have challenging academic standards in English language arts or reading mathematics and science and as you as you know from Leah's presentation the state does have academic standards for each of those subjects and then regarding
assessment the state has to have an assessment and it must contain at least three levels of achievement so under the Arkansas plan Arkansas schools must administer assessments to at least 95 percent of their students annually and this is a requirement in Arkansas and student schools can be held accountable for violations of the standards if they are not testing at least 95 percent of students and then Arkansas summative assessments in English language arts math and science
have four levels of achievement Adrian is going to talk more about those in a few minutes I do want to note here in the Arkansas ESSA plan at the time the The ESSA plan was originally passed, Arkansas was administering the assessment known as the ACT-Aspire. As of 2024, Arkansas now administers the ATLAS examination, but the ESSA plan
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
47:14
continues to refer to the ACT-Aspire.
Speaker 20
47:20
The next ESSA requirement is a statewide accountability system. Arkansas does have a statewide accountability system. That is the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act. And following our ESSA section, Adrienne and I will take you through that accountability act. And now I'll turn it over to Adrienne for
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
47:39
our next couple of sessions. Thank you. So with that, we're
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going to get into the ESSA student achievement progress portion. So we're going to get into some of the achievement data.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
47:53
And so within that, we're going to get into some of the long-term goals laid out in ESSA on student achievement specifically within Arkansas's ESSA plan, how that's being met, and then available corresponding data. To start us off, here are the first set of achievement requirements from ESSA. So states are required to set long-term goals on proficiency on annual statewide assessments, progress towards English language proficiency, and high school graduation rates.
To meet those, Arkansas's ESSA plan, first created in 2018 and last approved by the U.S. Department of Education in 2022, sets four long-term goals, meaning they have to be met by 2030. So the first achievement goal is to have 80% of students achieving a test-based grade level proficiency score in ELA and math. While science is required to be assessed, science is not included in the long-term achievement goals.
Next, we have in the ESSA plan a goal of 52% of English language students on track to English language proficiency, a 94% four-year graduation rate and a 97% five-year graduation rate. Additionally, as part of the long-term goals, Arkansas's ESSA plan includes interim checkpoint goals to help determine progress towards that 2030 goal. So we'll include those as available throughout this portion. The next set of
ESSA requirements include student growth or another indicator that allows for meaningful differentiation of school performance. This is achieved in Arkansas's ESSA plan through the ESSA school index
Speaker 92
49:46
score. This measures academic achievement, English language proficiency, graduation rates, and school
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
49:53
quality and success indicators. Additionally, ESSA requires that this particular goal in the previous two goals the last slide encompass economically
disadvantaged students students of racial and ethnic major at racial and ethnic groups excuse me children with disabilities and English learners so they required to call these the ESSA student subgroups so we'll see those throughout as well so in Arkansas's ESSA plan their student subgroups include African-American students Hispanic or Latino students white students economically disadvantaged students which in Arkansas this refers to students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch English learner students
and then students with disabilities or those in special education so as noted earlier ESSA requires states to have at least three performance levels on their statewide assessments and you heard that are under ATLAS the statewide assessment used in arkansas this includes four that are shown here excuse me for the review of student proficiency levels in this portion we're going to look primarily at the percentage of
students scoring um level three or four proficient or above so with that um atlas assessments for grades three through ten assess in three main subjects english language arts math and science So
Speaker 92
51:22
you'll notice math and science here only go up to 8th grade. That is because 9th and 10th grades include
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
51:30
end-of-course assessments in specific subjects, including algebra,
Speaker 94
51:34
geometry, and biology that we will go over in a later section.
Speaker 92
51:40
In 2025, 35% of students scored proficient or above in English Language Arts or ELA, 39% in math, and then 38% in science. all of these were increases were from the previous 24 school year. So broken out by the grade level starting with English language arts. You'll
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
52:05
see here in 2025 all grade levels had between 31% and 39% scoring proficient or above in 25
which is a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year. Next we have that grade level by math. So in 2025, all grade levels had between 32% and 43% scoring proficient or advanced, which were mostly increases from the previous year, with the exception of fifth grade, which had a slight decrease in 2025. Finally, we have science. So all grade levels here had between 37% and 39% scoring level three or four,
proficient, or advanced, and all of these were increases from the previous school year. Then we have those proficiency levels broken out by our ESSA student subgroups. So across all three subjects, English learner students had the lowest percentage of students scoring proficient or above, ranging from 5% in ELA to 11% in math. White students had the highest percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced, ranging from 42% in ELA to 48% in math.
So our next long-term goal within ESSA is to have 52% of English learners on track to English language proficiency by 2030. So to be considered on track for English language proficiency, an English learner student must meet one of the following criteria. So they have to either exit status as an English learner student, they have to meet time expectations on three or more domains within the ELPA 21. The ELPA 21 is the alternate assessment used specifically for
English language learner students, and we'll get into those specific results a little bit later today. And then the third expectation, or the third criteria, I should say, is to meet time expectations on non-exempt ELPA domain. So this is very specific to that ELPA 21 exam that we'll get into a little
Speaker 92
54:20
bit later. So this chart using this chart shows the percentage of English learners on track to English language
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
54:27
proficiency going back to 2018 which was when getting that ESSA plan
went into effect so we're going back and um to that original baseline so you'll see in 2018 44% of all English learners were considered on track that decreased to 38% in 21 and then back up to 41% in 2024 which is the most recently available data for this measure for English learner students with disabilities and long-term students that percentage on track remained below all students for all years reported here so the boxes in
green these are our interim checkpoint goals that were listed in the ESSA plan as kind of ways to kind of monitor progress towards that 2030 goal so you'll see in 2018 Arkansas's percentage of all students on track exceeded that goal and then fell just below
Speaker 97
55:23
those goal checkpoints for 2021 and then 2024. Moving on to graduation rates.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
55:37
So we have two of these. We have a four-year graduation rate and a five-year. So four-year refers to students who graduate at high school in four years. And then five years, of course, refers to those graduating within five school years. excuse me, five years. Both include those with a regular diploma as well as those with significant cognitive disabilities who earned a state-defined alternate diploma. Arkansas's ESSA plan sets a four-year graduation rate goal of 94% by 2030.
Similarly, we have progress goals here shown in yellow, and they are a little bit different than they begin in 2019. So almost, as of 2019, almost 88% of Arkansas students graduated high school in four years, just under that progress goal of 88.76 in 2019. Arkansas's four-year graduation rate increased to 88.2% in 2022, and then fell below that progress goal of 90.5.
As of 2024, in the most recently available data we have for this, 89% of Arkansas students graduate at high school within four years. Then we have our four-year rates by our ESSA student subgroups. So white students had the highest four-year graduation rate with 91%, and then English learner
Speaker 98
57:07
students had the lowest of 83% for the 2024 school year.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
57:18
So again, the 2030 goal is 97%. So in 2019, just over 90% of Arkansas students graduated within five years, exceeding that progress goal of 87%, of almost 87%. And then that five-year rate decreased to almost 90% in 2022, which just missed the progress goal of 90.2 for that year. as of 2024 that five-year graduation rate was 90.2 percent overall
and then finally our five-year graduation rates for our ss student subgroups similarly similar pattern here with the four-year rates english learners had the lowest five-year graduation rate of 85 percent and then white students had the highest with 92 percent so that includes the student achievement portion and i'll hand it back to elizabeth to for the next category Our next
Speaker 55
58:13
category is school support and improvement activities. I'm going to interrupt
just one moment, Elizabeth. We have a question.
We would all be disappointed if we didn't have a question from Representative Duke. So Representative Duke, you
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
58:28
are recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr.
Chair. I'm glad not to disappoint. So my question is, do you know offhand right now, and if not, can you get to us the year that we were the highest on this percentages on our proficiency? So you start
at 2018, and on all of those, on your English language and stuff, can you give us the highest year that we have on record
Speaker 86
58:56
on record? Not offhand, but we can certainly get that to you for the English learners
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
59:01
and the graduation rates. And we, of course, have older percentages for the state-level assessments, but we just don't include them because they're not comparable because they're ACT-Aspire and then ACT-AP. And so that is a little bit different. But for the other two measures,
Speaker 96
59:15
we can certainly get that. Well, they're testing relatively
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
59:18
over the same standards all these years. I mean, those different tests, whether it's ACT-Aspire
or whether you go all the way to the benchmark world,
and I know we've changed the standards a little bit over time, but some of the basic things are still there. the basic things we want them to teach so even though I understand it's not apples to apples it's as close to apples to apples as we're going to get looking at those tests so I would like to know I mean you can put like an asterisk or whatever by it as far as this is an ACT aspire or this is a benchmark exam but to be able to look back and see in history if there was a time period that we had 80 percent on anything or 60 percent on anything I think it behooves us to go okay what were we doing then that we're not doing now and if it's not comparable that's fine but I
think it would be useful for us to see because the 2018 and I understand the shot but I'd like to know the highest we've ever had and the lowest we've ever had so then we can go look or maybe ask more questions of you all okay what was going on at that time period if that's I wouldn't think that would
Speaker 110
1:00:20
be that big of a absolutely not we definitely have that information and can get that
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:00:26
to you pretty quickly. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's the only one I had. Cripson makes you recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well,
I've got two so I can top Representative Duke. So my first question with these benchmarks, are there any penalties if we
fail to meet those benchmarks, or does the federal government provide more resources? What is the ramifications of failing to meet those benchmarks? So if you're referring to the interim ones, I'm not
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:00:47
aware of any penalty for that. In terms of the long-term goals, I don't know for sure what the ramifications of that would be. That might be a question for the department. If there's, for those larger, like 20, 30 goals, I'm not sure about those. Okay, I'd just kind of be
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:01:03
curious if it's, we'd like you to meet them. You know, if you do, great.
If you don't, no big deal. You know, what's the point, right? So my second question is, in the LEARNS Act, we included tutors to try to help with reading proficiency to bring those up for our third grade students. When might we start seeing, or have we already started seeing the impact of that on the student test scores for the third and fourth grade classes? Would we already start seeing that, or is that something that we'll start seeing this year to know what kind of impact those are having?
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:01:41
Overall, I would say that's probably out of expertise in terms of measuring effectiveness of that program. We'll look at grade-level results for third and fourth for that level for reading and for writing as well in a later portion so we can see the 24 and 25, but I can't say confidently if that's going to reflect that or not. That would be better answered by the department. But I'll also say to the accountability piece for the long-term goals, even though Elizabeth will get into it, there are other accountability measures that may or may not be directly tied to those long-term goals,
but do look at other measures within the achievement system to look at other ways of supporting districts that might not be meeting those. Okay. All right. Thank you.
Speaker 118
1:02:23
Representative Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
1:02:27
go back and look at some of the slides with the graphs, to me it looks at pre-pandemic we had higher rates, and then they took maybe one or two back before then. Yeah, you had higher rates right there before the pandemic.
We took a nosedive of the pandemic. How long before we get to pre-pandemic rates and fix the errors of the shutdown? That's a
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:02:52
good question. I don't think I would be able to – I think that might be better by the department. They're more familiar with that level of information. I'm
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
1:03:00
just worried we've ruined a generation of kids by sending them home and not letting them learn. thank you
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:03:13
represent mayberry thank you i'm i'm just curious it that 80 percent goal that that's
our our state has set that as the goal that may not be the same goal that other states have
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:03:26
am i understanding that correctly that's correct every state has a different plan so they'll have different goals different mechanisms in place for how they measure it so um but arkansas is 80 percent for sure okay so so going
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:03:39
beyond that let's just say other states do have 80 percent or something like that or or do you know what other states have set as their goal and has any
state met that I mean we're down here in the the 30s and our goal is 80 percent yes we want it that high but has any state achieved that do you know I'll let Elizabeth take
Speaker 110
1:04:00
a look at that I think or answer that i know we could definitely look
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:04:07
at other states i don't know offhand but i'll see if has any more information on
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:04:12
that i haven't looked specifically at other states as a plans but i'd be happy to look into that
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:04:18
for you okay thank you just curious how we compare i know we're way down
there but i want to be realistic
thank you and i would say i think it'd be helpful to have a comparison on the state by state maybe at a future meeting representative mayberry it's you know when you look at things like NAEP scores uh there's a lot of consistency in terms of um lack of progress even the last 40 years and most states are are relatively low frankly and so i think it'd be interesting every state obviously has their own testing mechanisms individually so i think it'd be interesting to compare perhaps how states have progressed with their own testing mechanisms
versus maybe what NAEP scores look like uh which could be instructive for us moving forward representative Painter, you recognize? Thank
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:05:10
you, Mr. Chair. I just kind of want to follow down the line of questions. My
good friend from Camden was going down, you know, on the English language proficiency, you know, I get it. We had the pandemic. What year did we test? Was that, i don't think
Speaker 134
1:05:27
we tested in 21. we did not test in 2020. okay we did test in 2021.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:05:32
okay so so would it be so with that almost 10 percent decline it's safe to say that that's a reflection on
on that year before correct for this
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:05:42
particular particular measure this is not referencing a specific test these are students who are meeting those eligibility criteria to be considered on track so this is not a tie to a specific assessment it has components that are connected to it but this this chart right here um is not tied specifically to the test but that may still be a time wise that still might be part of it in terms of the covet response okay thank
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:06:08
you for explaining that i just wanted to make sure i
Speaker 20
1:06:15
wasn't aware thank you thank you members you can continue with the presentation okay i will know first adrian is going to get into some nape scores later in the presentation so we'll see some of those later our next essa category is school support and improvement activities the essa requirement is that states must have a method for identifying districts that are in need of support and providing that support and the arkansas essa plan has three categories of school support
we'll see those in a couple of slides the exit criteria requires the school to demonstrate continued progress by an upward trend on the essa school index for two plus years and meet or exceed their initial ss school index score so the ss school index we'll see on the next slide and so that's the manner that the that the essa plan states that districts will be identified for support here you can see the calculation for the ss school index this is in the ss plan
it's the method for meaningfully differentiating schools as required under ss you can see that it includes weighted achievement growth progress to english language proficiency the four and five year graduation rates all of us adrian just discussed and the school quality and success indicator the school quality and success indicator is calculated on a per student basis so you'll see obviously some of those act scores high school gpa are only applying to high schools
but for any student who's not in a high school those categories would not be included in their score
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:07:55
so it's possible for every school to have a score for the school quality and success
Speaker 20
1:08:04
indicator now looking at those three categories of support these come from the arkansas esso plan under the esso plan these are calculated using those esso school index scores and districts and schools are removed based on their progress on the esso school index the esso school index has currently not been
calculated for 24 and 25. according to the department the last identification for schools occurred in 2022 and those schools will be exiting support this year and I'll turn it
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:08:41
back to Adrienne thank you so our next category within ESSA regards equitable access to educators so ESSA requires states to describe how they will ensure low income and minority students
excuse me are not taught disproportionately by ineffective out of field or inexperienced educators to meet that requirement Arkansas's ESSA plan requires the department to identify schools who receive title one funding these are schools that have at least 40 percent or more of students eligible for free or reduced price lunches so they're gonna look at those schools and then how many of those have disproportionate rates of these educators.
And then Arkansas's plan goes on to state that any districts with disproportionate rates would be required to attend equity labs and develop other plans to better target support. To achieve those access goals laid out Arkansas's ESSA plan, DESE is used to identify these Title I schools, using the following measures. So we have the high poverty, high minority report. This was developed by the division
and reports progress towards ensuring that low income and minority children in Title I schools are not disproportionately served by these teachers. That was last reviewed or last produced for the 23 school year. So we want to review that here. And then we also have the workforce stability index. This refers to a DESE-created measure of workforce quality used to identify districts and schools with potential access gaps to target resources to help close those gaps.
No available, excuse me, Donata is available for this index for the 24 and 25 school years, so they're not gonna be included here as well. As previously noted, DESE also uses equity labs for this purpose via the, as noted in the ESSA plan. These were recommended to begin in the spring of 2018 with at least 15 per school year, beginning in the 2019 school year, though we don't have any evidence to show that those have occurred since then. And then lastly, we have the school report card.
This refers to a comprehensive report of state and federal accountability and reporting measures from DESE, including measures to help determine these disproportionate rates of teachers. And so we do have some data from that for the 25 school year that we'll go over next. Quick terminology, though, before we get into that. So we're going to refer to high poverty and low poverty schools within that. And this refers to the highest and lowest quartile of schools based on their concentration of students who are eligible for free or reduced price lunches.
So before I get into this data, I do want to note that the report card doesn't differentiate by Title I status, but strictly by high poverty and low poverty schools. So the charts are going to show us the percentage of effective teachers as determined by TESS, which is the Teacher Excellence and Support System. This
Speaker 86
1:11:58
is the statewide system used to evaluate teachers across the state. the chart here is going to show how these rights
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:12:06
of teachers vary by different economic levels of
schools. So for the 20 for 22 through 24 so you'll see here the overall percentage across all schools you know the overall percentage of effective teachers under s test excuse me that decreased from 92 percent in 23 and then up to 96 percent in 20 up to 90 to 97 percent in 2024 which is the most recently available data we have for that and then you'll see on the other side of that for 22
and 24 students in the lower poverty schools had a higher rate of effective teachers than those in the high poverty schools our second measure from the school report card shows the rate of inexperienced teachers and that is defined as through teachers within their first three years of teaching so the overall percentage of inexperienced teachers decreased across all schools from 25 percent in 2022 to 19 percent in 24. that rate also decreased similarly across high and low
poverty schools though the percentage remained higher in high poverty schools and then we don't have any data regarding the percentage of teachers teaching out of field so we're not going to include that here from the report card but the next available other using other data available from the division we have some additional analysis on title one schools so we'll have a quick round of terminology again before we get into that so emergency and provisional credentials These refer to temporary teaching licenses, allowing someone to teach in the state of Arkansas, meeting certain criteria.
And then, again, Title I schools, these are schools with more than 40% of students eligible for free or reduced price lunches. And for context, of the just over 1,000 schools in the state in 2025, 79% were considered Title I. So as noted in ESSA, we looked at Title I schools by the rate of free or reduced-price lunch eligible students,
and then minority students using free measures, teachers with emergency or provisional credentials, percentage of teachers considered completely certified and then the average year of teaching experience so this chart shows that percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials was twice as high in title one schools with the highest level of free or reduced price lunch eligible students than those with the lowest levels and then the percentage of completely
certified teachers was higher in schools in the lowest level of free or reduced price
Speaker 94
1:15:01
lunch eligible students as was the average year of teaching experience. And then looking
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:15:07
at Title I schools by level of minority students, so we see that the percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials was three times as high in Title I schools with the highest level of minority students than those with the lowest level.
And then the percentage of completely certified teachers was higher in schools with the lowest level of
Speaker 94
1:15:34
minority students as was the average year of teaching experience.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:15:39
So that concludes the equitable access portion. I'm going to hand it back to Elizabeth
Speaker 20
1:15:46
for the remainder of the ESSA section. Now we move to some slides looking at the state standing under ESSA. We'll go briefly through public reporting. ESSA does have requirements for public reporting. You can see that there's a number of requirements
in ESSA for the Arkansas plan. Those requirements are met with the state report cards, which the department is issuing. As I noted before, the ESSA school index is specifically mentioned as part of that reporting in the state
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:16:19
ESSA plan, and that is no longer being calculated as of
Speaker 20
1:16:26
2024. Looking at the state standing, as we saw with the academic standards, the state does have academic standards and assessments for all required subjects and four levels of achievement.
In the ESO plan, those are still currently based on the ACT Aspire rather than the current assessment, which is the Atlas. The statewide accountability system, we do have a statewide accountability system which we'll discuss in just a minute let me interrupt just one more represent Garner do you have
a question on the previous section sorry in it I apologize I'm thinking one thing looking the other way do you have a question on the previous section okay you recognize I'm trying to promise
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:17:16
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question about the previous presenter, which you said about the ESSA requirements, equitable access to educators. You mentioned on slide, was that 58, about the equity labs. You said that they, so we're not doing that, or can you elaborate more on that? As far as I know, I haven't seen
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:17:44
those happening, but the division may have more details on that than I do,
but as far as I know, I haven't seen any reporting or anything from those if they are
Speaker 146
1:17:54
happening. Is it mandated to have these? It's noted
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:17:57
in the ESSA plan, but that's the only place that comes up as far as I know. Okay, thank you. And is anybody from
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:18:03
the Department of Ed here? We can request that information. Thank you. Okay, perfect.
Speaker 20
1:18:22
All right, you can continue to recognize. Thanks. Looking at academic achievement, as we saw from Adrienne's data, looking at ATLAS scores, no student group met the required as-a-planned goal of 80% in 2005. Looking at English language proficiency, the most recent checkpoint there in 2024, for 41 percent of all english language students were on track and that checkpoint was 43 percent
looking at graduation rates the most recent checkpoint for graduation rates was in 2022 and for both four-year and five-year graduation rates the state was just below the checkpoint level looking at school support that school support is based on the end of school sss school index scores that are no longer being calculated again according to the vision those were last identified in 2022 and the public reporting um the ss school index is again not available for
24 or 25. desi does continue to issue the report cards and as we'll discuss in a later section of the report there is
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:19:37
a new school writing system that DESI has implemented as of 2025. And finally looking at access to educators as
Speaker 20
1:19:50
Adrienne discussed much of this information is not currently available and the equity labs do not appear to be occurring currently.
Speaker 86
1:20:01
and i'll turn it back to adrian thank you so now we're going to get into
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:20:10
the arkansas educational support and accountability act for but for ease we're just going to refer to that as the state accountability act going forward so in this law the general assembly found that the state is responsible for providing the necessary statutory framework so that all public school students have a substantially equal opportunity to achieve and demonstrate academic readiness,
individual academic growth, competencies through the application and knowledge and skills in core subjects that are also consistent with state academic standards. Arkansas's accountability system that was created in the Arkansas, in that accountability law, closely mirrors Arkansas's ESSA plan. So that includes challenging academic standards that are periodically reviewed and revised, maintain a statewide student assessment system that includes a variety of assessment
measures, establishing levels of support for public districts, and maintaining information systems composed of performance indicators to identify levels of district support. And then we will review available data regarding statewide student assessment system, access to educators, and district levels of support required in the Accountability Act. I'm going to recognize Representative Painter for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:21:37
I apologize. I was trying to press my button real quick. Back on slide 71, it says,
Information on the 2024 report cards did not provide separate data for Title I schools as required. Do we know why?
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:21:56
question part again it was on slide 71 when the bullet point says information on 2024 report cards did not provide separate data for title one schools as required why i'm not sure
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:22:07
that was desi provided information and that wasn't available on their website either so i'm not i would have to defer to them on the why behind that one
it is that requirement in statute i don't believe that i think that's just in the essa plan i'm not aware of
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:22:32
that being in statute. Okay, thank you. Representative Duke. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to follow up with that. So, because on a couple of these different things, on the report card not being issued and those different items, because obviously we are here because we are required to do all of this assessment and evaluation during this. Are these pieces of the puzzles that we should be making sure are being done? Or do we have the flexibility to say,
know or the department had the flexibility to say we don't have to issue these report cards or we don't have to have this data up or whatever these things are is that can you can you enlighten me on where how that falls as far as us being in compliance with what
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:23:10
we're supposed to be doing the only thing I can I know for sure that I know there is a because of a transition between plans that know that it has accounted for some of the lack of information but i don't know for sure the details of that um other other than that
Speaker 94
1:23:24
elizabeth i don't know if you wanted to
Speaker 20
1:23:30
add any more on the compliance piece of it uh this is all information that's required under the essa plan it'd be up to as
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:23:37
i understand it'd be up to the federal government to enforce that i don't know of any i don't know what that
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:23:44
enforcement mechanism would look like so this is separate from
what we are required to do under our adequacy in those pieces, or do we fold this in to meet some of our adequacy requirements?
Speaker 23
1:23:54
I see our Administrator Jasmine Ray coming down,
Speaker 162
1:24:08
Jasmine, if you would please introduce yourself. Sure.
Speaker 163
1:24:11
Jasmine Ray, Bureau of Legislative Research. So, as we went over yesterday, part of the continuing education, continuing adequacy evaluation act, which is the entire adequacy, what we're here for, it stipulates that part
of the duties of the legislature is to review our stand, Arkansas standing under the ESSA, under ESSA. And so, the way we go about that is we look at everything Arkansas has stated they're going to do in that ESSA plan and then we report what information is available to show what our standing is and so for example with the equity labs it says in the ESSA plan that that's what's going to be done is equity labs but we can't find any evidence that equity labs have happened
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:24:59
does that make sense it does make sense so do we have the ability to change as as the legislature what our ESSA plan is? That's a
Speaker 165
1:25:10
good question. I really do not know. Because, I mean, I would
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:25:14
assume, I mean, like everything, things change. You get more knowledge, information, or just perspective. So you would think there would be flexibility in it. But if we have said that this is what we're going to do, it is our job as the body. I mean, you're telling us what we're doing and what we're not doing, right? And it's our job as a body to go, okay, well, we're supposed to be
doing these things so we need to either make sure they're being done I mean actually that's the legislation anyway we're not going to get into all that but as far as the adequacy study is concerned we're supposed to be reviewing this to make sure we are all compliance and doing and making changes to make sure we're providing a good education to Arkansas kids and you're giving us this information and what you're saying with this information right now are these are some pieces of the puzzle that we're not saying that that we're not doing that we had said we were going to do in relation to the ESSA plan that's correct and so I guess where do we find the answer to
whether we can change the ESSA plan or not so I don't believe anybody from the department
is here still I can't see behind the column but you know I'll make a request that staff request that information relative to the equity labs relative to the 2024 report
Speaker 168
1:26:20
cards from the department and we'll see what the response is and I think that can
Speaker 169
1:26:26
help us make decisions moving forward I would like to add
Speaker 163
1:26:30
that this report this entire report was sent to DESI for their review so they reviewed the report and provided feedback so they were aware that you know we would be saying we do not
find evidence of equity labs happening so well and of course one of my questions
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:26:44
was going to be without what is an equity lab that raises the different questions that I have for
that as well is just trying to understand some of these this terminology and stuff as well but but and uh chairman
mr. chair did you say that you were going to ask them to about our ability to change our essa plans or yeah we can inquire about that for sure yeah i think that would be helpful to know that we need to update these we can update these according to maybe we don't need to do things exactly i mean i like the report cards i want us to continue to report cards thank you
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
1:27:13
appreciate that represent barnett you're
recognized thank you um i had a quick question as it relates to graduation rates. I see that ESSA is collecting data on four-year and five-year graduation rates, but is there any provision, I guess, within ESSA or any goals within ESSA on reducing dropout rates? And do we have any data in that regard?
And when we are looking at the graduation rates, Are we only looking at students that are still presently enrolled, or is there any count given to students that have dropped out? I'm not
Speaker 20
1:27:59
aware of any. I don't believe that ESSA plan has anything related specifically to dropout rates, but we'd be happy to pull any data that we can find on that. The graduation rates do adjust based on the number of students.
So if a student, say, moves
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:28:18
away from a district, the graduation rate is adjusted. But I don't know of anything specific in that as a plan
to do with graduation rates. Okay. Or with dropout rates, excuse me. So you're stating that
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
1:28:31
you're not sure that when we're looking at graduation rates, we're not giving any account to students that may have just dropped out, but they're only making adjustments for students that may have transferred or moved?
I'm just trying to understand that the type of data we're tracking because that really kind of changes things if we're looking at the whole picture. There definitely is data collected on dropout
Speaker 110
1:29:00
rates like Elizabeth said. We can definitely provide that. There are no specific long-term
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:29:05
goals related to that in the ESSA plan and I am not aware of any that might be a that's obviously a component of the graduation right but in terms of who's graduating but it's not a specific measure that I'm aware of
Speaker 86
1:29:19
that is tracked within the ESSA plan but we could certainly get you data outside of that to
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
1:29:24
look at okay I'll be interested in it I'm just trying to understand whether or not when we're tracking graduation rates are we just basing it off of students that are currently and were enrolled at the time of graduation versus, you know, any students that may have dropped prior to graduation. Thank you. Representative Beck, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:29:49
I'm gonna shift gears just a little bit here, but I recently read a book and had some information concerning education and some of that fact, and in the book They actually identify as a major component of a child's education is the parents emphasizing the importance there on education. That was probably the number one factor as far as a success rate of a student.
And we looked at a lot of data here, and it's great data. I love this data. You know, I like data. But, you know, do we ever try to track is, I don't even know how you would do it, but students along the lines is that where we have parents that are not engaged versus parents that are engaged. And, you know, across these other attributes that we're looking at, right, English language learners and all that stuff, to see that how much of that is actually the result of less involvement by the parents for whatever reason.
You know, maybe the English language learners, the parents are a bit overwhelmed or something like that. but do you guys ever track any data to deal with? I'm not aware off
Speaker 110
1:31:16
the top of my head of a lot of measures that look at that, just because I'm
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:31:22
not sure if that's been determined the best way to actually capture that information, but we would certainly be happy to look into that to see what data is available about parent engagement and get that to you.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:31:34
And just a quick comment that they made was that they actually listed probably
that private school's number one thing that excels them is the fact that they have a lot of parents' parental engagement, I guess you would say, in education. And it just seems like we look at a lot of data, but we don't look at that. And possibly how we could help parents to better understand that, that, you know, hey, your engagement here.
is is really key to your child's success or at least one of the major factors of your child's success so i'd be very interested in that data
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:32:17
representative painter there's more a question to the chairs i know we said we might have staff reach out to the department uh but maybe i hope the chairs maybe would consider a a meeting with to have the department answer some questions i just think it's it's kind of hard to swallow if we're going to require certain you
know individuals or schools to do certain things and then our own departments not or he's just going to willy-nilly not do certain things I think they should be able to come to the committee and ask being answer those questions so I know our staff does a good job reaching out department getting good questions but I think it would be maybe boohoo of us as a committee to be able to have members ask those kind
of questions agreed and happy happy to have the staff put that on the agenda for the first part of the meeting next month no additional questions you can continue
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:33:11
great so we are back to the arc this is the arkansas accountability act the arkansas educational support and accountability system um so as i said it closely mirrors components of the arkansas as a plan. And to look at that, we're going to look at data from the statewide student assessment
system, Atlas. We're going to look at additional data regarding access to educators. And then we're going to look at data regarding district level of support. So to get started with data from the student assessment system. So as required under the state accountability act, DESI is required to implement a statewide student assessment for public schools and that is accomplished with the atlas system that replaced act aspire in 2024 as you heard from elizabeth
students are also required that are enrolled in public schools are required to take statewide assessment unless they meet specific requirements for alternate assessments that we'll discuss more shortly and i'll make a note here that as mentioned atlas refers to the statewide accountability using the statewide assessment it can also refer to the statewide assessment system so sometimes it can incorporate all of the tests the atlas the act but it also refers strictly to the test that we'll spend some time looking at here shortly as well so with this statewide student assessment
system the accountability act requires arkansas to have developmentally appropriate measures for assessing students in kindergarten through second grade as well as high quality evidence-based literacy screeners for students in kindergarten through third grade and that is accomplished with the atlas k2 interim and summative assessments in literacy and math and then k through third grade screeners in math and literacy as well and as of the as of today the public results from
The results from the 2024 and 25 K-2 assessments and K-3 screeners have not been released yet. So as a reminder, as Leah talked about earlier, the working definition of educational adequacy is to have all or all but the most severely disabled students perform at or above proficiency on these tests. So, in regards to that, the Accountability Act requires state assessments to measure English language arts, math, and science as identified by the State Board of Education.
This is accomplished with the ATLAS assessments that include summative assessments for students in grades 3 through 10, as well as end-of-course assessments for students in 9th and 10th grades for algebra, geometry, and biology, as well as the dynamic learning maps, known as the DLM. This is the alternate assessment used for students with disabilities that have the most significant cognitive disabilities. So here we have proficiency levels for ELA writing and reading for 3rd through 10th grade for the 25 school year.
So between 31 and 39% of Arkansas students score proficient or above in ELA as well as reading. And then between 13% and 18% were proficient or above in writing. Then we have proficiency levels for math. So we have third through eighth grade. And then we have algebra results. And then for ninth grade, in geometry results for 10th grade. And that's just due to the number of kids testing in those grades for reporting purposes.
But between 32% and 43% of third through eighth graders were proficient or above in math. 20% of students in ninth grade were proficient or above in algebra. And 13% or more, excuse me, 13% were proficient or above in 10th grade geometry. And then science performance by grade. So between 31% and 39% of 3rd through 8th graders were proficient or above in science,
and in 10th grade, 31% were proficient or above in biology. So results from the dynamic learning maps, this is the alternate assessment for students with disabilities. So we have results here by grade level and by year for 24 and 25. so in 25 between 10 and 39 percent score proficient or above an ELA this is a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year for the math
portion of that alternate assessment between 7% and 19% score proficient or above in 2025 also a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year and then for the science portion of that assessment between 7 and 19 percent scored proficient or above in 2025 though these were all decreases from the previous school year excluding ninth grade in which there was no test given so the next requirement from the state accountability act includes assessments of
english proficiency of all english learners so this is different from that percentage of students who were on track to English language proficiency. This is going to be results from a very specific assessment of the ELPA-21 and the ALT-ELPA that we'll go over here next. So the ELPA-21, this is the English language proficiency assessment for the 21st century. It's the assessment used in Arkansas and a group of other states to measure proficiency in English learners towards English language. And then the ALT-ELPA, this is the alternate assessment
of English language proficiency. So this is given to students who are eligible to take the dynamic learning maps assessment. So results from the ELPA for 24 and 25 by grade level. So this shows for 2025 between 6% and 24% of English learners scored proficient on the ELPA 21, which is a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year and then results from the ALT-ELPA that's incorrect that I should
be the ALT-ELPA I apologize but that's showing between one percent and 23 percent scoring proficient in 2025 again also a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year so the next set of requirements from our account the state accountability act requires assessments to measure college and career readiness in 10th through 12th grades including a career readiness assessment that leads to a nationally recognized work readiness certificate and it also includes
optional additional assessments including but not limited to civics government and additional sciences. To meet that the state assessment system includes the ACT, work keys, the PSAT and the long acronym the NMSQT this is the the national merit scholarship qualifying test as well as the Arkansas civics exam so currently the 24 and 25 results from the work keys the PSAT
the national merit test as well as the civics exam have not been released but we do have results from the ACT that we'll go over next. So this chart shows the average composite score of arkansas high school seniors along with the percentage of high school seniors tested so for reference act composite scores range from one to being the lowest to 36 being the highest arkansas's average composite score dropped from 19 in 2020 to 18.5 in 2024 which is the most
recently available data and the percentage of students tested also decreased in this time period from 100 percent to 95 percent. So for a national comparison we're going to use that percentage of seniors tested again. So according to ACT the best practice is to examine a cohort of states with similar percentages of tested graduates so that's what we've done here. So these states in 2024 tested between 90 and 100 percent of high school
graduates for the 24 school years. So we're going to look at Arkansas in comparison to these states. So for the composite score, the average range from 17.2 in Nevada to 19.5 in Montana, with the average of 18.4, which is where Arkansas was just above that. And then a couple of other measures from the ACT is the percentage of seniors meeting readiness benchmarks for English math, reading, and science. So these benchmarks refer to ACT scores that
represent the level of achievement required for students to have a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher and about 70 to 85% chance of obtaining a C or higher in corresponding credit-bearing courses. So for English benchmarks the average percentage of high school graduates meeting those range from 37% percent in Nevada to 53 percent in Montana with the average being 46. For math that ranged from
15 percent also in Nevada and Oklahoma to 31 percent in Montana with the average at 22 percent and then for reading it ranged from 25 percent to 41 percent in Nevada and Montana again respectively and finally in science that percentage range from 17 percent in Mississippi and Oklahoma to 32 percent in Wisconsin with the average at 24 percent and you'll see that Arkansas was close at
Speaker 94
1:43:48
or was at or close to that
average for all four of those benchmarks
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:43:56
and then finally the accountability act requires participation in the national assessment of educational progress examinations this refers to the NAEP so this is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what students in public and private schools in the United States know and are able to do in various subjects so Arkansas meets that requirement by regular participation in the NAEP which assesses students on a range of subjects in grades 4 8 and 12 and we're going to
look at results from fourth and eighth grade this is the most regular assessment given with the most recent administration in 2024 so we'll start with those results from the reading and math assessments. In 2024 between 20% and 31% of fourth grade students in Arkansas scored above excuse me score proficient or above in math and reading lower than the national average which range from 27% to 39% in 2024. So looking at these scores, have they varied since 2017? For fourth
grade math, Arkansas percentage mirrored a similar pattern to the national average, but remained below that for the last four administrations of that test. So for fourth-grade reading, Arkansas similarly mirrored the same pattern for the last four assessments as a national average, though that gap between them did decrease in the
Speaker 94
1:45:30
last few administrations of that test.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:45:36
Then we have eighth-grade math. Similarly, Arkansas mirrored that national average between 2017 and 2014 in that trajectory, while remaining below that national average seven percentage points in 2024. And then finally for eighth grade reading Arkansas's percentage of eighth graders scoring proficient or above remained below the national average in 2024 though did not fully mirror that national trend of decreasing each year. So in 2019 the percentage of students scoring
proficient or above increased from 29 to 30 percent whereas the national average decreased three percentage points. So for a national comparison we looked at for additional national comparison between other states surrounding Arkansas we looked at the SREB state so this refers to the Southern Regional Education Board this is a non-partisan non-profit interstate compact serving 16 states on public education policy those shaped states are shown here
so we're going to look at the average percentage of students scoring proficient or above in each of these four assessments that we just reviewed starting with fourth grade math so the percent excuse me the percentage scoring proficient or above Ranged from 31% in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia to 45% in Florida with the average at 38%. And then fourth grade reading, the percentage scoring proficient or above ranged from 23% in Oklahoma to 34% in Maryland with the average at 30.
And across these two tests, Arkansas's averages sat just lower than the average of these SREB states. and then results for the eighth grade assessments for these states in eighth grade math the percentage scoring proficient or above range from 17 percent in oklahoma to 29 percent in virginia with the average at 23 percent and then in eighth grade reading the percentage range from 21 percent in alabama and west virginia to 33 percent in maryland with the average at 26 and across these
tests Arkansas's percentage set lower than the average of these SREP states as well so the next portion takes us to the access to educators section just one second represent Duke
Speaker 168
1:48:09
you're recognized thank you again mr. chair
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:48:12
thank you again for the presentation a couple questions the first one and I don't know if you can I
assume you build answers I'd like to know how many assessments or screeners our students are taking in the different grade levels because I know it varies from grade levels
in the year and if you don't have that right at hand if you could get that to us and the second question I have is similar to what had what we had before can we have the highs and lows on these different reports that you've had on this one but also on the NAEP I know you're just doing that southern group can you get us the high and the low in the country of those scores too Absolutely. We can get that to you pretty quickly. Because I think, I mean, we are competing in a nation worldwide for our workforce and stuff.
And so for us to be able to see how we're competing with across the country I think is important for us as well. And I'm assuming we can't compare that very well globally, but it would be nice if we could just to kind of keep perspective on that because we always need to be able to measure
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:49:22
what we're doing. So that's all. Thank you. Representative Garner, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've got a question, and this may be for the department, but you guys may know, on slide 84, where we're talking about the science by grade level, we dropped significantly in 25, half as much.
Is that a difference in testing or a
difference in assessment? There was no change in assessment as far as I'm aware of, so I would have to yield to the department
for further explanation. Okay, great, thank you. But I'm reading that right, right? In 25, we... That's correct. Half. Okay. Great. Thank you. Any other questions
you recognize? Continue. Okay. So that takes us to the Access to Educators portion of the State Accountability Act.
So within that, statutory requirements, there are a couple here. And these are similar to the ones apart from the ESSA requirements. So first, the General Assembly says that all public school students should be taught by qualified and effective educators, as well as low-income and minority students shouldn't be served at disproportionate rates of ineffective, out-of-field, inexperienced teachers as well. It also requires DESE to assess if students have access to excellent teachers via the state accountability system.
For this portion, there's no specific requirements on how to measure that, so we're going to review a few available measures regarding teacher quality. So that includes the average percentage of teachers with a bachelor's degree, with a master's degree. Again, the average percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials, average year of teaching experience, and then geographic shortage areas that comes from DESE. So first, we pulled some teacher data from DESE and analyzed them by Title I status.
So this is a little different from the earlier Title I analysis, because we're looking strictly at measures in Title I schools compared to non-Title I schools, whereas previously we looked at concentration of student groups in those Title I schools. So you'll see here that Title I schools had more teachers with a bachelor's degree and fewer teachers with a master's degree than Title I schools. And then Title I schools also had double the percentage of teachers working with emergency or provisional credentials, and a teacher with lower number of teaching experience.
So we're going to break those measures out geographically, give you a sense of how that ranges across the state, starting with the percentage of teachers with a bachelor's degree. So this ranged from 25% to 82% across traditional school districts. So open enrollment public charters aren't included on the maps because they don't have geographic boundaries, but for reference, the average percentage of teachers with a bachelor's degree ranged from 33% to 100%. And then we have the percentage of teachers with a master's degree ranging from 18% to
75% across traditional school districts. And then for those charters, that ranges from 0% to 67%. Then the average percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials that range from 0% to 20% across the state with traditional school districts. Again, for charters, that range from 0% up to 33%. Then finally, the distribution of districts by average year of teaching experience.
which range from five to 20 years across traditional school districts. And then for charters that range from one to 17 years. And then our final map for this section, this comes from the division. They put together an annual geographic or list of geographic shortage districts. So these are the ones for the 25 school year. And they determine need based on three year averages that include teacher supply and demand. So districts in red have the highest need. And you can see those concentrated in the southeast part of the state there.
And with that, I will hand it back to
Speaker 20
1:53:52
Elizabeth. Next, we move into levels of support for public school districts. Let
me grab a couple questions real quick. Sure. Representative Innet, you're recognized. Thank
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:54:03
you, Mr. Chair. I had a quick question. Can you explain what provisional credentials are? I can just a
Speaker 131
1:54:12
second have the definition here I think in front of me so provisional credentials
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:54:19
this is a three-year license issued to an experienced professional for the purpose of teaching on a part-time or full-time basis as a teacher of record in an Arkansas school so it's a three-year license given to somebody there's some specific requirements they have to meet I don't have those with me but that they to
Speaker 96
1:54:35
meet to get to that license so it's not just anybody that can get that license. But that's what that is. Great.
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:54:54
I promise I'm trying. Thank you. Is that what alternative teaching certificate is? Is that in lines of that or is that something totally different? It might be
Speaker 86
1:55:10
part of it, but I believe there's some other ones that would be included in that there's some a different routes I
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:55:16
think it's that may be more referring to the pathways of getting to that But this is more of just different types of licensure that might be issued within a at the state or state level
I think they're connected, but I don't think they're the same thing exclusively. Thank you Representative painter
Speaker 151
1:55:35
Thank you, Mr. Chair. How many Title I and non-Title I schools do we have in the state? And if you don't have that, you can get that to me.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:55:47
Well, I know it's going to do some quick math here. I've been 1,063, excuse me, I'll have to do some quick math. We have 1,064 schools, 79% are Title I, so I don't have a calculator here in front of me. That's fine, I can do that.
Thank you. It's a lot. All right,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:56:05
thanks. Representative Duke. Thank you, Mr. Chair. you can see i'm rubbing off
on representative painter here with all the questions careful you sit by um so my question is on the um geographic shortage districts does that do we have any data that shows if since the um learns and the passage of the higher teacher salaries if there's any um if there's any movement in that the people are staying or going to some of these i mean i get
the needs are still there but are we seeing any improvement because the salaries have gone up is there any data that shows that i know there's definitely data that
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:56:42
looks at that i haven't looked at it specifically that might be a part of a bigger part of our teacher report that'll be later this summer but we can certainly get some information to you in the interim if you want
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:56:51
to look at that i think that would be really helpful and also if it's incorporated that report too but you know it's nice to see
i mean i'm hopeful i know at least i've heard in a few around that still show higher need in my area i do know there's been a little bit more retention of some of their
teachers but what you what you see on the ground is not necessarily showing up in the paper and it may not be completely accurate so if we could
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:57:15
have that data i think that would be great thank you so much
representative barnes thank you chair uh thank you all for so much information it's this This is a lot of info here. But I'm wondering, the stats are kind of leading us in certain directions and with the difference in the needs in your southern areas.
Are we using these stats to generate ideas of putting more money or something, resources in these areas to bring them up? I mean, we're seeing that there's a great distance between the teachers who have the qualifications and those who don't in the south are we using this data and maybe early but are we using this data to maybe fund give more funding to these areas to bring them up
Speaker 92
1:58:08
i know there are programs um that provide support to different areas like
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:58:13
geographic shortage areas i think um there's some different benefits to there but to the broader question that's It's more of a question for the department and the legislature to what decisions need to be made or should be made regarding
Chair
Unverified
1:58:30
the data. Okay. Thank you. Representative McGruder, you recognize.
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:58:39
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this wonderful presentation. You had said that there are some programs to help in these geographical needed areas. What are some of those programs? Was that last part of the question? I want to
Speaker 167
1:58:55
make sure I heard all that correctly.
Speaker 220
1:58:57
You said there's some programs to help in some areas where there's a
Speaker 86
1:59:01
shortage. That refers to, I'm referring to some kind of teacher recruitment retention. I'm thinking of those, which I
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:59:07
know we'll get more into in the teacher report.
I think May or June is when we have that presentation. I can't think to them more in detail off the top of my head, but there are some programs that are designed to support schools that maybe have different issues like the geographic shortage area, so different areas that may not be performing as well or in different more isolated areas or along those lines. But we'll certainly get that information more in the report. But if you want to think in the meantime, we'd be happy to provide that. You said we'll get to that today? Not today. That will be in our teacher report. I believe that's scheduled for June as of right now.
But if you need anything in the meantime, we'd be
Speaker 20
1:59:54
happy to get you some more information. That would be great. - Absolutely. - Now we move into levels of support for public school districts. So under our Arkansas accountability system, the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education is required to assign each district a level of support from one to five. Level one is the lowest level of support
where districts have access to guidance, tools and DESE contacts. Level five is the highest level of the support where a district can potentially be put into state authority meaning that DESE that the state board removes either the superintendent and or the board of directors. DESE has discretion in determining the district levels of support. You can see under the classification criteria that there are two instances where districts have a mandated level of support based on
summative reading scores as you want to note there that in need of support is a designation based on the act aspire so district scoring with certain reading scores are mandated to be in level 3 or level 4 based on student scoring in
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:01:02
need of support but that's based on the act aspire and not the atlas assessment level 5
Speaker 20
2:01:08
does require the approval of the state board of education so DESI identifies districts as being in need of level 5 and then the state board must vote to
actually classify those districts in level 5 once the district is classified into level 5 the commissioner of the department and the state board are allow have a number of actions available to them under statute to take corrective action in those districts including removing the superintendent and the school board currently five districts in the state are in level five all of those districts are also under state authority that does level being in level five does not automatically place
a district into state authority so you can see that the marvella lane district was classified as being in level five in november of 2022 it was not placed under state authority until july of 2023. Districts can also be placed in state authority for violations of the standards of accreditation or for fiscal distress which we'll discuss in the last section of this report. If you'll notice Lee County actually has two designations, two dates that they were placed
in state authority. That first date in March 2019 was for violations of the standards for accreditation. That second date is for level five. State board approval is also required for a district to exit level five. The school district that meets the exit criteria set by the board must be returned to full local control as soon as the state board determines that the school district has met the exit criteria but in no case longer than five years after the assumption of
authority of the school district a little bit of history on this since since the passage of the accountability system in 2017 three other districts have been in level five dollar way pine bluff and little rock pine bluff and little rock have both been removed from level five the dollar way school district was annexed to the pine bluff school district effective in july 2021
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:03:30
and then finally looking at some of the data that Adrian showed you broken down for the five school districts
Speaker 20
2:03:40
in level five currently you can see at the top of that chart the percentage of all school districts where students are meeting the percentage of students meeting scoring a level three or four on each of the subjects and each of the assessment subjects and then you can see the percentages for these districts and you can see that all of the districts and
state authority have a smaller percentage of students
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:04:06
scoring a level three or level four on atlas than the statewide average for all three of those subjects. Moving
Speaker 20
2:04:21
to school and district rating systems, as we discussed the adequacy statute requires that we review the Accountability Act, Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act. The school and district ratings are actually not part of that act. They are in a separate section of the Arkansas
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:04:37
Code. However, since they are an embedded part of the statewide reporting on school performance we are reviewing them as part of this report we'll start
Speaker 20
2:04:50
with school writings as i mentioned earlier desi has adopted a new system for calculating school letter grades you can see that formula on this screen these are the indicators used to calculate the letter grades for 2025. I want to note from 2017 to 2023, DESI used the ESSA School Index to calculate letter
grades, and under Act 474 of 2025, DESI did not publish letter grades for 2024. Looking in statistics on the school letter grades, here you can see the number of schools with each letter grade, the percentage of total schools with each letter grade, and the
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:05:35
number of students enrolled in schools of each letter grade across the state.
And now we'll look at a little bit of Adrienne's data that she
Speaker 20
2:05:50
previously shared, but broken down by letter grade. Here you can see some of the subgroups. You can see on this screen the percentage of special education students, English learners, and students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch compared with the percentage of all students across the state. You can see
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:06:08
that the special education and English learner percentages for each letter grade are similar to the statewide percentage. The percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price
lunch is lowest in A schools and continues to rise through each letter grade until you get to D. Here
Speaker 20
2:06:30
we see letter grades broken down by race and ethnicity. For the percentage of American Indian, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, or students of two or more races, those are all similar across all
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:06:42
letter grades to the statewide average. For Asian students, the percentage is slightly higher in the A schools, but otherwise similar to the statewide average. For Hispanic Latino students, the average percentage is similar
to the statewide average except in S schools, where it is slightly lower. For African American students, the average percentage is lowest in the A schools and gets higher with each letter grade. And for white students, the percentage is highest in A schools and gets
Speaker 20
2:07:17
lower with each letter grade. Looking now at ATLAS scores, broken down by... Let me catch a
Speaker 137
2:07:23
question real quick. representative Duke surprisingly you are up for a question
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:07:29
okay thank you mr. chair I'm sorry I got distracted on looking through this information as y'all were given it on the letter grade on I guess 116 on the performance systems or the school rating systems when it talks about the the achievement and the proficient can you so you have proficient and then advanced and is that going to catch everybody the proficient would have the proficient and advanced on this letter grade yes
Speaker 20
2:07:56
so that's including there are four level four levels and so that would include all student the proficient includes any students scoring proficient or advanced okay
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:08:04
so but so we are still in the letter grade recognizing achievement not just growth it's both yes okay thank you
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
2:08:14
representative barnett you recognize thank you on slide 117 i see that there were 18 schools that were exempt from receiving letter grades and I wanted to know what under what circumstances are schools exempt from receiving a letter grade I'm gonna have to I will have to
Speaker 20
2:08:36
get back with you on the full
list my recollection um i believe some of them is to do with the grade level served or the number of students served some very small schools are exempt due
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:08:52
to privacy considerations but i can get back to you with the full
Speaker 180
2:08:56
list of okay i appreciate that thank you representative grutter Thank
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
2:09:04
you, Mr. Chair. Piggyback off Representative Barnett's question. Do you know, can we get the information on which schools were exempt?
Absolutely. Also, on slide 113, I noticed that these schools that are in state takeover are scoring a lot lower than the other schools. And my real concern is we have the school that's been in state takeover for the longest period of time, which is Earl School District, and it's going lower than all of the other schools, do we have information to explain why they're doing worse, that they're in state takeover? I think
Speaker 23
2:09:40
that would be a question for the department
about what they're doing in that district and why that is
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:09:46
or is not working in that school district. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Looking at
Speaker 20
2:10:01
ATLAS achievement levels broken down by letter grade, and you can see the pattern here that the achievement level, the number of students scoring three or four on the ATLAS
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:10:12
is highest in the A schools and declines with each letter grade through the F schools.
Then looking at that same information for the dynamic learning maps, you can see here there's not
Speaker 20
2:10:27
as much of a pattern. The percentages are highest for ELA and math in the A schools, but actually highest for science in the B schools, and the F schools actually have higher percentages in all subjects than the D schools. Now looking at Adrian's access to educators information broken down by letter grade.
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:10:50
So the average percentage of teachers with a master's degree is highest in the A schools and declines with each letter grade. Conversely, the percentage of teachers with just a bachelor's degree is lowest in the A schools and
Speaker 20
2:11:06
then rises with each letter grade. And the percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials is lowest in the A schools and then rises with each letter grade. And
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:11:18
then last at a point on the school letter grades, you can see the average years of teacher experience, which is highest in the B schools.
Now we're going to look at district-level ratings.
Speaker 20
2:11:36
So the Arkansas Access Act of 2025 required the division to create a formula for district letter grades. So these 2025 district letter grades are the first. You can see the number of districts, the percentage of all districts, and the total enrollment in those districts. DESE calculates these in the same manner as the school letter grades with each district treated as one K-12 school.
Looking at this geographically, you can see that the F and D letter grades are more concentrated in the south, central, and northeast parts of the state, while the A letter grades are more concentrated in the north and northwest. Again, this map is showing the traditional districts because charter systems do not have an attendance
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:12:30
zone. Those charter systems are most concentrated in the northwest and central areas of the state. So most of the letter grades are correspondingly in those areas for charter schools.
Now looking at district grades by subgroups, English language learners, free and reduced price lunch eligible, and special education. As with the school letter grades, the percentage of special education and English language learners are similar to the statewide percentage. And for free and reduced price lunch eligible, that percentage is again lowest in the A schools and rises through to the D schools and then falls when you look at F schools, at F districts, excuse me.
Speaker 20
2:13:18
Looking at district letter grades broken down by race and ethnicity, again, this is similar to the breakdown for the school letter grades. Looking here at atlas performance by district letter grades, the average percentage of students scoring a 3 or 4. And you can see, again,
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:13:39
like with the school letter grades, that this is highest in the A districts and lowest in the F districts.
Speaker 20
2:13:48
and then looking at this data for the dynamic learning maps the percentages are highest in the A schools lowest in the
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:13:57
F schools but actually higher in the C schools than in the B schools looking at access to educators by district grades you can see again these patterns are similar to the school letter grades the The highest percentage of teachers with a master's degree is in the A schools, and the
highest percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials is in the F districts. And then looking at the average years of teacher experience by district grade, almost the same in A and B
Speaker 20
2:14:36
schools, and then declines with each subsequent letter grade. And I'll stop for
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:14:42
questions there before our last section. Representative Garner, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:14:52
I just have a quick question on 123, the new rating system for the schools. Do you have a comparison? I know it's a new test, but I would like to know how many schools, what percentage were each one of these grades on the prior test, on the prior assessment. I can get that for you. I think that would be helpful. Even though it's a different assessment, I'd like to know why the difference and how the difference. That would be great. Thank you.
Chair
Unverified
2:15:23
Representative Duke's seatmate, Representative Painter, you're recognized. All right.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:15:27
Since we're requesting information, can I get a request of the information for the list of the schools and the districts and their letter grade? I love reading a map, but when I look at it, some of that color blends in together. Absolutely. So if we can do that, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 20
2:15:48
Yes, I've got that. All right, you're recognized, finished. Okay, our last section, additional accountability for public schools, looking at fiscal distress and facilities distress.
As Leah mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, both of these programs are required to be reviewed under the adequacy statute. We'll start with fiscal distress. Fiscal distress is the program intended to help students that are districts that are struggling the division of elementary and secondary education identifies those districts and then as with level five the state board actually has to vote to classify those districts in fiscal distress once the district is classified then the commissioner
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:16:29
and the state board have authority to take corrective actions including removing the superintendent or removing this district school board. Currently, no districts are in fiscal
Speaker 20
2:16:44
distress. Looking at early intervention, early intervention is part of the fiscal distress statute. This is intended to help districts avoid fiscal distress. DESI identifies districts that are in early intervention. Once DESI makes that designation, the district cannot incur
written incur additional debt without the written approval of the division and that district must comply with all requirements established by the state board in rules districts are able to
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:17:16
move in and out of early intervention at any time and currently there are four districts in early intervention. Another
Speaker 20
2:17:28
part of the fiscal distress statute is monitoring. DESI is required to provide monitoring for three years after a district is remade from
fiscal distress. So currently Earl, Pine Bluff, and Lee County are all in this
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:17:43
monitoring. They are all due to be released from monitoring later this year or
Speaker 20
2:17:52
in 2027 and finally facilities distress the purpose of facilities distress is to ensure adequate facilities and ensure that districts and schools are complying with facilities rules this is either a school or a district classification only one district has ever been placed in
facilities distress it was removed back in 2009 no schools have ever been placed in facilities distress facilities distress is run through the division of public school academic facilities and transportation that division maintains a facilities distress indicator tracker and
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
2:18:26
you can see here the numbers from that tracker for 2024 and 2025 the number of districts the number of violations and the number remediated in the same school year remediated meaning resolved in both years several
of those violations related to failure to notify the division as required prior to before performing construction or maintenance or having unsecured exterior doors and with that we are
Speaker 20
2:18:58
done with our presentation and we'll take any additional questions members we have
additional questions representative in it you're recognized thank
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
2:19:12
you mr. chair thank you
for the presentation it was very insightful I do have a question about we talked about special needs in this report and forgive me if I'm not framing this correctly and I'm just trying to think of a coherent question to ask regarding special ed is there any way to how to take this information just put it all like special ed information like take it out of this information to so I
Speaker 86
2:19:46
could I don't know I'm sorry I think they understand the question um we certainly could do pull the data and showed strictly special education I'll I'll also add, they're not included here because they're not
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:19:59
related to any of the requirements of ESSA or the State Accountability Act, but there are some federal accountability measures for special education that can also provide that maybe answer to that question
Speaker 115
2:20:09
as well. Yes. Thank you so much. Representative,
Speaker 168
2:20:13
if you want to get maybe some more specific questions to me, I'll send them out to staff so we can disseminate.
I think it's good information. Thank you. Additional questions? All
right, committee, thank you so much for your time. Ladies, thank you all for your work and your information. It's very helpful, as always. Committee, real quick, everybody has binders, okay? Their binders will remain here. They'll be in the hallway between MAC A and B. My recommendation request of the committee would be that don't let this be something you pick up once a month when you take a look and come in for the meetings.
Take some time to study through the presentations. These folks have worked extremely hard to give us this information. And I don't want this to be something we just look at once a month and then forget about because I think that helps us get to a better place at the end of the adequacy study. So I'd encourage you to do that. Also encourage you don't take it home because then you'll leave it there and you'll wonder where it is and we'll have to print off more stuff.
Speaker 234
2:21:13
Representative Grutter, you got a question? Yes, sir. You're saying we can take these binders with us? No, sir. Let's leave
the binders here so they stay here because they have a tendency to just walk away and never come back.
But I would encourage you, when you are here, please take some time to filter through
Speaker 168
2:21:29
it so we continue to be educated on this. Thank you, sir. I'm not going to tell
you what you have to do with your binder. I mean, you're a big boy, so you beat
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:21:40
me up. Representative Mayberry, you're recognized. Yes, just another question along this lines, bookkeeping, I guess we could say. So these that have been handed to us, they have the nice holes. Are they supposed to be put into this binder, or do we just take these home and this is additional stuff?
Just help me know what I'm supposed to do. Staff will place
those into the binder, I believe. So leave them on
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:22:05
our desk, and you will put them into the binder where they go. Because that
Speaker 236
2:22:09
was going to be my next question. I don't know what category it goes
Speaker 238
2:22:12
under. There's a tab in the binder. Staff will take care of putting all that in there,
so it will be ready for us to review any time you want to. Okay. Thank you. And it's also all available online, of course. Additional questions? Clarifications? We're all good? Awesome.
Thank you, everyone. With that, joint education is adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. 2026 Adequacy Study: Accountability and Achievement [Exhibits B1-B2]
C. Other Business
D. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Representative Keith Brooks Chair
Unverified
Speaker 5
Speaker 7
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Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 53
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Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 92
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Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 118
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
Representative Julie Mayberry
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Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Speaker 134
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
Speaker 146
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Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 131
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Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Speaker 167
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