Education Committee - Senate

Transaction Derry schools the Department produces unbiased research findings leading to intervention programs in schools it is committed to providing research that will directly inform policymakers at all levels of government as well as inform scholars parents teachers administrators and the general public all with the goal to positively influence the future of Arkansas and the nation's schools. While we are here to share our insights today with this legislative committee we are available to all education policy makers and practitioners in Arkansas any time as a resource to help them support our state school children and families. I study school choice initiatives which take the form of private school vouchers tax credit scholarships or education savings accounts. Currently sixty six choice programs operate in thirty three states plus the district of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Since coming to Arkansas in two thousand six I have led major longitudinal evaluations of the DC opportunity scholarship program the Milwaukee parental choice program and the Louisiana scholarship program. Well the achievement effects of these another private school choice programs on participating students have been somewhat mixed choice programs consistently improve non test scores student outcomes including high school graduation college enrollment and college completion rates as well as rates at which young adults commit crimes and have unplanned pregnancies. School choice programs have some of their clearest and most consistent positive effects on the broader education system they tend to advance the racial integration of schools and competition from choice programs inspire traditional public schools to improve. Of twenty eight rigorous statistical advent evaluations of the effective competition from school choice on the achievement of students who remain in public schools twenty six of them report that the effects are positive generating a rising tide that lifts all boats. Private school choice programs are popular with parents in the public. Of the thirty studies of the effects of participation in a choice program on parents satisfaction with their child's school twenty eight report clear positive a fax. Opinion polls over the past thirty years have consistently shown choice programs to be broadly popular recent polls show that nearly three quarters of American adults support education savings accounts where the government places a portion of the funds it would spend on a child into an account that parents can use to customize the child's education. Support for ESAS is similarly high among Democrats and Republicans. Americans tend to support expanding private school choice regardless of their political or demographic backgrounds. We witnessed exactly such an expansion in twenty twenty one day of the year of school choice. Twenty states either enacted new school choice programs or expanded existing ones Arkansas did both providing increased funding to the succeed scholarship program for students with disabilities and enacting the philanthropic invest in kids act to provide tax credit scholarships for low income students. My understanding is that the new scholarship program has raised over ninety five percent of the donations it needs to reach its funding cap this year and it is only the middle of February. Arkansas is home to two well designed private school choice programs these programs however can support fewer than a thousand school children in our state which equates to zero point two percent of all K. twelve enrollments. Parents across the nation and certainly in Arkansas want more educational options for their children. Legislators should consider increasing the funding for these private school choice programs the research evidence indicates that doing so would yield a variety of benefits for Arkansas children families and communities thank you for. Thank you and before you start I do want to recognize I'm really pretty Arkansas community college's leadership institute are with us today class members are sparring community college leaders from across the state if you'll please stand so we can recognize you thank you for being with us today. Community colleges play such a key role for so many of us expressly in the concurrent credit space and so just so you know as a parent of four kids that have been the beneficiaries of concurrent credit at the community college level I'm very very grateful I apologize to do that in the middle of your presentation but thank you for being here please proceed. The apologist impregnated of I'm I'm Robert rent so on the twenty first century chair in leadership the University of Arkansas the department that reform Patrick is a very hard act to follow but I'll do my best on personally thank you all for doing this very few state legislatures would take the time to honor an academic department and we're we're happy to be here the I can do it too universe of Arkansas back in two thousand eight after she informal science for dedicated to win over in teaching various other places I where I served on the school board for five years I've also served on a to a cyber charter board another state currently serving Arkansas advisory committee for you Civil Rights Commission I think it's useful for educators researchers and all the time and schools are working about two hundred schools one time or another she lost track of two hundred mostly there is an Arkansas Texas Oklahoma but six or seven other states and if you're working for me a lot of written or edited fifteen box a lot of them pretty obscure some lessons here on the last three years west five years of mostly worked on three key areas of equity ask any questions about anything one is closing achievement gaps are was raised in a in a blue collar area some kids did really well some kids so I didn't do so well I'm with my mom's side of first generation high school attendee so in a sum of what that's like on we actually a lot of schools in Arkansas if they do very well in closing achievement gaps so how do they do it I think on one key is a common approach discipline a common language the kids aren't learning new rules with every class or every year I think one of the biggest keys is recruiting knowledgeable dedicated teachers who support the mission of the school and respecting those teachers giving them some power over how they do their work but you also have to be willing to separate staff for just not working out to the hardest thing for a leader to do and something leaders don't usually get a lot of of education or coaching on parenthetically when I was in school board I found no school all hardly any score numbers ever asked for any teachers on improvement plans aw and if not why not this is a very important job we need to hire great people we need to help them along the way but if necessary sometimes you have to separate them another key is building very strong relationships with parents and that's especially true with low income parents who themselves often had pretty bad experiences in schools my mom was for the and I've written a lot on that they talk about any time. I'm a secondary that I've done a lot of research on recent years a cyber schools and how to improve them I've been a cyber Board for about ten years now and also see the work they do all the time one thing that's interesting cyber parents tend to choose schools for different reasons than other parents a lot of times it's to do with bullying sometimes safety I'm going to give a shout out the fifth so we've had our own district run on cyber school for example virtual since two thousand fifteen and interestingly a lot's been been written on how COVID has changed physical schools and certainly has I think mostly not good ways on it's also change however schools service causing a lot of new parents coming in with a new approach and it's income a challenge for them and I've done some of the first work on that my colleague Dennis back in another shift on that on the on the third area is is in some ways maybe the main area reforming educational leadership to better serve all students something that's always occurred to me in field work and probably even more when I was on the school board is that the school board members education leaders are great people are they really are the rededicated their hard working but they're nearly always people who did pretty well in school. In schools as they are and so they love schools as they are and schools is as they are not terrible things is a lot of kids we serve really well on what they're another thirty percent maybe forty percent of kids that we don't serve as well some of those kids are away had and we figure out ways to challenge them some of those kids are or way behind to fall behind on entry school and and usually never catch up and we need to a better job of serving those kids And focusing more on them and asking questions about how to do that better I've always said on the school board I think most with a dead mostly behind the scene was just was just ask questions we're going to book a working to open it now what kind of questions we ought to be asking you also need to figure out what people are thinking if I'm a school board member or principal even definitely superintendent I wanted for school I'm gonna get a little different reception the average parent we need to a lot of service special larger districts to see what experiences parents and teachers are getting to better connect with them and see what problems we might be having such personnel problems we also need to teach school board members and others how to use data better Sarah mackenzie my colleagues in the audience up in a few minutes it's amazing on that she has maybe the best date in the state and she did some training for school board members for years that was very successful so this is some of the things I do and it's a small party with the department as a whole does it again thanks so much for having us here it's it's a huge honor. The good afternoon centers I just want to begin by thanking you offer this opportunity to come here and introduce myself and professor Albert Chang and I direct the newly founded center for the studies of a classical education this is a research lab that exists to serve the pot serve the public good of our state by conducting research about the effects of classical pedagogy particularly upon character formation. What those approaches to education primarily focus on filling the had with information the classical approach is uniquely attentive to the formation of the whole child head hands and heart what they think what they do and what they're drawn to. Classical education also draws upon diverse traditions and five stretching across millennium and different cultures throughout the world to invite students to entertain questions of great import from different perspectives these might include what is a life well lived. is a just person what's a just city. What's true what's good what's beautiful. Wrestling with these questions is essential for character formation all of which is necessary to address today's intractable challenges such as mending civic division. Addressing today's mental health and emotional health concerns better caring for neighbors and communities. Parents across the country and in Arkansas recognize the need for cultivating character. In twenty fifteen a national poll conducted by education next based out of Harvard the project with which I had some past affiliation found that nearly one third of parents thought schools should emphasize character education a lot. When we asked them how many schools are actually doing that only ten percent to ten percent of same parents said so. In twenty twenty one parents responded to related questions on this education next poll we asked them how much should schools focus on student academic performance versus students social and emotional well being the average parent said fifty fifty. So this hunger for character education is evidenced by long wait lists and prolific Roman growth in classical schools. A nationally for instance great hearts academies is a national classical public charter school network that over thirteen thousand students on their wait list. More locally in Northwest Arkansas we see the same demand for classical education. Across the two campuses of founders classical academy in Bentonville and Rogers three hundred thirty seven kindergarten students are in a lottery and for only one hundred forty seats. In the recent for the last four years we've also seen three new classical schools become established in Northwest Arkansas. First those are Class Catholic academy opened in Tontitown with about twenty ninth graders and tenth graders and now the quadruple to about eighty students. All twelve sophomores in the inaugural cohort graduated and now attend college. Siger class county open here later in silence springs with forty nine students in the kindergarten through sixth grades. And now I plans to roll a hundred forty students an open high school next year. Finally and in class so account anywhere I'm a governing board member we opened our doors last fall with twenty four kindergarten through fifth grade students we're about that were about to double our enrollment next year. So parents are right to discern something good about these schools a national study conducted by researchers at the university of Notre Dame compared to adults who attended classical schools to adults who graduated from other schools among the results the authors of the report found that individuals who attended classical schools reported feeling more prepared for college and their job. We're more likely to earn a four year degree. I have a strong sense of purpose agency in dealing with life's problems and a sense of moral obligation to take actions against injustice in fact they were most likely to participate in voluntary community service. So by starting the classical approach to education and providing professional resources to store them the center for the study of classical education inspires to improve educational outcomes for all students. Classical schools only benefits students who attend them but can also be a beacon to law schools and provide examples of ways to refine pedagogy and prove teaching and learning. In closing I leave you with a passage from an article that Dr Martin Luther king wrote well he's a students for the Morehouse College newspaper. Any rights the most dangerous criminal maybe the man gifted with reason but with no morals we must remember that intelligence is not enough intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education. Those words to simply capture the practical aimed at the center for the study of classical education seeks to attain for all students in our state thanks for your time. Thank you I'll open it up for questions from members for for these gentlemen let me just say thank you for the presentation and for informing us in educating us about what you do when your studies and all the work you're doing It it out for me I think there's so much to learn from each other so you know I I I talk about this a lot I'm I'm a product of private school education I went to holy souls graduated from mount St Mary academy I can tell you what my English teacher taught me but I can really tell you what the nuns taught me. And you know in community service we you have to have a hundred hours of community service before you graduated I thought that was a you know a great a great thing and I you know and and to me there's no reason why you know public school couldn't operate the same those kinds of same things and I do see it and a lot of times in a lot of our public schools where they all are really trying to talk about integrity character and perseverance and courage and conviction and you know and and spirits about who they are and in the institution are part of and so I you know what it was fun I was what I was visiting an elementary school and and we stir Arkansas and I have the we stir way and the Worcester way is ingrained in those kids know the Worcester way and they want to live up to the Worcester way and it's about character you know and so it I appreciate knowing that we have your department that you're really looking at all those aspects and and understanding it so very enlightening members you have questions. Senator Hester you're recognized. Adam good. So Dr if you made a statement that a rising tide right raises all all ships and you know there's an argument that when when when funds go to a private school rather than a public school that is hurting our our public school yet there seems to be results that we're seeing that when the more that the private schools like education overall goes up in the in the community can you speak to that just a little bit short so one thing happens when a private school choice program is launched or expanded so some students leave the district run public school that they were attending for a private school choice for parents well some of the funding for those students stay in the district the local funding doesn't go and only with the delay does even the state funding go because state funded based on on prior year enrollment so immediately the district run public school experiences to things actually has extra money to spend on the students who stay. And it has you know as a sense that that there's competition now for our students and we need to take seriously opportunities to do things differently specifically the things that that affected public schools do when they face competition from school choice they communicate more extensively with parents and that makes sense. they they tend to offer new programs that appeal to the kinds of students who otherwise might leave for private schooling and they're more likely to Remove their least effective teachers and and and improve the quality of their teaching by by trading up by a by removing the the teachers who are in fact so those three actions result in higher test scores for the students who don't participate in the school choice program that's the rising tide that lifts all boats. Question before I get a Senator Ballinger you know the way we fund we funds our students are public school education. The money is goes. Something that you just said never really clicked in my mind until now we fund students per student there are educational matrix. However that really creates a scenario to where the government is more the stakeholder in this situation versus the parents. And so to your statement if the money comes through the parents they become the main stakeholder. And are more engaged with the education of their children as receiving did I hear you correctly. That's correct Senator Irvin in fact I I a did a study of this question what happens when parents who are used to sending their their child to the neighborhood public school and just just sort of play scene the education responsibility solely in the state's hands what happens when they're given. the opportunity for private school choice of state subsidies to choose a private school for their child and suddenly they have the responsibility to decide the education that their child's going to have and what happens is we we we documented in a book I I co authored called the school choice journey is especially the these parents from disadvantaged backgrounds they really become empowered by this opportunity it is an opportunity and it's also our responsibility so we find that they learn more about their schools than they previously did because they want that information to inform their choice they're also more active in the schools when they have a chance to choose them and in the case of the DC opportunity scholarship program Congress tried to eliminate the program one year. And there were mass rallies of parents who who protested and became politically activated for the first time in their lives because the government was trying to take school choice away from them so that that's sort of the story of empowerment it really does give parents a stronger vested interest in in the quality of the school that the child tax. Thank you Senator Ballinger you're recognized for a question thank you madam chair it you all do what will lot of people do you want to go directly to your your expertise and speak about it and since all you all will be here probably really good but one thing I would like it if you'd share and and I know I don't I don't even know all this information but professor will for any bill but your department generally does a variety of different things so we all know about school choice we've we've utilized you guys here for that but I also know that you've been you've been asked to do research projects on a variety of different things from the governor's office and and the Department education and and you have a variety of different departments which I hope everyone will have chance to present that you guys do bunch of different things there outside of school choice and we've learned a couple of Marty. What what what what are some of the different. Specialties within the the school reform that you guys are doing. So you'll you'll hear in in subsequent panels about the teacher quality work and and support for teachers are the kinds of initiatives that we're studying and evaluating in in that area because you know the teacher is the single most influential force in in student success in schools so the next panel will cover many of those and then and then the final panel we're looking at the future of education where we're looking at a variety of issues that challenge Arkansas school children like rural schools and and the challenges they face to teacher pensions and and the successful funding of those pensions so that so that we attract a strong teacher workforce into into public schooling this those those sorts of things are additional does you know teams and and focus areas for the research of our department. I probably should know to what to my informal little bit I didn't article about seven years back with one of our former students is now the dean at southeastern university or an how to attract teachers to rural areas which is very very hard to do and we looked at what Arkansas tried what worked what hadn't worked and and came up with some ideas for what to what to do a little more of a list here to attend a lot of work on curriculum I just feel like some of the difficulties in the country people Frank apart to some degree or because we we don't teach assault in Commons of extraction and so that is something really important to focus on doesn't directly translate to the bottom line but I think in terms of citizenship is quite important. And one thing I'd like to add is that not all of us presenting today are going to be faculty of the department of education reform a couple of the presenters are problems of our program of whom we are very proud and you know we've produced over forty doctoral that doctors of of education policy and sent them out into the world and some of them the state here in Arkansas and done amazing things in Arkansas others have have gone out you know around the country and around the world and and done amazing things so so another big part of our impact is is through the students we teach and and we have a hundred percent placement rate. Well I think that leadership component is really important and just like you said it's very difficult to recruit to roll Arkansas and in different areas that those small schools in those rules schools are really the backbone of those economies so we've got to figure out how to keep those schools open and viable and thriving because you know we don't want a community just to weather up and go away we want to make sure we have good schools all across the state and you know and and I'm blessed I mean you know Mountain View school has benefit fabulous experience for my kids you know I have a question for you on on that classical schools the curriculum of current character is so I can figure that would might be you know character and how that's translated how that's taught or you know who's leading that discussion may have that I can see that per how is that controversial or how do you how do you wrangle with those issues yeah you know I think the important thing to think about that is there's actually even more in common so as I mentioned in this what what's I think a nice feature of classical education that it's draws from diverse traditions what time parking not just your graphic area but also through history. And so you know the golden rule shows up in almost every culture and so classical the classical education doesn't have to come from a particular tradition unit lots of traditions have their classical period lots of traditions wrestled with these questions and so because there is that common denominator that's out there I think there are ways to craft curriculum and and think about pedagogy to put character really at the forefront you know we don't want kids just to be number and letter at although you know as important as that is but we want to give them worthy goals to to pursue with the skills that they have. Thank you are there other questions Senator Sturch you're recognized. Thank you Mr chairman I appreciate you coming I wanted to ask you talked. I think this process will fit first about competition between the private schools and public schools and how that works question minor in north central Arkansas I don't have very many private schools or charter schools we have conversion charges that I wanted to ask if you dividend research between competition in public schools. So to public schools competing against each other what is that do as far as you know the relationship between them our overall as far as our success. Thank you bye senator Sturch and and I appreciated years your speech on the on the Senate floor as well it reminded me of of the the. Vibe or or I think that we try to follow in our department as well we we are we are faculty of very diverse opinions and ideological commitments and and we get along fabulously because we respect each other and and we respect the perspectives of of of of other people so so I want to thank you for that entered your question I have done a little bit of research on the affected public school competition and it reinforces the research on private school competition that is generally when our school districts are smaller and when families have more choices among school districts in where they they can live then those districts really know that they have to they have to bring their a game all the time and so that the presence of competition whether it's from other public schools or whether it's from charter schools or private schools that that that competition inspires the public school systems to deliver better results for kids. I thought to say. I appreciate it I I live it so I I feel like you're right on point the other question and I would have is you know like you said when I talk about school choice back home that's what they're thinking walking on the south side I can go to bed so I can go see read you know because those the options they see so beyond kind of the funding our what else do you see then as maybe a bear with regard to the state or state policy that might need to be changed or might be I guess what I'm gonna get I'm just gonna say it is you know I guess my thing is always been if I'm giving money to two different entities the rules ought to be the same you know or at least somewhat fair and so that's what I kind of want to make sure is what do you see as barriers in a state policy as far as regards to funding in fairness that might need to be changed or might need to be updated so that we might go further down this road. I can be for anybody sure Senator yeah that's an excellent question well so what we have in Arkansas is is is we have the the foundation we have the policies in place for widespread parental school choice but they're just on a really small scale with the exception of the the statewide a public school choice initiative that's that's pretty robust you know thirteen fourteen thousand kids participating every year but the private school choice programs are just tiny and and families without resources have far fewer educational options in our state than families with resources and I think that's that's a matter of fairness and and and Justice and I'd like to see more families from disadvantaged backgrounds have the opportunity to make make informed choices for the kids public charter schools is one way we can do that an expansion of our public charter schools are charter school sector is growing in our state but but it could grow more and and with the funding I am I also do had a research team this looked at charter school funding across the country and and here in Arkansas and we still need to do some work to equalize that funding so that so that funding more closely is tied to individual students needs and travels with them whichever whichever school their parents chooses for them. Follow up on that last point and so across the United States in different states that you see or different best practices when they do update their funding methods do they change any part of the rules or policies as far as what is required in order to get that funding to that make it somewhat the same between private schools and public schools are they treated differently under one set of rules over here another set of rules over there. Sure it so that you know what the what what we think about about public charter schools for example at what the what they're supposed to be what the motivation is for them the one of the motivations for public charter schools is that these be opportunities to experiment and and try different things that aren't necessarily permitted in the traditional public school system so so opportunities to innovate and and and to do unconventional things so the idea that if public charter schools were subject to all the same rules that traditional public schools were subject to they would be public charter schools so it is it is sort of definitional in public charter schools that they'd be that day be excused from some of the requirements that traditional public schools follow now you know we could have we could have a separate discussion I'd be happy to have it just about the rules and regulations to traditional public schools are subject to because I think I think sometimes those you know those those are excessive and and we can get rid of a few that we. Yes but but the idea and it and it's true that that basically the the current deal that's being offered to public charter schools is is you you have freedom from any of these requirements but you get fewer resources and I think the question is is it still is that balanced or or are they under resource because they're not getting all of the revenue flows that traditional public schools again. Thank you Senator Hester you're recognized. Quick Dr Chang it in your You talked a lot about developing children now. For my kids go to classical education so I'm for this but that you talked a lot about you know like defining justice and helping kids determine what that is like is there a right or wrong answer or someone lead like who determines what justices because I think all of us might have different interpretation yeah sure well I I think the best way to illustrate this is Plato's Republic which is all about justice and I mean it's interesting that and a lot of the dialogues of Plato they don't quite settle on the it of the definite answer you know they'll become aspects of what it is and you know see you hear sock to say the you know it's when your soul is all all the parts are working in right order you know and so they don't land on a very particular say dictionary definition but the intent to wrestle with those tax and other literary works and and you know all up and down the curriculum the point is to wrestle with that question and in in kind of thinking through it pondering it in relationship with others in community with others you know kids beginning on apprehend Hey that feels right that feels wrong and you know I mean we're probably not going to ever find like some kind of technical definition of it but I think that's something we all kind of apprehend a little bit of what that is I think that's the seed that gets planted and it sets the the kids up for the whole base your whole life journey to ask that question which I think we only to even that we've all graduated from from school so again leaving it open and and giving that opportunity to you know go whole hog into thinking about what is that that's really the the significance of that opportunity. Yes Sir. A doctrine that you mention it and. I say this because you guys are smart people words have meaning like we call a virtual school you can call it cyber is that this is there a different reason it's it's the same thing and that's a great question I have no idea okay thanks we use interchangeably okay no that's that's that's very helpful to me and the next thing following the a lot of kids a lot of virtual the last couple years Hey I think it's been fantastic seem to be very successful for a lot of kids who struggle what we learned that the negative about cyber school virtual school has been any new because I have a I don't know of any hi this is fairly other than prolonged virtual school for kids who need to be interacting but you have any feedback on that sure I mean in general and I hate to say this I've been on the board of a cyber school for eleven years now in general the academic value added is somewhat worse and I've done a lot of studies on not to try to explain why and I just come up with the thing that yes just somewhat worse I think it's harder to establish relationships and cyber environment but I think there's another thing too which is that all the kids who tend to choose a certain the parent to tennis shoes the server environment were parents of kids who were typically doing pretty badly in a traditional public school environment or traditional face to face school environment it's nice day socially semis Bentley academically CMOS both we've we've actually done a lot of parents surveys it actually looks like the social sort of bullying to mention plays more of a role for the academic dimension at the restaurant general cyber versus face to face schooling I think there there's there's a clear need for cyber schooling and all kinds of ways on they'll be classes a lot of foreign languages Sabin a large district AP classes and a lot of small districts that you just don't have the resources to do in your district that you really have to do by cyber on there's a lot of kids who just can't do a face to face environment for a range of reasons so we really need cyber what we have to accept the fact that it generally doesn't do quite as well in the last two. Ears I think a huge thing we found with pandemic and this was was predictable this was researcher predicted it It in general kids have not done quite as well either academically or socially but that's been especially true for kids were already behind so like you know my I have a go getter seventeen year old daughter and Steve PhD family so a lot of recycling last year's spend virtual schools would close and open and close and open and we wonder just going completes a week and that's what I think and and she's doing fine she's a go getter she looks opportunist office yes teachers a lot of questions she's doing great she has friends who have done I would say probably twenty percent of the work they usually do when their task force to be showing that because they don't have a teacher there re data hold their hand and push them through she's she's actually tutored a couple of our friends and kind of pull them up the passing so I I think in in general especially closed down the schools the kids who who suffer the when you close down face to face schools the kids who suffer most or or generally more low income regionally kids are a little a little behind but yeah that there's a place for cyber there definitely yes but I think we should never sell it I was one of the people who twelve years ago eleven years ago in a book I predicted this would be the wave of the future and much better than physical school in all kinds of ways on the reasons for saying that and mostly I was wrong. So what happens. Thank you I love that discussion because I know that Senator Sturch is a teacher and he's shaking his head because we have seen that devastating the fact kids need each other no they need to be encouraged thing need a teacher to guide you know to to present it in a different way because they have a relationship with that student and they know how that student learns not every student learns you know in a linear way some learn in a horizontal waste time in a circular way some in a sporadic way I mean I have four and they all are different learners and make and I can tell you exactly which one is which you know and and one of them just blows my mind because she's the sporadic one you know and I'm like how did you get from there to here again there's no clear definition defines path so yeah I can imagine and what I've heard it from so many educators who are so concerned about their students and in fact one thing is that I think we really are going to have to wrestle with Azin Education Committee or ask legislators is the mental health issue because we've seen it way too many suicides in kids who are plugged into their football team they were plugged in and to their their environment to their family outside of their family and lost that when the pandemic hat and we went to all online and these they got lost they what they just got lost and and I I it it's it it's devastating to see teachers and administrators deal with that loss when if they had been in their classrooms they would've been able to keep tabs on them and may be prevented that suicide from occurring so it's it's such a tremendous discussion and I so much appreciate you bringing that into the discussion and the question that you asked senator Hester because it's very very important for us to really wrestle. With and define. and I shouldn't jump in and say just yesterday I saw presentation making the case that before covid actually it's before covid the average kid was doing about five hours a day of screen time of all kinds but low income kids it was closer to eight hours and that's just really special too much art has a place for this is too much three hundred accounts but still. Instead of looking down any be looking at. Thank you okay we're going to move to the next panel thank you all. Legislators if you want to move and ask questions you can do that okay and I see senator elect if you would like to come to the table I represent McKenzie representative Bragg come on up H.. Under the open seats. You can even set up here if you'd like. We want you to participate in the conversation okay. If you will introduce yourself for the record you may proceed. Hello my name is Samantha Morrow. I'm a professor of education reform on economics at the university of Arkansas what I also hold and now trading teacher quality I joined the department of education reform back in two thousand fourteen my areas of research include education forty C. LA what economics with a focus on teacher quality and the child labor markets thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. Research has some clearly the who your teacher at ease is really important I'm not only in terms of this is course but also important for later life outcomes you have a high quality the chair you have better chances of higher paid jobs less unemployment I'm fighting go and so I would say that you miss the need teachers is investing in the future of Arkansas. Although we don't have final but also ditch of teachers in the state that import on persistence or teaches that we will continue to address we have certain churches in sentence ADS of the State southern and he's there Arkansas particularly that is that are you know they have suffered importante to shortages. These three days in this area are relying heavily on long term substitute teachers and certified teachers to covered positions. These are also some of the states in the state who's there for a higher proportion of more the seventy two students. We also have so teaches in certain subjects we like my math and science teachers as well as a special education teachers and the pandemic has also some sort agency not important to school personnel we are missing bus drivers or support staff sixty two teachers on but a professional C. not dying when we need them most. Although the pandemic so far has not resolved in the now widespread increasing teachers leaving the profession our research shows that the teachers across the country have been experiencing high levels of burn burnout under their considerations to leave hopping case in March of twenty twenty one four out of ten teachers declare that they have considered leaving or retiring from their current position that in the last year. All of these it's likely more than five said it was because of Kobe ninety. Those approaching retirement age fifty five or older consider leaving of higher rates is letting is slightly more than fifty out of ten they said that they considered leaving or retiring because of call it. Consents would you burn out approaching retirement age having to switch between modes during the year or teaching hybrid what all factors that we found associated with higher considerations to leave the profession for teachers building that bond and make. As the fundament continues there is an ongoing risk that the children are my entities and even a small rights of teacher turnover of there could be problematic for this state either they're concentrated in those areas where we are already missing teachers. Higher levels of Europe the satisfaction with nose affect teaching effectiveness I'm cool I'm a student I got any progress even if teachers decide not to leave. There are multiple solutions that having that I am proposed to improve the teacher pipeline another is the speech teacher shortages we will continue providing the financial aid for those hard to staff schools inside units we can find ways to better address already got we near by the states we go through a that incentive programs increase evaluation on incentives to teacher preparation programs supported them not exceed the vacation programs find supporting pathways to a standard licensing for but a professional a long term substitute some classroom eight we're trying to you will your own programs find better ways to improve the five line of high quality principals or find ways to read that is from my Dick working on these all these right for a missing ITS five finding the right solutions that will work in each place required understanding of the local teacher labor markets in this state. Without research we need to provide a better picture of teachers who planned the money in Arkansas so we can help inform effective started solutions in this respect the better to stay data is key to be able to develop successful is that they use to improve the recruitment and retention of Arkansas a locate. The Committee necks will discuss some of our efforts in these that action thank you so much for your attention. Thank you senator is my name is Josh McGee I'm associate director of the office for education policy AT and a professor at the university of Arkansas in the next panel you'll he'll hear more from the office of education policy at executive director Dr Sarah mackenzie about the center's partnership with education stakeholders across the state I'm going to focus on our collaboration with the state around the use of data and evidence to help improve our cans lights in addition to my job at the university of Arkansas I am also the chief data officer for the state of Arkansas as CEO I'm part of the leadership team for the A. R. data team which is Arkansas as data and analytics team this is within the Department of transformation and cheered Services Division of information systems I am also chair of the state data and transparency panel which was established by the legislature in twenty seventeen air date is mission is to help the state use data to make better decisions and to provide our Kansans with high quality useful information to improve their lives they are data team has deep knowledge and experience in data linking privacy protection research and analysis and evidence based policy in addition to myself the team includes chief analytics officer Robert McCue and chief privacy officer Jennifer Davis A. R. data is building several components that will facilitate data informed decision making a high functioning data integrated data system with the fact of data governance to securely link data as needed across state departments and divisions the analytic capacity to use those data to produce actionable insights and a process to identify high priority issue areas and use data to continuously improve in those areas their data team in its work in many ways was made possible by transformation which help streamline state government and push departments to work together to improve as part of our efforts to build state capacity use data to produce you. S. full actionable insights they are data team is collaborating with state departments to build relationship relationships with higher education institutions like the university of Arkansas to leverage existing subject matter expertise and research capacity. Our work around the Arkansas teacher pipeline is an excellent example a productive partnership between the state and institutions of higher education our teacher pipeline work involves Arkansas the Arkansas department of education the UVA's office for education policy and department of education reform and a our data team. The Arkansas department of education is working with partners including the office for education policy to conduct a comprehensive study of the teacher pipeline the project will use data from multiple state departments and divisions A. R. data will link the data from the various sources and will share privacy protected data with eighties authorized partners. In close collaboration with AT the office for education policy and department of education reform will conduct research and analysis to help us better understand Arkansas specific teacher pipeline the study will describe the teacher pipeline from high school through post secondary education and into the classroom explain how the teacher pipeline is changed over time and highlight links leaks and potential barriers in that pipeline this work will be used used by eighty to inform improvements innovations in policy and practice around teacher preparation and retention this type of collaboration not only allows the state to use data in new and powerful ways but also allows departments like the department of education to leverage experts like doctors Morrow Dr mackenzie and myself to make faster progress we're excited about the potential of this collaboration to deliver insights to help us improve training and support for states teachers and help all Arkansas students reach their full potential presenting next our panel like to introduce Dr Sarah Moore who is one of our distinguished alumni who is also serving as the vice chair of the state board of education. Thank you hi everyone it's good to be here today I'm Serra more like you said I currently serve on the state board of education but I am do not work with the Department now but I am a graduate of the program I really enjoyed my time there a state bill when I got my doctorate degree I when I was asked to speak on this panel on education workforce I said of course as I had teachers I was a teacher elementary teacher for awhile we know that teachers or port it but it wasn't until I went to graduate school and really dug into the data into the research to see that teachers really are the most important school related factor in a child's education and you know we always hear heart warming stories of teachers the impact we all have them ourselves but when you really get down and look at the data you see that having a high quality teacher not only impacts students current achievement but lifetime success and these folks are very smart and can give you lots of of studies around that that I think for it from for me the more I look in my work the more I want to see how are we supporting teachers how are we pushing them how are we encouraging them to be the best they can be for our students. I do want to commend our state I think we have done a number of things to address our teacher pipeline as as they discuss as we all know we've been in a lot of meetings we have a shortage of teachers in our state and not just in Southeast Arkansas where we've traditionally always unit but across the state and different subject areas we don't have teachers and now with the pandemic we that might be exacerbated as we move forward this state and others and art and art and with y'all have been a number of things to combat that we are just picked out a few of educate educate arising program that works with high school students that those that want to be teacher might wanna be a teacher to get them supported to get them excited and to get them working and schools and high school I think the most important part of that is when it gets that high school student on a pathway to an edge education degree and which we now have a pathway that that could be paid for I'm I'm glad to see a lot of community college. BBR here today we have the Arkansas futures pathway in which you can get an associate's degree for free education you can pile that on with other scholarships and you could in our state go through all four years and get an education degree at no cost to the student I think we need to encourage that morning push that information out I also think we can look to other states to have even more robust programs Arizona has there is a teacher's academy where if you sign on you can get your bachelors degree completely paid for for up to and then you have to do up to four years of service in Arizona public schools to get it paid for what a great way to attract people to share in a strongly say we want in education and we're gonna knock down those areas so that we can get you there. We have other innovative programs in some of our schools in this state we have an a growing in teacher residency model a lot of districts are starting to look at their pair professionals those that are already working in a school setting those that they have a lot of experience with kids but not might not be on that pathway to licensure and there are more pathways to get them whether they need to degree or into licensure to do that. That being said we also and we all know we have a lot of alternative pathways to licensure that are being utilized more and more because of our waiver process and just last month or the month before our state board. Approved the teacher licensure waiver for majority of the districts in Southeast Arkansas their large number districts in our state that have that licensure and therefore those they're seeking individuals just with a bachelor's degree we need to make sure that we are supporting those districts so that they can support those individuals some of those might have had tons of experience in schools and some of them have it we want to see how how can we as a state and how our districts able support those teachers and also provide accountability when needed when or lowering the bare barrier to entry into a profession we I want to make sure there's some accountability on the end so that we are and making sure we have the best people for our students. Last I just want to touch on it from the night I talked about a lot that and you have already talked about here but virtual education even before the pandemic we knew that virtual dictation had to play an important part in education here in Arkansas right now all high school students are required to take a virtual course we do have a number of schools where students virtual can be your full time option whether through charter schools or district conversion schools I Fayetteville even before the pandemic had that virtual school but as we have already talked about here today there are certain challenges with that for teachers and for students and so we started to train some teachers and how to teach virtually I think we need to make that more robust we need to look at what that looks like and how do we build that out and even if you are in a classroom and you see the face to face all the students you're still using a lot of technology and more than likely moving forward you're gonna be doing a lot of platforms so that you can offer virtual programs for students. I thank lastly I would say and that conversation we know that a lot of our districts might not ever find teachers in certain subject areas we have a specially in my part of south it's the southeast part of the state we have districts that aren't going to find a high school chemistry teacher and even before the pandemic they're using virtual options for that I think it's important that we look at our current virtual options see if we need to change or open up the gates for that and in doing so look at how are we providing virtual education for our lowest performing students should for George education be the same for all or should we be looking at it more personalized and specialized trying to meet the needs of our students. That's I think that's all I have now. Thank longer than I meant to but you're fine thank you are there any questions from the members of the committee. Yes Senator Sturch. I just wanna ask this committee anybody and I think doctor again you might have touched on it but when you said something about your collecting data as far as why teachers leaving the classroom is how quickly they're leaving the classrooms or you know that kind of thing. What I wanted to see is the connection piece and you say you're working with eighty but every school has to have a teacher recruitment and retention plan and so with that data than ever be somewhat used and as far as on the school basis meaning that schools can actually implement some of these ideas are not just coming straight from eighteen down you must do this you Mr that but will they be able to have access to that or be able to utilize that a such a way that they could change was recruiting retention plan Sir I guess more customized their area of their subject needs or whatever. Absolutely that's one of our goals we we would like to provide very detailed information down at the district level one of the problems we have right now is a lot of the information is provided to summarize at the state level it's hard to kind of get good information in your local labor market and we like to take that down to the district level das for Education Policy the University where I work partners with lots of districts and try to translate research research findings for them so they can actually their action with that they can implement something based on them so it's not just you know research papers and us talking to policy makers here in Little Rock we're going on working with districts to help them understand what the findings suggest and help them tailor solutions that work for their students. Any other questions Senator Hester doctor you as well just on a practical level in and I've been very supportive and believe in the sharing of data can you can you give me a real life practical examples sharing of data on a state education or statewide that that we help solve or improve problem. Yeah absolutely the state legislature requires the economic security report which links higher education program of study data with workforce outcomes this year we put out that report and I improved it I am or we're also developing a dashboard whereby we're connecting higher education data so data on graduates from our institutions of higher education we're following up afterwards looking at our the employed in Arkansas and how much they make and we're summarizing those workforce outcomes by a program of study we're calling it the higher education planning guide because is meant to be a guide for families and students who are looking at their next step in their educational career they're trying to decide what they're gonna major and we want to provide actionable information that would help them decide if based on employment in Arkansas. What's that website. If you search for the higher Arkansas higher education planning guide you should find it the workforce services puts that on their website as well but googling that we should work. And and that's part of the higher end consumers guide that we pass legislation to to create a higher a consumer guide with that whole idea in place so that was one of the things that Senator English and myself and the Republican women legislative caucus really felt very strongly about was the fact that you should have a higher and consumer guide and that's to be made available to parents and students while they're in high school so that they can make a better choice a consumer led choice with the information and data to support their choice as to what institution they want to attend and what field of study they want to attend because going in to that whole purchasing you've got to be armed with information to back the best choice and decisions you can't because you're gonna incurred dat we got to make sure the end of that road you're able to pay that debt off so I'm just you know hoping that all this gets tied together so that we can give those parents of the students that informed power or decision and information and to make their decisions better decisions anybody else have questions yes senator start manager this just technical assist the report that was released last month was it just a new report released last month maybe on Arkansas hired a department's website or something I believe the report I was referencing was released late last year and I know that as interpreted said there is a is a larger effort afoot to inform our cans is to what their options are for higher education so this is just one piece of that but happy to provide the link to the committee afterwards they can get circulated I should also say that without the efforts of Senator Irvin and Senator English I would be sitting here and and a lot of the work they were doing behind the scenes on data would be happening Senator English as been a a long time supporter of this work and and we're making great progress out. So thank you senator English yeah yes we will if you for that our staff will get all this information out to John only the members of the committee to other members of the legislature any other questions from members. Right thank you all so much for your presentation. And the last panel if they'll come up. I'm sorry you have to carry your own chair college is. At. Welcome. Here I'd be fine. Bill just introduced everybody for the. Introduce yourselves for the record and then you may proceed. Ninety five. I'm doctor Serra mackenzie for the executive director of the office for education policy. I am Dr Jennifer Ashton alarm of the department of education reform and I run the national center for rural education research networks at Harvard University. I am Jonathan way. And my name is Bob Custer shall be the first to speak with you today I am an economist in the field of school finance in my specific expertise is on teacher pensions which is why you've been staring at this the throughout the entire session I'm a communist I can't talk without a picture to just one I had the honor of testifying before the Joint Committee on retirement a few years ago were several of you were president Senator Irvin I believe Senator Hester as well and some of the other members of the S. committee and your patiently sat through my hour long presentation on Arkansas teacher pension finances so it's good to see you again and for those of you who are spared that pleasure you can find the link to that presentation on the bio page which I sent to to the Committee I'll be much briefer today but it does give me the opportunity to update some of the information I presented them and to reiterate my availability as an extra resource for you on this important but often overlooked aspect of education policy teacher pension policy is important for a number of reasons most obvious is the fiscal impact on school funding these costs can squeeze the resources available for salaries and all other education programs if they get out of control the majority of these costs do not go to fund current classroom teachers but rather to pay off liabilities for benefits that have been around long ago but not fully funded the good news for Arkansas is that unlike the rest of the country these costs have not been rising since the last recession at the point of this picture here if you take a look at the red line that's my calculations of the per pupil expenditures for pension contributions in K. twelve education around the country as a national. On average over the last twenty years they started at five hundred forty dollars again that's in current dollars twenty twenty twenty two dollars inflation adjusted dollars back at the beginning of the century and there are now north of seventeen hundred dollars by contrast Arkansas by my calculations start off at about six hundred twenty five dollars in as did rise to about a thousand it has been pretty constant about a thousand dollars per pupil in an inflation adjusted dollars for last number of years now that's a significant chunk but at least it's not been growing I would say that the S. P. T. R. S. the Arkansas teacher retirement system has managed its risks well compared to the rest of the country for example in the early two thousands pension France Systems found themselves or so they thought momentarily in good financial shape due to the long bull market of the nineteen nineties and many states many states raise benefits right afterwards which left the systems vulnerable to the shops that followed Arkansas chose a different path offering temporary cuts to the contribution rate which were easily reversed as a result Arkansas was not settled with benefit hikes that proved painful to reverse elsewhere in the country more recently as a TRS has aimed at paying down the pension debt more quickly contribution rates were ramped up by one percentage point each for the districts and teachers to help stabilize the system. This of these steps together with the extraordinary returns on the pension fund last year north of thirty percent both both here and around the country there may be some respite in the near term. From further hikes but as we've all seen in recent weeks this is a risky business markets as you've seen we've seen are jittery about rate hikes and inflation among other risks in my opinion the biggest risk we face and let me qualify that I'm I'm I'm an economist I learned long ago particular when I served as governor of Massachusetts to be very humble about my predictions. I remember actually of the it was in the administration governor Jane swift and during the session round two thousand and the I was asked every month how bad can things get next month with revenues as they were dropping over fifteen percent and I every time I was wrong was we're Senate on finally I had been on leave from the university of Massachusetts economic department governor swift said you're no better at this than we are is maybe it's time for you to go back to you mask. Anyway in my opinion the biggest risk we face is from inflation which as we all know is the worst we've had in forty years this not only poses risks to the system through its market impact by a rate hikes in general uncertainty but also importantly a direct impact on our retired teachers the eight year is Cola is set at three percent simple and of course inflation is now more than double that. Pension policy and reform have other implications they can impact teacher quality by virtue of pensions large role in compensation potentially shaping recruitment and retention subject is been discussed earlier and much of my work has focused on the incentives in uneven distribution of benefits embedded in current systems in general the incentives in in equities in pension benefits are shrouded in formulas that are often poorly understood my colleagues Dr McGee and doctors imaro doing important survey research on teacher knowledge of the retirement system which varies widely and how they might react to various reforms but sometimes impacts there's a straight a face as with current inflation that we see so I thank you for the opportunity to appear here and to reiterate my availability for whatever assistance I may be able to add to the excellent guidance you already get from A. T. R. S. in thinking through this important but complicated area of education policy and with that I'll close. I thank you so much for having me here hi I am Jonathan way assisted professor in the department of education reform and endowed chair in education policy and today I'm discussing gift education research and its implications for Arkansas students. Developing excellence for all students is worthwhile gold Education every student should have the opportunity to learn something new each day. Thank you to get that education research supports the idea that even the highest performing students need academic challenge to devote themselves to be the very best with that means learning from other highly performing peers being part of a gifted program or taking mathematics above the ground level because they're ready for. Unfortunately in many cases academically advanced students going challenged in many from disadvantaged backgrounds are often left behind despite being quite talented this is a loss to both the student and to society and to the communities. Students does need to be adequate identified in the match to events programming that they are ready to learn and to more fully develop their talents our research found that each year thirty percent of Arkansas high Arkansas's highest achieving students are not identified as gifted and talented. Our concerning was that high achieving students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are fifty percent less likely to be identified as gifted and similarly high achieving students from more advantaged backgrounds. Research and get that education finds the universally testing all students instead of just the students who are nominated by teacher parent is a way to widen that identify a broader set of students are ready for advanced learning. To avoid added expense IMPLAN existing academic measure that has already taken by all students such as the city's fire as one objective indicate a readiness revenge programming would help identify talented but disadvantaged students. recent research also shows that although the quality to get that education divisions across the state likely varies widely as a result of inconsistent programming. Overall participating in the gifted program in Arkansas is associated with improved test score growth and integrates this positive outcome aligns with decades of research and get that education around the world which supports the idea that advanced learners just like all the students the challenge to drop their excellence. This work for research practice partnership with Dustin seating the northwest Arkansas education service cooperative big Tran a PhD graduate student in education reform answer McKenzie executive director or EP. We're continuing to research and support improvements and get the education through this collaboration but working with GT coordinators to inform the research questions we ask and hopefully help identify and challenge students in Arkansas schools. There are many ways to get the education may be improved in the future such as expanding identification to include students relevant spatial reasoning those who can rotate. Three dimensional figure their minds I'd or enjoy working with their hands to build and crucially we need to ensure that the wide ranging talents of all students are fully developed advanced programming to ensure the personal flourishing in to support the talent pipeline for the future work force in Arkansas and thank you. Got it this time hi I'm Serra McKenzie I run the office for education policy and I'm a professor in the department of education reform we P. as my office is named was formed by Gary Ritter in two thousand three and are the goal was to help bridge the gap between sort of academic research and the practitioners in the field and make sure that they're feeding back and forth between each other I was a pretty novel idea at the time now there's a title for it called research practice partnerships and you know if he is really a model and how we do that so we put out research papers we put out shorter policy briefs we put out even shorter the blog posts so people can access the information at whatever level they have time an interest in doing we also do a lot of data visualisations which we find really helps put complex to. Concepts into just a picture you know instead of lots of numbers an asterisks in words so some of our annual reports are the school report the school discipline report and then we do school district report cards for Pulaski County schools in northwest Arkansas schools sort of comparing and very. Easy to understand terms how those different districts are doing and my favorite the only P. awards for the highest growth schools in the state and we're gonna talk a little bit more about growth later so hold on I'm like mention with doctor way we've been engaging in this research practice partnership about G. T. we are also partnering with a lot of other school districts we're working with Fort Smith to examine the effectiveness of their reading intervention program with spring Dale to sort of identify key markers on the path to English learner proficiency with hope charter to figure out what works and doesn't work in starting up a trauma informed school in Arkansas and most recently partnering with little rock school districts community schools to evaluate the academic and social emotional fact of an after school program arts program for fourth graders doctor again I are also working on a statewide evaluation of the State of pre K. in this state and have been serving pre K. teachers and and Senator leaders about what their biggest challenges are and we're working with them to implement an assessment for our youngest learners and assessments are really important to me I feel like we really have to have critical I'm not critical but crucial measures of if what we're doing is working so when I was a brand new baby teacher twenty seven years ago I came out of teachers school and I got hired into a teacher team of three teachers have been teaching for like around seven hundred fifty years maybe was my best. And they had their folder that was September and they gave it to me and they wanted me to do it their way and I was like what I do it my way because I know better and I was just working really really hard trying to do all these innovative things for students I was complaining to my father about how much it was working and it was so hard and he was like how do you know that what you're doing is even making a difference why do you think you know better than these teachers that have been professional educators for a long time and I did not have an answer for him I didn't have any evidence that what I was doing was better for kids I'm not really drove me to where I am now which is we've got a lot of evidence about what's working for kids we just don't use it very well. So this is why I want to talk a little bit about academic growth academic growth is a powerful tool that you can use and anyone in this state can use to. Get a handle on what's working apart from just grade level proficiency which is highly correlated with out of school factors like poverty right we can tell what proficiency is going to be in different areas of the state just based on the percentage of the students at the enroll who come from for and reduced lunch it's highly correlated academic growth is not what academic growth is is looking at how much students improve from one year to the next compared to other students with similar test score histories right so we may not all be a grade level but in my growing more or less than similar kids like me across the state and that really helps us inform policy because we can identify schools where students are growing really really well and try to go there and see what's happening in those schools that's helping students grow very well. so we move forward a little bit There's some there's a bunch of projects we've been working on we have if you want to warm know more about growth. I'll talk about it all day just as my husband at. He's like please I know it's great so we've looked at achievement outcomes for pre K. kids in Arkansas now this was not a randomized control trial like the Tennessee one that just came out because we weren't able to randomize kids into pre K. but we do have information out all the kids who attended public pre K. in Arkansas and look at their outcomes through third grade and then through fifth grade and see if there's differences there like I talked about data visualisations we have one that shows school level trends over time for different subpopulations so you can look at what those achievement gaps are. Do we if they're getting worse or better by school in this state we just did a report about high school freshman GPAs and their impact on longer term outcomes like going to college which is fascinating school based health centers how do they relate to student achievement part of the grant was that they would improve student achievement and so we took it took a Gander at that academic growth we looked if it's related to class size school spending school poverty teacher experience we find no correlation really with any of those things it's about what's happening in the classroom every day but most recently we did find that African American students are persistently demonstrating lower growth rates than their non AfricanAmerican peers which is very strange and we're digging more into what kind of school characteristics are associated with that it's not the percentage of African American teachers it's again not class size it's not school spending it does seem that charter schools have higher levels of growth for African American students than traditional public schools so this sort of goes back to what doctor will close tracking earlier but one of the really interesting things I want to share with you as I just completed a parent survey of a state wide representative sample of five hundred school age parents asking questions about pre K. attitudes about their kids school attitudes about character education attitudes that the school voucher programs and and private school scholarship pieces that doctor will mentions at the top of the hearing so we're going to do that report that survey every other year and then in between survey teachers in the state in partnership with the state department and try to get a better sense of what our constituents what are stakeholders are thinking. Not education in the state so thank you for your time and please accept my invitation to let us help you grapple with some of these complex decisions that you're gonna be facing as you move forward trying to make education better for all kids in Arkansas now I would like to introduce our final Speaker this is Jennifer Ashley grew up here in Arkansas and graduated from R. ET are a program and as you mentioned is now off Herbert. All right thank you Sarah I am honored to be here today to tell you about my current work at the national center for rural education research networks at Harvard University and how my training at the university of Arkansas made that work possible M. A. ideas for improving rural education in Arkansas so you know just a quick quick overview here. the herd rural center school is to expand the use of evidence based decision making by rural school districts this is no small feat because there is almost no what rigorous research on what works and rural settings so in order for rural districts to use evidence to make decisions we first have to generate at we do this by working in partnership with approximately forty rural school districts in New York in Ohio we help rural school districts use their data to decide on solutions to improve attendance postsecondary readiness and post secondary entry we then help them test the solutions using randomized controlled trials the gold standard in education research. Through this we hope our districts find strategies that work and we expand the body of evidence that all rural school districts can learn from. I would not be doing this important work today if it were not for the exemplary training I received at the department of education reform at the university of Arkansas. My training of the department of education reform imparted many values a commitment to conducting rigorous research the importance of strong partnerships with schools and doing research the imperative to share research findings to a wide audience beyond the academic world and an understanding of the unique context of rural education. My first significant experience enacting these values was evaluating the older raider promise college scholarship program in Eldorado Arkansas for those of you who are not familiar I I expect many of you are the older reader promise gives college scholarships equal to the amount of in state tuition in Arkansas to all other rate or high school graduates who've been enrolled in the district's since ninth grade. We conducted interviews with school staff and not suggested that the scholarship helped create a college going culture that motivated both the staff and the students to change their actions so that every student would be prepared for college and my research we found that the introduction of the scholarship led to a measurable improvement in the district's math scores later research by my department of education reform colleagues Lee Swanson and Gary Ritter found that the scholarship lead to an increase in students enrolling in college and earning a bachelor's degree. The success of the older it'll promise program was my first experience seeing firsthand that sometimes and policy if we take big swings it pays off. The Harvard rural center is another big swing in its own way there is a reason there's almost no rigorous research and roll education it's just as much work for researchers to. Goshi the data use agreement gather data from one small rural school district as it is to just go over to little rock and work with them a to do this rigorous research you need large numbers of students and schools and so it's often easier for researchers to just work with one large districts and work with a lot of small ones. The Harvard road center solve these problems in a few ways first we work with a small number of data hubs instead of working with each of our forty districts receive their data we have a great team of research analysts led by another department of education reform along doctor Lee Swanson to use sophisticated statistical analyses to account for the smaller numbers of students in these districts. And most importantly we offer rural school districts something they value an opportunity to be a part of a large professional learning community of other rural school districts focused on school improvement. Districts value this enough that they're willing to compromise and come to consensus on one or two if interventions to test. They've also been willing to roll out the intervention to only a portion of their students in order to be able to rigorously test whether it works or not did I mention that we've done all this work during a pandemic. Rural communities are hungry to do this work and to learn New York in Ohio are really different places they have different funding and governance structures and yet many of our rural districts have remained committed to doing this work with us even during a pandemic and all of the many challenges they have faced. Harvard's role center so far we have tested for interventions in attendance to in post secondary readiness and expect to test at least two more next year we found that one simple intervention personalized messages to parents about their child's number of absences it has improved student attendance and we plan to roll it out and tested in for additional states next year. In the space of three years we will have exponentially increased the amount of rural education research that any rural district in the country can use. This work happened in New York and Ohio not through Harvard alone but through a partnership with the states the state provided help recruiting districts to participate subsidies to rural districts to for travel and interventions and access to data. We could learn even more if more states would create rural research networks to help their rural districts learn and provide evidence for the nation's rural schools. Arkansas has all the ingredients to do this kind of work we have a centralized data infrastructure we have a large number of rural school districts and we have the in state talent to conduct the statistical analyses needed to learn about what works and real education. as members of the Senate Education Committee I would encourage you to invest and helping rural communities learn and support institutions like the university of Arkansas's department of education reform to produce the next generation of researchers education leaders and policymakers that will help them do that thank you. Thank you I mean this is just an excellent I really appreciate the academic growth piece of the and how about so importance to what we have seen as proficiency you know and we are to the point where the court has stated. And has put something in place that has not moved the needle. Hasn't made the drastic improvements that we really need to be making the state of Arkansas and so something can be adequate but and we use this word adequacy we're supposed to define adequacy that adequacy is not getting the job done. We have to move from adequacy to exceptional we've got to do it now. And we're to the point where we have to engage as policy makers in a very real way with people that are in partnership with us to figure out how we really change that narrative and that's what I'm interested in I don't want to waste our time going through a process that's going to produce poor results poll results organizer process that's going to produce no improvements in student success so you know that's that's why a is very important to have you here today and to hear from you and these different Buckets of things that are happening and your different areas of expertise and so. I you know I really believe that there's so much to do with the challenges and understanding why a school is getting it done and they have a forty one percent reading readiness score. But their free and reduced lunches are a lot higher than some other areas where they may have an eight percent reading writing the score we've got to understand the dynamic of what's happening there the curriculum in the and and and with the teachers in the classroom but I also go back to you know whether it's G. T. you know that curriculum. When you say or the that has been said you know that a rising tide. At less all boats. Well why wouldn't that be the case why wouldn't we say. Kids that are getting gifted and talented curriculum why would we apply that across the board. Why wouldn't we say your. You're not selected why why isn't that child selected how is that selection process is it random is that consistent across school districts across schools. And if it's going to be working and its engaging then why would you buy when you incorporate that's right your curriculum for every student and that was one of the approaches that we took with the science of reading you know if we understand that teaching reading to a student who may have dyslexia who may have special needs when it comes to reading if we know that these methods of teaching help these students why wouldn't you incorporate that through your entire curriculum for every student to increase their vocabulary. To increase their writing skills and to increase the reading comprehension. So I've. And you can respond to that but I feel like we're to silo to sometimes and we're not looking at what's working and how you mix at all throughout the batter. Thank you so I'll start over the coming I think Sir because you might call it up it says I think it's a great great point about how well why don't we give you Tito students and I think it personally learning system where we could tailor education to each person's very diverse different types of learning needs and in places that would be ideal I think at this point she still exist because we haven't figured out how to do that differentiate in all the classrooms very difficult for teachers to do that and so GT's use for just you know to make sure that a group of students you know are challenged at least in that kind of program to make sure I'm at the same time you know it's kind arbitrary to some extent right I wear that kind of falls and we're trying to figure out how to expand that to ensure that we do provide more advanced education every level for all students and so I I completely agree with you thank you. Are there any other questions you can respond as well but are there any other questions members of the committee Senator Sturch. I think it was Dr McKenzie if I'm right you mentioned a survey of support the chart conducted with parents I believe is there a way that we can get a copy of that or is that public. Your results are just as soon as I can get those numbers current okay I will let you know how we did it in November and December. It's next on my list that I just figured that would be good for us to have as well or if it comes at a report later that's fine as common to get an idea absolutely and then I missed the first part not construct sorry that I want to ask you mention about inflation several us have those concerns as well but you mention the three percent Cola and so can you kind of remind us if you if you know as far as how is that currently calculated maybe do you have any recommendations on how to change it for example a lot of my teacher retired teacher friends and I didn't realize this they complain because for so long it was three percent on what their retirement wage was it wasn't a three percent cumulative and so you know if it had been committed maybe all this time inflation may have not have had such a huge effect since three percent on a salary that may have been twenty years ago you know then that's causing more of a burden so I just wanna see if you can share your thoughts with us as well. Yes first what the specifics are of the provision it's three percent simple it's not compounded so just as you said in just as the teacher that you referred to said it is it is on the base salary sorry base pension when then when the initially retire now there have been occasions I think most recently was in two thousand nine. when At when the Another so there's three percent and then the next three percent does not is not on that first three percent it's only on the the announcmenet before that first three percent that's a different string simple and compound there was one year and it but it is at the discretion of the board of the A. T. R. S. to re re basis okay and that was one year I believe was two thousand nine where said okay we are going to include last year's three percent in the pace okay that can also be reversed okay it obviously depends on the fiscal situation of the state but in general it has been three percent simple and and and that's that's the current situation actually E. P. put out a blog a few years ago on this issue of the simple versus compounding and the other issue of course is that the three percent is independent of whatever the CPI is whatever the rate of inflation actually is and they they put out a blog to compared different approaches to that situation of course that was a few years ago when the situation was very different inflation is running well below three percent and now in a situation where it's at and so actually some ground have been gained on information even though wasn't compound it is my recollection but of course now we're in a different situation we don't know how long it's going to last as for what I would recommend that you do that eighty R. S. consider and conjunction with this committee is to try and do what you can to protect her retired teachers with without raising this amount to much more about the that's the trick that's the hat trick so some of the steps you may want to consider Are to have some rule for the CPI or the C. guide for the region perhaps Hey may well want to retain caps may well want to make it contingent on the fiscal situation of the clam some of this. Can you know if the inflation if the call is made more generous in certain years so I'm the obvious as races costs but some of that will be some portion may be self funded by the fact that inflation will also raise potentially work their way through to salaries and therefore to contributions of the current workforce so it it's a complicated situation and a lot of uh so systems across the country have grappled with it in times past again making certain coal as a contingent on the on the extent of funding fortunately in this state it's it's it's about eighty percent funded all right now which is actually relatively good compared to other states but of course we want to continue to be well funded and not let things get out of control so. That may not make may not be a lot of guidance to you but. No excellent thank you are there any other questions from members of the committee. Thank you so much this is been and excellence excellent presentation from everybody we we really do look forward to I think working with you all and that would be my hope I mean I think for those of us here policy makers and everybody that folks we really do want to partner with you and look forward to working with you in and that these capacities so hopefully you'll hear from us. Thank you very much thank you and with that members thank you for staying and having this year and today And so with that were turned.