Education Committee - Senate and House
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- October 2, 2026
Unknown speaker
3:18
Members go ahead and take your seats if you would please.
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
3:57
Joint education will come to order members if you would please take your seats and we will get started on our agenda for today. Thank you everybody for for being here. Hopefully everybody had a good Labboor Day holiday and glad you're back here in town. if you would I'd like to go ahead and start off just with a moment of silence and then a prayer and reckon recognition of senator Gary Stubblefield and his passing obviously it's a very difficult thing for for his family for his constituents in in the state of Arkansas so we want to make sure that we
recognize him and the and the amazing service that he did. if you would please stand with me we'll have a
moment of silence and a prayer. Gracious father we thank you for your love your mercy, your forgiveness we're thankful for the promise of Jesusrt the hope of eternity God we pray today for senator Sublefield his wife his children his grandchildren got in their pa in his passing
and the loss that they feel God may you bring peace to their family peace to know that the hope of Christ is the most amazing hope that any of us could ever have probably to provide that to their family in the days weeks and years to come lord you bless and we thank you for the service that he gave to his constituents to the state of Arkansas and ultimately to his family and you Lo we love you thank you for forgiving all of us it's in Christ Members we will go to item B on
your agenda consideration of a motion to approve the meeting from June 16th. I need a motion to approve motion and second on the senate side have a second all in favor say aye all opposed that has been approved we'll move on to see we have several interim study proposals members if you'd like to present it let me know I don't believe that any of the ones who were on the agenda today have indicated they want to present it so without objection we will batch all
three of these. do not see any objections so I need a motion to batch all three and approve have a motion in a second is there any discussion on the motion all in favor say aye all opposed all righty and now item d on the agenda we have an overview of Atlasesting school scorecards and career readiness so recognize Secretary Jacob Oliva as well asRoss White. if you would please introduce yourself
Speaker 15
6:32
and then you're recognized Good afternoon Jacob Oliva Secretary of Education department of education Ro s s wa
Speaker 17
6:49
t t director for the division of career and technical Education at the department so
Speaker 18
6:54
first I want to thank you all for an opportunity to come provide an update and overview on kind of the state of the state on where we are in education across the state of
Arkansas review some atlas results that we have administered from last spring that we're we're able to release back to the school districts about an achievement levels this week and last week we pre presenting learning gains giving you an update on where we are with redesigning our accountability formula and talk about how all of this work is not only just aligned with Arkansas learns but now with Arkansas Access as we build the system of excellence for all of our students across the state so if that's ok with you chair I'd
like to just go ahead and share some information you're recognized so just a historical perspective if everybody remembers we've done a redesign on our statewide assessment system we've updated our current standards in the last 2.5 years and went back to a criterion reference assessment that means that those test items were written specifically on the criteria that we're looking to measure on our academic standards the primary tested subjects that we're going to
review today is English language arts math and scienceence. this was an update from our previous assessment system that we had in the state of Arkansas which was the ACT aspire and this is something that we're really proud of because it was created by Arkansas educators and experts all across the state for our Arkansas students so I always like to look at how are we making sure that everything's aligned and if you kind of look at our threeleged stool what we want to really make sure we have is high quality standards that clearly outline what we
want students to know and learn and each test this subject area and grade what kind of high quality instruction materials are we giving teachers in the type of professional development we're giving them to support the teaching of those standards and then how are we going to measure our students are learning what we expect them to know when we do our standardized assessments that's the key to making sure that the system is aligned and we've spent the last 2.5 years building out that framework when we talk about the different performance levels similar to ACT aspire there's four levels
levels 1,2,3 and4 and just give you kind of a little bit of an overview is our minimum expectation that we want to see when we def define proficiency as a student that's demonstrating a level three or greater that means they have a good understanding of what's being asked of them in the classroom and they're able to apply what they're learning into the work and other corresponding subjects a student that is at a level four they demonstrate an advanced understanding they're typically able to apply the concepts being learned in the
classroom to other concepts that may not have already been taught. they're ready for a more rigorous path and expectation a level 2 student is somebody that has a basic understanding we get a lot of ask the questions about difference between 2 and3. Level3 means a student primarily can work on those tasks independently need very few prompts or reminders from the teacher and they're able to demonstrate at a proficient level the content we expect them to know. A student with a basic understanding means that they're they understand what's happening they may understand
some of the main concepts but they may need some additional queuing they may need additional remindors may need additional support in order to get those correct answers and then a student scores at level one has a very limited understanding and they need intensive supports they may need high impact tutoring they need me before school after school summer school programs so the the biggest question that we want to know is now that we've done two years of the same assessment right the same assessment items that we have that we didn't we we're able to get two years of data on our
students how did we perform in year two verse year 1. Now if you remember we had to go through a very rigorous process called the standard setting process when we determine what those levels are for level 12,3 and4. Those standards were set and based on the same standards we're able to define how well our students did. so here you can see in green excuse me students where they performed at level three and above if you aggregate all the subject areas in ELA
for 2024 and then in blue is how the students performed in 2025. so you can see in ELA we saw about a0.8% increase in the number of students meeting what we would call that proficient level so that's a positive trend line and we're we're pretty excited to see students are moving towards that progression if you look at the middle column that's math you can see in the green from 24 to25 there's about a 2.7 increase when we look at how our students performing
before the impact of COVID we're still below where we were when we were defining that proficient level but you can see that we're progressing towards more students hitting that proficient benchmark and the science was about a 2.4 increase. so if you look at that all aggregated and break it down by grayle which you want to see is more students in the dark green and the dark blue. that means they have a proficient or deep understanding of the grayle
expectations thank you and when we did that standard setting process the state did it right. your support got it right. We set very rigorous expectations when we want to say what a level three is which was very aligned to similar to what we've seen on thena assessment which is a national assessment of education progress there are other states around the other states around the nation that actually went back and lowered proficiency rates for their students so that they can come out and say that they're back to the level of where they were before COID.
Well I think we believe that we should not lie to students we should not lie to parents and we should be transparent on student performance sometimes it's it's not as good as we want to see but that's a big deal for this state to say we're going to have a high expectations and you could see over time students are starting to meet that this chart shows you that it's a pretty even distribution across grade levels3 through 10 on the percentage of students score in level 1 to,3 or4. you see a
similar distribution in math until you get past eighth grade and you can see that when we went back to end of course exams in algebra and geometry we're still nowhere near the proficient levels that we want to see as a state and part of that is because we're making a transition back to end of course exams where we're actually teaching algebra and we're actually teaching geometry. When we gave the ACT aspire assessment to high school students they were taking a gradele assessment not a subject area assessment and I think as we're supporting teachers and making that
transition back to the content we expect them to know and learn we're gonna see greater improvements overall. you could see science is actually a pretty even distribution even going into the end of course exam for biology when you only get33 performance and then how do students make that transition back to biology. so this is a big deal this is a lot of work for the state to make sure we had an assessment system that measured what we want students to know and learn at each of the tested subject
areas and back to end of course exams one of my favorite charts is this chart because I like to look at everything by cohorts and say overall you know instead of trying to compare students from year to year, how is each of the cohort doing based on previous years cohorts and you can see overall this was a pretty positive year for the students across the state of Arkansas the foundation has been laid the support is starting to happen in our classrooms our teachers and administrators our local folks are doing an
excellent job. We have a unified coordinator progress maring system that's giving real-time information back to our educators to help them make sure the students are learning the standards that we want them to learn but I I like to track certain cohorts and a cohort of a lot of interest to me is fifth grade in this slide and you can see overall in fifth grade the ELA scores are pretty stagnant. there's a little bit of a decline in math in science was a little bit of an
increase. This is a big deal to me because these are the kids that we sent home prematurely and took away the opportunity to learn during the COVId pandemic and had probably some of the greatest impact on making sure they had access to high quality learning and then if you look at the fourth grade, the cohort of students behind them, those are students that when we did bring them back to school we over quarantined them and masked them in their primary early literacy grades and we know that was gonna have an impact on their learning you could see that those students are resilient the investment in high impact
tutoring the double down on the science of reading that we put in those primary grades are having an impact because we want to make sure that we're growing generations of students to mitigate the access to high quality learning that we created throughout that pandemic Another key initiative that we've been really pushing districts is making sure our systems are designed around acceleration which was some of the foundation and backbone around access a lot of our students are ready for more
rigorous content meaning they couldu they're ready to earn high school credit while they're in middle school and we a lot of times don't have systems that support that but we've been pushing districts for the past 2.5 years to make sure that we're creating opportunities for students that are ready to be on a more accelerated pathway to be in those classes to get it so I get asked all the time well what if the kids aren't ready? So here's a snapshot of the students that did take more rigorous coursework when they did and I think it's a very interesting
anecdote. so when you look at the percentage on on the chart to to my left the 2025 algebra performance levels by grade you can see that in seventh grade it's a little bit blurry but it was about 81% of seventh graders that took the algebra and of course the exam passed at a proficient level so this mindset that kids aren't ready for moregarre's coursework is not necessarily showing up in the data when we raise our expectations for students they will meet it and
this is part of what the access and the combo system's gonna be built around and you can see even students in eighth grade my numbers are all blurred but it's about I'm gonna say close to70% of the students that took algebra the algebra and of course in eighth grade met at a proficient level where you can see if they take algebra in ninth grade it's you're getting down to about 20% of the students and then in 10th grade about 17% of the students are passing the algebra exam. Now there's a lot of theories, a lot
of differences in thoughts beliefs and practices about why that happens and those are the conversations that we have with districts but you can also see geomeometry when you look at the percentage of students taking geometry in eighth grade it's almost 90% and even geometry in ninth grade you're getting to about close to 5560 % and then the students that take geometry in 10th grade you're under 20%. our system is being designed to
push kids we we created a system in this state where we tended to focus on the bottom kids and held everybody back and I've often said a lot of times when you focus that kind of system you you neglect your top performing students and now we're flipping the narrative. not only are we double down with our focus on the on the lowest performing students making sure they have access to the supports they need we're opening up rigorous pathways to our students that are the best and brightest and if you remember I presented the NApe scores back to this committee when they came
out over the summer and when you look at those quintiles and this is why these math ppas are really important and I've been sharing this data with district leaders all throughout the summer and this is the foundation for some of the bones that Arkansasess was built around when you look at our 90th percentile kid in eighth grade math and I'm talking that's our best and brightest kids in eighth grade our 90th percentile kid our 90th percentile kid is 11 points behind the nation's average 90th percentile kid.
so I know we like to be proud of some of the work we're doing and we are proud. this is a lot to celebrate but if we create the conditions to help incentivize the schools and support them better to push and accelerate our students we're gonna see more students taking more advantage and more rigorous pathways and opportunities and we're gonna close that gap for all of our students not just the bottom students but our highest performing students so how do we incentivize and how do we ensure and how do we measure whether or not districts are doing that this is where
we've come to look at how do we grade schools what does an A mean? what does a C mean? what does an F mean? And if there's one thing that I definitely heard when I first got here and we were working on Arkansas learns implementation and went out around to every district every single educational cooperative met with every superintendent if there is one question that I got at every single educational cooperative when I met those meetings guaranteed I got one question was when are we going to get rid of A through F?
Now I'm gonna tell you I'm a big believer in A Ff. I'm a big believer in accountability. I think parents have a right to know how well their schools are performing. I think students have a right to know what kind of school they go to the community has a right to know what kind of schools are represented in their neighborhood but if there's no confidence that the Ara system reflects the learning that's happening in the school then we need to fix that and what I found is most of the superintendents they're ok with being held accountable or educational cooperatives they want to be held accountable but
they want to know that the grade that we put on top of that school is reflective of the learning that's happening in that school so we put together work groups just like we did on standards test items accountability all these frameworks brought people together to make some recommendations and as we rolled out last year if you remember we rolled out because it was the first year of an assessment we issued tentative grades that weren't officially kind of given because it was a transition and we had to do equal percentile linkings from one assessment to another
assessment so those grades were given provisionally but most schools accepted or wanted to accept them because they felt that that school grade actually reflect the learning that's happened in their school. So one of the first things that we wanted to do is simplify the accountability formula we we had a formula that measured school grades in this state that directly mirrored what the feds required us to report to them. so the first question I would have with superintendents and leaders across the state
is one should we create an accountability system based on what Arkansas feels is important or should we build an accountability system based on what we think the federal government thinks we should think is important and without hesitation it was decided we needed to bifurcate the two. Sure we have to meet some federal reporting requirements but that doesn't mean that that needs to be the definitions that reflect the school grade and one of the things that we do when we built around federal reporting requirements is we
made it confusing we have to add clarity. If I go to a principal and sayRoss is a principal at high school say heyRoss I saw your high school it was ac as a schoolgra what are you gonna work on next year to try to improve it? could you tell me what you needed to fix in order to get a better grade? No, because it measured everything and anything and none of it was measured on outputs of student's performance we tried to micromanage and handcuff districts for making strong
educational decisions by controlling the inputs that's not how you're gonna improve learning and outcomes we need to hold people accountable for outputs and not micromanage inputs so we wanted in unhandcuff that and we built a system that's based on growth and achievement Very simple. then if you're at a high school our kids graduating and are they graduating on time? so when you look at how we define now the the buckets I like to say there's buckets
there's about 9 buckets that go into a school grade we want to measure our students scoring at achievement level of proficiency in English language arts math and s English language arts math and science and then are all the students learning regardless of their achievement level can students in your school demonstrate a year's worth of growth and then also we put an extra focus on your lowest quartile. Are they showing a year's worth of growth. so this formula doubles down not just measuring achievement levels because that's what we got criticized
saying that your school grade reflects your poverty level of your school based on achievement levels but this is based on are your kids learning ? They may come to us as a level one they may stay a level one but they can still hit their learning targets as they're progressing the level two and then progressing to level3 cause every student has a unique learning target that's built around their own unique identifiers so if we focus on those four or three fundamentals achievement growth and then graduating ready
to be successful in life then we have a school grade accountability that reflects what we expect students to be able to know know learn and demonstrate in that grade is reflective on the performance of that overall school. we issued provisional grades last year it was a whole harmless year based on this formula ask your superintendents that think you'll find that it was very well overall received some schools they're gonna say they're not proud of the grade they got but they understood it and some schools are really proud of the grade they got because they feel like they're
going above and beyond and meeting that mark. but there's one metric in there that we're we're really looking at that's gonna focus on acceleration and that's how we define a success graduate and what we've done is we've recognized that students will graduate from our system and fall into maybe one or three buckets there's some students that are gonna go to school and do the bare minimum requirements and they're gonna graduate and they're gonna move on that's great. you have now
earned a standard diploma. In fact when we used to post graduation rates on our last accountability system we also factored in a five year graduation rate that's not good enough. We should expect kids to graduate in four years especially when we're only require 22 graduation requirements which I think is really low but we don't wanna I'm not gonna tell people you're doing a great job even get kids across the finish line in five years you should be able to graduate on time with your cohort of peers when you enter ninth grade
in four years. If students are able to do that meet the minimum graduation requirements we're really happy for them but we had some students that may do a little bit more they may earn a ceilla by literacy. they may take some concurrent credits they may earn an industry recognized credential they may pass some IP IB or AP exams so how do we recognize those students and reflect that that are going above and beyond the minimum expectations well we created a plom of merit and then how do we recognize the students that are earning an
associate's degree while they're in high school they are an AP scholar they are completing that workforce credential with with an apprenticeship and the the find diploma of distinction at the end of the day all three of these designations make sure that every student that graduates from an arkansas high school is ready to be enrolled enlisted and employed. and one of the things that we had to do with Arkansas learns is really look at our workforce pathways and I knowRoss is gonna talk a lot about it because we
had about65 different career pathways that are reflected in high schools all across the state Well Arkansas learns re tasks us with defining credentials of value that led to a high skill high wage high demand area and we identified was it 16 or 181818 pathways and learns Arkassas learns required that every school offer three pathways and one of them had to be on that list and that had to go into effect for this past school year in 100% of our
schools met that requirement so the there's a lot of good work happening that's a lot to be celebrated but these are the pathways that I've identified this isn't a kind of list that you just make once and then you're done right? like we've got to work with workforce partners listen to industry listen to key stakeholders because what's a credential of value today may not be a credential value of three years from now,5 years from now,10 years from now and so this is a fluid document
that we have people that are going through in making sure that we're updated and reflective of the times. but here's the very different more technical categories of what it meant to earn a diploma of merit and wouldn't have to be a diploma distinction because not only regret calculating graduation rates for students like towards your high school credit but we're also measuring the number of students that are meeting these credentials and if you remember an Arkansas access we time or we tied the results let's say if a of a student
that earns a diploma distinction with some of the different scholarships so that we can recognize these as a state to say this is the product and quality of student that we're proud of that graduates from our school system and we know that if they are a recipient of a standard diploma a diploma of merit or a diploma of distinction they are ready to be enrolled and lied or employed. So I know I I covered a lot chair Brooks but I wanted to just kind of give a state of the state of an update and then
I'm sure there may be some questions and then uhRoss white from our technical program area can go a little bit deeper around the pathways and what does this work really mean? thank you Secretary Oliva
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
29:32
and prior to Mr. White doing his presentation we'll open it up for questions for the secretary or other questions? Represent meeks you're recognized for a question
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
29:45
thank you Mr Chairman. just just a question on those
pathways that you had listed there this past month I was at probably the largest AI conference in North America. It was a an industry conference and listening to a lot of the thought leaders in the discussion going on there. the the impression that I came away with was that computer programming is beginning to wane because AI is really starting to take over kind of in that area. but AI as you know is
becoming more and more important and so I'll just throw it out for what it's worth that AI prompt engineering is going to become more important than computer science programming so as you look at that going into the future I would hope it's already on your radar but if not for what it's worth, I'll throw that out for you so would love to
Speaker 33
30:42
follow up with you a little bit about some of the topics because it when we talk about AI
Speaker 18
30:48
and and I like to look at everything from education but then also from a
workforce perspective it's not new right like these aren't new tools or new topics. I think it's becoming more sophisticated in the future of where we're gonna head there's a little bit of unknown especially with geneator AI but but I agree I I read I want to say I read an article recently about like salesforce and some of these national computing program companies are laying off thousands of programmers and it's all being released replaced by AI which is creating a
different skill in a different type of worker they need and that's why I said these are fluid lists that are always gonna grow and be updated but I I don't know if we know the extent of how Aa's going to impact you know the the technical side of the world and business and industry but I know we're having a lot of folks looking at the impact not only as schools but for teachers for classrooms for tutors for support. we're even looking at it as an agency.ha come the work that we do be more efficient and better supportive
Speaker 27
31:55
of the stakeholders we serve so excellent point thank you
Speaker 35
31:58
thank you Mr Chairman. Representative Duke, you recognized your question thank
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
32:03
you Mr Chair. thank you for your presentation it was really informative and helpful. I have a question I guess maybe a two parter on the test scores on the I love seeing the cohorts I think that's really helpful as well but can you tell me first of all your your 1st and second grade, they were tested on Atlas this last time as well is that correct or is that still a year
Speaker 18
32:28
so it's part of the atlas system but so you're talking about for the current school year that we just entered in or the results from
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
32:38
past school year the past school year did they were
Speaker 18
32:41
they tested on atlas so they did the formative assessment part so they're they're their scores aren't reflected in these charts because the these charts reflect um3rd through 8th like for the ELA but they did the K2 progress monitoring system part of our unified coordinated progress my system that's under that atlas umbrella so what are you seeing
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
32:59
the trends with K2 because I mean like the third grade scores, I mean there's I see the improvements right? but I'm really curious what we're seeing the third grade's fascinating to me because that's obviously new implementation of things though you're starting to see how that looked with kids going through the system similar with Kaith and two Kay and one and 2. what are we seeing? what are the trends we're seeing with them because that's really reflective on the implementation of the programs and ins initiatives and
things that we have done in the last couple of years. do you have
Speaker 18
33:35
that data? Yes now last year was the first year that we've rolled out the K1 too so it's hard to compare data from last year to this year but we we're in the testing window for the first administration of Atlasarres this year so probably in the next couple of weeks we can get you that snapshot to look at how did students do in august to September last year compared to this year we did have to make some modifications throughout the last year because it was the first time we implemented
like in in year one of the assessment we definitely heard from kindergarten teachers that this ain't working right so we had to ok we had to take that back work with the assessment company reget it right. so far you probably haven't heard from anybody about this year because I think we we did a pretty good job getting that right but what what we're seeing is one we know we've deployed literacy coaches to our lowest performing schools our DNF schools and as they're going through the instructional rounds what we're seeing more happening is explicit systematic
instruction around the science of reading and recently you may have seen I've gotten some baits about some of our textbook companies not being strong enough in the science of reading so we're having conversations with districts around how are we using high quality implementation or high quality instruction materials to make sure that that foundation is laid so now when we get that snapshot in time, that information will be given to the teacher down to the standard level and help identify skills that they may need more support with but the reality is is one of the questions I'm sure someone's
gonna ask and I get a lot is well how does third grade promotion work this year and notice that I call a third grade promotion. it's not just an automatic retention it's a screener so we should know based on this first progress marring system, how many students are at risk of not meeting the proficiency expectation by the end of3rd grade and if we identify those students now and give them high impact tutoring give them access to a high quality teacher that's trained and skilled in the science of reading we can mitigate those holes and make
sure by the end of the third grade they have those gaps filled so that they can be successful and ready to move on in the fourth grade. So I I I think I don't know if I'm answering your question the short answer is is we're going to have some much better information here pretty soon because last year we had to learn a lot about the system but we're gonna be able to give information to students and districts faster in more real time than this school year than we ever have based on student performance so like if you look at last year or two
years ago when we first did the baseline assessment of atlas. it took us almost 8 months to get achievement scores back to districts that's because we had to go through a standard setting process this year it took us about4 months in fact we just last two last week or the week before released learnarning gains which was in august the year before we didn't get learnaring gates to districts until October, right? Like that's late in the year to help teachers understand where their students are when our spring assessment window closes it this
current school year 2526 districts will have access to their achievement levels in less than two days. we are turning this around this system is being built and we're gonna start getting realtime information back to students and families at a much quicker pace so that we can make those instructional pivots as necessary and get these students the support they need and hopefully we'll see the number of students at level one decreased dramatically and at3 or4 increase exponentially
but when I talked to schools about their achievement levels from last year to this year, the number of students of the superintendents had told me Jacob I don't have enough kids at level3 and4 but we drastically reduced the number of ones so we have a lot of number twos but we've got a lot less number ones that's a big deal that's a big deal that means we're moving the needle follow up and you you kind of hit the nail on the head right there
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
37:32
at the end of what I was getting ready to ask so the feedback because we have
the school districts have assessments from the past with theirk through 2 so even though it's a different test in theory right they should be relatively around the same standards the feedback that you are getting do they feel notm not asking so much about the test right because the test measures whether what we're doing is effective are they giving you feedback from their teachers that the moves that we are making they're seeing even though we can't necessarily see it in the data because we don't
have the same access to the data I making myself clear on what I'm
Speaker 18
38:15
trying to answer0% and and like last week I met with all of our state literacy coaches and they're talking about the difference of what they're seeing in schools and classrooms this year versus last year I'm going into primary grade classrooms and seeing teachers using word walls and interacting with students that I didn't see two years ago, right? so like when when I tell you there's a movement happening especially in those foundational years which is very pivotal to get right while we're pushing
acceleration in those middle years we're going to see drastic improvements in overall student scores the initiatives if this is doing what we believe it's
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
38:48
supposed to be doing then our little kids starting with us under this new system we should have hardly anybody in one and twos right because like what 9 9 % of kids actually can be taught to read and so we're going to start seeing that with those and catching up the older cohort cohorts but we're gonna start seeing that in the next year or two that archaic
kindergartners our first graders across the state are going to be hitting those targets because that's what I'm looking for cause you know I've had longer conversations but we should be teaching like our hairs on fire because it is because we can't let these kids continue to graduate or continue to move on without being able to read it's and so that's what I'm looking for whenever these come in so I'll be excited to see that snapshot because I think that's going to be super helpful for all of us to see but it's encouraging I mean these numbers are encouragingishish but it's more encouraging when
we see what the if the new implementation in those younger grades is making the difference that we hope that it is
Speaker 47
39:50
making and in every cohort students is a little bit
Speaker 18
39:53
different on numbers because it it it ranges but most of them are around30,000 students so each percentage point is just over 30 0 kids right so when you see a percentage point increase that's300 more students across the state that are hitting a proficient target. We still have work to do but these aren't small numbers that we're moving. These are significant swings in
the overall preparation of our students with some of the most rigorous cut scores that we could define as a state which was important to get right. in ner flowers you're recognized for a question thank
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
40:32
you I have a couple of things that I wanna know about one is about the retention of third graders I think under the Learns Act has that been implemented
Speaker 47
40:45
this year so that's gonna that's the impact of
Speaker 18
40:48
this year's ir graders so the students that started third grade this year at the end of the school year when they take the what year we in 26 assessment in the spring those results are gonna be the results that folks are looking at and and the level
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
41:05
two if they score level two will they be retained? No ma'am. So when
Speaker 18
41:10
when they're looking at the promotion for third grade when you look at the
performancele descriptors I'll put up here they're using level one as a student that needs to be reviewed it's not automatically retained so I wanna make sure we clarify that because there's some good cause exemptions it's about triggering a meeting around that student determined the best path for that student moving forward but they're using that level one def in ition on the assessment for
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
41:41
say there are some good causes rationale is that
Speaker 18
41:49
for disabled students it also some of its prescribed in the law but basically what it does is it's it's it's designed to have a meeting with the family and the educators to say this student has a very limited understanding in third grade if they were to go on the fourth grade without significant supports they're going to continue to struggle so what are we going to do one, should we put them in a summer program? Should we offer them high impact tutoring? Has this student already been retained maybe it's not a good idea to keep retaining them maybe it's a student that needs
to be tested for a learning disability or hasn't identified learning disability the individual educationalized plan team would make those kinds of decisions around accommodations modifications supports for a student maybe they're an English language learner with limited time learning the English language there's a lot of factors that go into making that decision it's not saying that they automatically have to be retained that may be the best decision for that child but what it's saying is that if a student does get promoted at 1/4 grade
without demonstrating a high level of understanding and literacy there's some provisions that also have to be in place because schools right now should be using that first progress miring system to write an intervention plan for a student that's at that limited understanding and we need to make sure the school did what they said they were gonna do and then if that kid goes to fourth grade do they have access to a highly effective teacher which is required and are they put in a 90 minute literacy block which is required to make sure that they're getting those foundational skills embedded
into them every single day to close those gaps because what happens why why you have that big shift from the foundational years around that learning how to read to read to learn is that systematic explicit instruction in the science of reading gets less and less as kids progress because they get more into text complexity and they're being asked to do things with the types of text that they're reading in the classroom. it's not that these kids can't have their hos
Speaker 27
43:46
filled but if they're not getting instruction it's really hard for them to fill it
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
43:52
so does the department ofducation review all of those children that are in maybe level two or level 1
do we expect that to happen? Yeah I mean so that's why it's
Speaker 18
44:03
important for us to get that progress monitoring data that snapshot of data in time and then we work with districts we work with educational cooperatives I know we have folks in DNf schools each and every single day doing data walks data reviews making sure that we're providing as much support I know even
they're graded a d or an F. at a d
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
44:36
UFd orF well did you not say that we got rid of
Speaker 15
44:39
the letter grape said we we redefine the letter grades to make sure they're reflective of the learning so we
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
44:45
still have and schools and this year we're
Speaker 18
44:47
gonna have graded school districts and graded educational cooperatives based on student performance as well well when you say that this thing for
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
44:59
calls in retaining a or making the decision to retain or not retain a third grader iss that across the board? I mean who determines calls
Speaker 18
45:12
will the law identify some specific criteria when when Arkansas learns put this policy into place but two it also gives the ability for the school district to meet with the student and the family maybe they got some literacy coaches, school counselors school administrator. it's an educational expert convening with the family to
talk about what's the best path best path moving forward for that child so you
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
45:36
say the law gives the school the ability but is it mandatory and is there some type of appeal process on
behalf of the student I don't know if I know the answer about it
Speaker 33
45:49
appeal process but it's the law so it's mandatory whether or not they reviews all of this from the school district concerning what
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
45:56
do you mean by a review like each and
Speaker 18
46:01
every single individual vigil don't know I don't know if we're gonna be at that level this is new for us too this year so we're still
Speaker 15
46:09
trying to figure that out I I'd have to check with the team and get back with
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
46:14
you on that has the department this last question right now I have one more after this chair will allow but you recognize have have the rules been promulgated that specifically state what we mean by good cause and the process and we're doing
Speaker 15
46:31
trainings with school districts now hosting webinars sending out commissioners memos making sure we can clarify that as much as possible and the last question I had
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
46:42
was on the I think it was your last slide that dealt with success readyady pathways and all the different occupations I guess you would call it this one is it this one success Ready pathways
do all are all schools required to have a minimum of these courses or subject matters or are they required to have every one of them at I'm really interested in like construction and welding those kinds of things is that is that
mandatory in schools so what's what's
Speaker 47
47:26
required is that every high school has to have at least3
Speaker 18
47:35
pathways that lead to a certificate certificate so3 out of this list it's it's three in total but one of the three pathways has to be something off this list.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
47:49
do we have do you have a list of what schools offer what we'd like to see that we can pull
Speaker 49
47:55
that for you that's a that's a great question'd like to
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
47:59
see it'd also like to see when you break down the percentages I'm glad to see that there is some
acceleration in gains with the atlas but I'd like to see it broken down by particularly districts that have been in under state control in the last five
years. So you're on a you want to see the the achievement and growth for the
Speaker 15
48:26
schools that have been under state control we can make that for you the last years thank you thank you Mr Chair. Senator Love you
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
48:35
recognize her question thank you Mr chairir
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
48:43
Secretary Le good to see you. let me start with this. if we were to if we were had
enacted this law of of retaining the students the third grade students last year roughly how many students would we have retained ? How many students fall into that level one? I know we can't say exactly but just give me kind of a ballpark what
Speaker 18
49:05
we acted this last year how many students may have been identified as at risk it would probably be close to
Speaker 15
49:13
around 10,000 because about a third of them were in the level one but that doesn't mean that they would be retained because that would be inclusive
Speaker 18
49:21
of English language learners students that have been retained before special education but that number includes this this percentage of students is that the lowest level of proficiency at a state and that's a lot of kids and I know the first thing people are gonna say is you can't retain that many kids. I'm gonna tell you right now publicly we do not intend to add student parking at middle school, right?
like that is not the goal of third grade promotion is to make sure that we are identifying skills that need support early intervening, doing our job to mitigate that number as much
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
49:58
as we can so so
it would have been 10,000 students right moving
moving to the atlas scores sure and this was pointed out to me
by a an administrator in the Li littlettleRock school district some of the some of the and and they brought me in and kind of showed me some things with the atlas testing one was and it was a concern not about the student's not knowing the information it was the use of the computer is the use of the the mouse and then sometimes I think they said they had to switch it to the tablet and there were some there were
some issues there kinda speak to speak to to that because that is a a very big concern of of actually are you really getting to it the if the if the student knows the information or if they can just use the computer mouse to actually click on you know the button and weight and different things like that so
that that's a good question so first I'd say
Speaker 18
51:11
is this starts in3rd grade so most of these students are 8 years old so that when you're when
Speaker 15
51:19
you're talking about the question is are we me measuring computer proficiency or what the student knows most of the students have been exposed to the basic computer understanding by the time they're 8 in order to meet the expectations of this exam. I definitely think we heard that more like in the progress monitoring K2 which doesn't go under the school grade but the kindergartner may not be where they need so that that's why it's important for folks to know that that that information is just for the teacher that's not reflective in a school grade it
Speaker 18
51:50
doesn't carry with the student if the student's not able to demonstrate or move that we do provide accommodations teachers are allowed to do prompting and support that was one of the clarifications we definitely wanted to make sure we provide in kindergarten or if they sometimes you have students with sensory skills maybe they want a paper and pencil version or they need to dictate it those accommodations are allowed that's done more on a student by student level case by case level but it's allowed right that was that was a a one
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
52:22
of the major things that because that it was pointing out
Speaker 15
52:25
with the little the little ones we we we heard that for
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
52:29
sure OK got you well if we address that then that that's fine because that was that was one thing let's move to kind of the high impact tutoring in the in the kind of the reading specialist at this present point to address the kind of to address the number of students that we have that may fall into the category one possibly
category twos do we have enough reading specialists do we have enough
high impact tutors to address the number of students well that's a good question. I
Speaker 18
53:03
don't know if it's a loaded question or not because the educator in me would say there's never enough support for our most vulnerable students right? but when when you look at what we were asked to do with Atlas of getting it to 120 literacy coaches. we're we're able to provide that support for all of our DNF
schools now the interesting conundrum which I think is a good problem to have is we've had schools that exited thatdNF status and then hired our literacy coach saying we don't want to lose them they're part of our family now and that's created a need for more literacy coaches so it it's kind of an interesting space because if you exit from a DNf do we want to take away that support because we got maybe we have identified new ones you know so I think we're still going
through that balance we do have some contracts with some outside organizations where we're not able to get the enough staffing that we need the high impact tutoring the feedback I get from districts is they love it I I I do think one of the things that we want to do better is promote the tutoring grants accessible to families to get additional support that's really underutilized right so they're there's opportunity for more families to participate than are
and that's kind of what we see in some of those spaces so it's a I think it's like anything else when you have new initiatives new priorities it takes a while to get it kind of up and running but going into this year I think we've learned a lot from last year and how we communicate the districts about the expectations and communicate with parents that will see a much better utilization this year. OK and
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
54:51
then are the are kind of the is the financial piece
do we have that cover to cover the the specialists in the high impact
Speaker 47
54:59
tutoring in our categorical budget this year
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
55:03
yes sir and then lastly going back to to part on the atlas I'm I've noticed that there was there's a an opportunity for students to kind of pretest
on the atlas are we making that a available or making that knowledge available to parents as far as when you say a
Speaker 42
55:23
a pretex like the teachers creates assessments well there there's there's theres
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
55:30
I was shown that there's a piece in the atlas where where students can go in and test that's part of the progress monitoring so so is that made readily available to parents so that they can actually yeah and and I'll have to
Speaker 15
55:44
check but it should be available where the parents can be able to log into the system too to see
Speaker 18
55:49
the progressmar that that would be the hope is that being pushed to parents because
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
55:54
reme I know I know this for a fact that when I was made aware of it I did not
I was I was like what you know we could we could be
actually having our son test and that knowledge was new to me so I'm just asking
Speaker 18
56:10
and that's probably an area that we need to continue to get better, right? I mean a a more specific communication plan around the components is probably a good
Speaker 15
56:21
idea you know it's like sometimes we we make informational videos and put on our website and assume that's enough but if you're not looking for that information on our website, how would you even know
to look for it? So I I I'd love to talk about different strategies on what is it that parents need to know from a parent perspective to make sure that we're getting it right and not thinking about it from an educational perspective but actually from a parent perspective as well it's a great idea. thank you sir thank you for
Speaker 86
56:48
sure p re s ent ative Mayberry you're recognized
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
56:55
for a question thank you. Over on this side. I know
it's always hard to see where everybody is houses side over here so a little while back I was talking to a group of
high school students in their class and we were just talking about a variety of education issues and I love getting feedback from students because they this is who it most affects, right? So I was asking him about testing and this class pretty much was in agreement. one of the key things that could be done to improve tests is to make students accountable they they said look we don't even get the test scores back until the next school year and
most of the time they never even look at the test scores. their parents sometimes get them, sometimes don't so they didn't even know
what how they did on those tests so that that's number one which I think you just said that you're going to get the test scores back sooner so that's good it's tough
Speaker 18
57:50
because you you would want the students to know right especially if if teachers are looking at that say that maybe they want to be in an honors class or like if if you didn't realize somebody was really good at biology might be using that result to try an AP biology course the following year
and it's good for the schools and teachers for PD so we are so excited that this year when that window closes they're gonna get the assessments before schools out at least the achievement level results on the level that's really good news I mean I am glad to
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
58:21
hear that that you'll get it sooner so you can have a little bit more you know immediate response to that but the second part of that is that to them it doesn't really make a difference and they told me that they they know and of course none of them would admit to doing this
but they know other students who just fill in the bubble well I guess you don't feel in bubbles anymore. call old school I guess just pick a number and they just want to get through the test as quickly as possible that it really it makes no difference in their world and they really don't want to be bothered by the test and so is it truly then their skill level or just they're trying to hurry up and get through a test. So I want to say maybe it was
Tennessee that does use the test in some way towards the student's grade in in a class it's considered a certain percentage of their overall grade or something like that even if it was considered just as a test, one test grade there would be some type of consequence or some type of benefit to taking that test and they might take it a little bit more seriously because that really disturbed me that there'd be students who just really they're just taking guesses.
they just want to hurry up and take the
Speaker 18
59:43
test. Yeah, I've seen some states have a myriad of policies around this some may have 20 to30% of the student's final grade is based on the end of course exam let's say for algebra whatever score they get also correlates to their actual grade on their transcript which impacts your GPA. some states have an exit exam requirement to graduate from high school meaning if you don't pass let's say grade 10 ELA
and algebra and biology you can't graduate. I I mean I'm not saying I'm advocating for any of those policies but if those are the kind of conversations you want to have around putting some meat or kind of incentive behind it that's not'd be
Speaker 27
1:00:24
more than happy to sit with you I I don't know what the right answer is but it's worth't either just thought I
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:00:30
never really processed that or knew that but that's what this class and these this is a pretty smart class. This is a an
advance d class that I was talking to and they were saying they know
lots of students who finished that test practically as quickly as you
possibly could answer all the questions boop boop boop boop boom and they don't spend a whole lot of time on it so just throwing the idea out there food for thought and something to discuss as we move further. Thank you. Reson
barnes you're recognized for a question with the private schools and your
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:01:13
microschools not being measured the same way the public school do we do you see a problem with students being moved to your private microschools to afford the standards that are being placed on the public schools
Speaker 15
1:01:31
I I don't think I've seen that. I think when when parents are looking for choice options or looking for something they feel may meet the best needs of their own child and if that's in a microschool
because they're getting maybe specialized one on one attention and they know that's what their child needs and that's great or a private school now the when when we talk about accountability for private schools we we do hold them accountable and they do have to give a standardized assessment because we want parents to know how well their children are doing and we have made Atlas available to microschool families and private schools as well and some some folks are choosing to participate in that assessment as well because they want to know how well their kids are
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:02:14
doing let me give you a scenario I have in mind. If I think my child is not doing well say second grade and I'm a little worried about the third grade testing If I moved them to a private school or microschool OK holdld them there until they get
Speaker 127
1:02:33
to the fourth or5th grade what what's the possibility of that happening Iu I
Speaker 18
1:02:39
would hope a parent isn't doing that if they've recognized their child needs help to say
Speaker 15
1:02:45
I'm going to do everything in my power to not give them help would be concerning for me so I I would say to that parent this is why you need to meet with your school counselor, your administrators and your teacher to say how can I reinforce that home and fill those gaps
Speaker 18
1:03:00
that my child's not getting at school because I want them to be successful. nobodydy should be dodging third grade promotion and v cognizant that I'm using that term third grade promotion and not retention because we want to move you on to the next grade to
be successful. right now if you look at all the students that are at risk and we're just pushing through the system are they graduating? Are they graduating with the ability to be enlisted enrolled or employed. If you have major deficits in reading in the primary grades, school becomes not fun and then you become disconnected and then you become a problem and you don't want to do it anymore because if you can't read you can't succeed. So this this is about promoting you
Speaker 33
1:03:41
with the toolkit to be successful at the next level.
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:03:48
I see the intent I think your intent is right what we're trying to do but in the minority area where I'm from you have a lot of schools who do not have licensed teachers and we're putting this mandate on them and we're saying to these unlicensed teachers you're gonna have to perform at the level of licensed teachers gotta perform it and and between all of the dust the child is the one suffering and we're making these rules to because the adults aren't getting them the support
Speaker 18
1:04:19
they need and I will never say ever that because you're a poor kid from the delta you should have access to unqualified teachers that's a different conversation we're not gonna have lower expectations for students based on zip code in fact we should be identifying those zip codes and incentivizing our best and brightest to go in there and lift these kids up not expect that they're gonna fail. I expect them to excel and I know kids in those impoverished communities that can graduate with their AA just like any kid in the state and we have schools
that are doing it we have Palestinewheatley I want to say last year alone graduated th3 kids with their AA Ho a school graduated about 30 something kids with their AA Lee County a state controlled school that we just asked about the dra I think he had4 kids so I I I get so frustrated when we want to make excuses we cannot love our students into meocrity and make excuses because their zip code limits their opportunities that's up to us to be honest about why that
continues to happen and stop perpetuating that cycle of failure. agree with
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:05:26
you agree with that I agree with that that's that was my point I was dealing with more realistic what's going on versus what we're
Speaker 18
1:05:34
trying to do and that's that's why we're putting those literacy coaches in to model for those teachers side by side because this if you remember I I got frustrated a lot and I still get frustrated with this mo this notion of that we should just wave everything and put everybody on a waiver which is why this legislator
says we're not going to accept that anymore. we're not going to let people just be unqualified for30 years be evaluated four times and get a full pension. like we want to put you on a path where you're qualified, right? So if there's a reason we got you in the door that means we're investing in you as an educator and we believe in you. so the question is how can the co ops and the systems support that educator to give them the skills they need which is why we've deployed those literacy coaches because they can do it. we need to get qualified educators and we need to
celebrate them elevate them and retain them at at a much higher level in some of our communities and we see in other areas of the state because the staffing issues are real, right? Like getting good administrators is real. Get getting systems typically when you see a failing school you see a failing community right? like you're building an entire system and we're not gonna accept failure and and and our stance and our agency's stance is if we see a
community that is not focused on what's best for students which we've seen like we've recently did some major actions in Blytheville because they created a system that was focused on doing what's best for adults while ignoring kids. they created a place where adults would go to have a job and kids would hang out that's not good enough and I don't care if you're in Byeville, I don't care if you're intexarkana, I don't care if you're in northwest we have
Speaker 103
1:07:18
to do it's right for students that is our job great thank you
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:07:26
Representative Brown you're recognized for a question thank you Mr Chair. Secretary Leva, I just want to clarify some things and I think this will be a pretty quick answer for you pathways are not necessarily considered advanced placement they're just strictly a pathway correct?s think that's a great question
Speaker 18
1:07:44
and and that's why we when when I think of a pathway it's creating an opportunity for exit and on ramps right so I think like the notion that every student's on a pathway from high school to university is a pathway but it
may not be for all students so you may have some students that are gonna take some career technical programs maybe they're gonna take some AA maybe they're gonna take AP it it's it it's it's about a highway with x and an R ramps but when you look at thecTE pathways the intention of those pathways is that you could become a program completer and if you take a certain level of coursework in succession it would lead to an industry certification.Ross may be able
to jump in there a little
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:08:29
bit deeper so so let
me clarify so the pathways are are are the that we were talking about are the ones on on slide eight the success readyady pathways and those aren't necessarily those would not be considered advanced placement it's just strictly a a course of study to to for some sort
Speaker 18
1:08:50
of a certification but that wouldn't prohibit a student for taking advanced placement courses but
these have specific courses that we would want to see a student complete towards the certification to to complete that pathway
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:09:05
and and then my next question that relates to that is a lot of the schools are several schools at least in Arkansas have academies are the academies considered a pathway or would they be an addition to a pathway Theyca be right so I I think like schools
Speaker 18
1:09:21
are saying they're going to develop a magnet
program or an academy or an area of study you know something that says that there's a school within the school that may be a little bit different I would hope that if they had an academy it would be aligned to one of these pathways and not just a random program that doesn't lead to outcomes for students so I I think that's the intention thank you and ye you're recognized for a
Chair
Unverified
1:09:48
question yes sir thank you Mr Chairman. Gentlemen let me tell you a little bit
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:09:59
about what's going on in in north northeast Arkansas back in the se0s and the eight0s and even 90s we had a tremendous amount of people working in the agriculture field OK and basically what has happened where you had4 or5 children that worked from finishing high school into the farming industry that's not going on anymore big equipment is taken over
and if there's any way I don't know I know you guys are sharp when it comes to these kind of things but we really do need to I think work at our technical part of that especially in
Speaker 18
1:10:48
that area so I agree and and one of the things that we we've often heard is that we've got to explain career expanding career andtechnical education but then do we really invest in it right so
I think one of the things that we did as a state which was a huge statement to say we value these programs in Arkansas access is we looked at weighted coursework so when we say that this is an honors course or an AP course we're now identifying career and technical courses that get the same way they credit as an AP course that somebody may be taking for a pathway to university but a pathway to career we're gonna say is just as valuable and as rigorous as
the pathway to university and I think that's gonna help with that perception that we really are valuing career and technical education because we're telling kids that this is just as important to take these courses as it is an AP course. thank you sir and thank you Mr Chairman. Represent Mcgruder
Speaker 143
1:11:50
you're recognized for a question thank you Mr. chairir. first I want to thank you
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:11:57
all for the wonderful job with the presentation. you all put in a lot of work and it's obvious that we are making some gains
here in the state of Arkansas and I wanted to make sure that I piggybacked off of what's in the flowers stated I want to see if we can get this data for districts that are in high poverty just broken down for those districts and I also as far as the achievement level or grades because I thought
Speaker 18
1:12:23
I think we were talking about grades right? or was it achievement levels too was achievement levels yeah the atlas the science
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:12:38
the math and the ELA that's what I was looking for and how close are we to getting all teachers trained in the science of
Speaker 15
1:12:52
reading. that's a good question when you say
Speaker 18
1:12:56
all teachers you're talking about K through 12 regardless of teaching assignment whether I'm a band
teacher or drama teacher or are we talking about in like K2 foundational years. I was focusing on our too we we can pull a percentage for you because that would be easier to pull than trying to figure out everybody around the science of reading when you say all teachers or or even K3 space because we can look at who has met the certification requirements and how what percentage we have on a pathway I I still think we have a high percentage of students or excuse me teachers that are on a
pathway to getting that provisional license but one of the things that we're we're gonna be hopeful to present to the legislature soon is we've been doing science or reading audits in our teacher prep programs and I'm gonna tell you right now you're gonna be appalled at some of these teacher prep program scores and then we wonder why these teacher candidates can't meet the proficiency in the science of reading to get a professional license there's a lot of work to do OK follow up last question I
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:14:08
heard you state this earlier about teachers within the in the delta I would love to get together on scene where we can come up with incentives for teachers to come to the delta that area to teach so we can make sure that we have high quality teachers in those high poverty areas so I look forward to working with you and your staff on this p re s ent beck you're recognized for a question thank you Mrir
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:14:33
is that thank you for the the presentation and and really the
good news is as far as the advancements that you've already made my question that I have is sort of builds onpresentative Mcgler's question a little bit why are you singing now because I'm hearing some good things back from the teachers but what are you hearing now as your biggest deficit the biggest gap that you have concern wise as far as what the teachers are gonna needing whether that be additional education for the teachers or resources or anything like that to implement
the program learns especially in that that prehird grade level so I I think kind of when you look
Speaker 18
1:15:20
at this implementation like state of the state or where we are now wiwi do teachers need they need good materials they need time to plan, right? They need time to to look at student data they need time to observe other teachers they want to be observed by their teachers and given feedback administrators are saying the same thing
because it it it was a lot of change right and and we get criticized like why are we changing so much at once well because we have to and these kids should only be in 3rd grade once. these kids should only be in kindergarten once. We can't wait another 10 or 15 years to get this implementation done right but the the amount of work we've done in standards realignment updating high quality prof instructional materials aligning professional development and building out that unified coordinator progress monitoring system where we keep hearing for
teachers like this is great but this is a lot I still need to I need to absorb it all I need to better understand how to use myarermarring data how do I take that information and align lessons how do I work with my peers and my colleagues as we differentiate instruction I I don't feel like schools are like no we don't want to do this they want to do it they want to do it well they just want to make sure they can be validated that what they're working on is the work that they should be working on
and that's what we're trying to provide as a as a state is that layer in safety net to make sure we can help validate them and that that's why we're working with our cooperatives and and supporting them as well because they a lot of times they're the the first line of support for a school district that has questions and that's where we're just trying to do our best to make sure we're giving them the answers quickly to any questions that they need in the right layers of support just a follow up So
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:17:17
not endorsing any program or anything a lot of the statements that you made seem to align with the PLC program so are we doing the implementation of the PlC program or that training not to main necessarily this program that training are the co ops picking that up or is that that were you in temperate and
Speaker 18
1:17:38
thinks at a district level choice like some some districts are continuing to work in that professional learning community model when it's when
it means coming together with your peers looking at data designing high quality lessons cooperatives are doing that I think it's kind of a in ar ray of support some may find other programs initiatives that work better for them so it's kind of making sure it's differentiated and tailored to the unique students and schools that that are being supported thank you thank you Mr chairir. all right see no additional questions thank you Mr
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:18:13
Secretary for the presentation and the answering questions we will move
on now to Mr White for your presentation if you would please introduce yourself and
Speaker 155
1:18:26
you're recognized. Good afternoonRosswatt, director for the division of career and technicalducation at the department. Give me one second to get this well good afternoon. we're going to extend a little bit on
Speaker 158
1:18:49
the information that the secretary just covered regarding success readyady graduates but this is going to be specifically kind of through the lens of career and technical education as it looks at in our schools across the state so specifically this is something we start with quite a bit this summer as we've done training across the state with educators but really talking about the Learns Act and access and how those two pieces together are really working to complementesready graduates and really looking at alignment of our workforce needs across the state because ultimately that becomes our goal and how
are we meeting and what that looks like for our state in regards to our workforce and so one I think the most important places we start is what is the vision of a success ready graduate and part of that becomes we have to start this conversation early. we have a lot of people who have this belief that magically in ninth grade our students are in high school and they're going to start making choices and making plans that are going to put them on a path to success postgraduation and to be honest a lot of our programs as we know start in the ninth grade or before the 9th grade
and so students are really needing to be intentional I spent 10+ years in an eighth grade classroom teaching career development and so my goal every day was to spend with eighth graders about 150 of them talking about what do you want to do post high school graduation. when I look back on those years and the time spent in that classroom most of those students knew really well typically what their parents did and then what we would typically call community helper beyond that they couldn't usually tell me what was happening our biggest employer in the community I live
in when I would ask students what what's happening there they couldn't usually tell me what was going on there it was a manufacturing plant that manufactured food and they couldn' t tell me anything about it and a lot of them that's where their parents work so I think we have to be very intentional in this continuum of what career exposure looks like for our students and so this is a continuum we use with our schools I'm really talking about in that6th to eighth grade band are we making students aware by early career experiences and so through the Learns Act
that was an important piece of legislation that really gave us we have to focus on early career experiences and so what are we doing with students in grade6 and grade7 and grade 8 around what I always kind of call the three areas of career awareness so they're aware of careers and why people work then career exploration where we're exploring all the things what are your dreams? what would you love to do? what would you not love to do and then career development which becomes how do we start to talk about what you've identified things you like things that you are interested in things that you
have an aptitude in how do we start start developing those skills and so those become essential for us to do in those middle grades we'll get people from time to time say that's way too early and I don't believe that at all as somebody who spent the time there somebody now as a father of 1/6 grader and a 9th grader very intentional conversations I have with them on a regular basis about what what is it you want to do or what are your interests or what do you enjoy as we plan that out and then by law we have student success plans that must be in place by the end of their eighth grade year and so this Marries right
into that as we start talking about student success plans that's more than just a four year plan of courses you're gonna take but truly a system that we should be revisiting on an annual basis throughout our high school experience but those experiences we do in grades6,7 and 8 really make that student success planning tool and resource between our educators, our students and their families be of a much more powerful piece as we go forward and then hopefully that then leads into what we call success ready pathways and that students are identifying really what are their goals that
they want to achieve post high school graduation and building out those processes in the high school experience because those pathways become a lot of opportunity but also there's a lot of things that happen or happen in between there that students seem to be able to understand know their families need to be able to understand and know and our educators can support them as they move forward which in the final pieces we want them to become that success readyad graduate and you heard the secretary allude earlier about enlistment and enrollment employment and that's really what we're looking at when we
began to talk about this is that we want all of our students ready for one of the three s if not all three of them that students are going to make changes we know that we know we're going to have students who graduate high school in May and have a plan in May and then by the time August rolls around that plan has changed but that we have skilled them to be able to pivot to a different option and still have skills within them that make them successful and able to move forward and be a productive member of our community and our state and our workforce holistically. Earlier the secretary brought these up. I'm gonna they're on
the screen again and these are specific to just our career and technical education pathways. I do want to give you a little bit more information around those as he mentioned we revisit them because they're not just a stagnant list and this is something we're required to revisit annually so when we look at this we're looking at wage in our state and the demand in our state based off labor market information and so when we're looking at wage we're looking at the wage that is being earned from these occup ation al codes and so that becomes very important because
we want that family sustaining wage we want to have ourkansans that are on a pathway to prosperity and making a family sustained income the other side of that then becomes demand. Is there demand in our state and we look at this statewide all75 counties we know we could narrow down into one specific countying probably have some outliers that are there but holistically when we look at it statewide we still see the same common needs across our state no matter where we are and so those are our driving forces when we're looking at our success ready pathways that our
career and technical focfoed is that labor market information and specifically out wage and demand because we want to ensure that we're preparing students for pathways that they are jobs and then there are jobs that are going to pay a decent wage for them um'm looking forward and so this isrevisited annually so as we mentioned earlier there were 18 on our initial list if you were looking at this one here you're gonna notice that this number actually is a little higher than 18 and through some work we've done this past year as we move into the 2627 school year we're gonna
have 22 pathways that then meet our wage and demand. part of that is re working programs we've had. we have a lot of programs that have been the same way for a long time and we haven't really visited what are the skills that we're teaching and how we're teaching them and so through some extensive work over the past year and a half we have really revisited all those pathways reign the standards that we're teaching and those standards align to the skills that go back to the to the care ers and their occupation codes and so being very intentional with that we're able to adapt programs to meet more of the
needs in our state and that becomes a big part of our conversation too is that when we look at these pathways we're focused on the needs of Arkansas and Arkansas alone specifically as we go forward so as the secretary mentioned earlier from those pathways students can graduate with merit and distinction which now becomes a part of our school accountability A toF system and so that's very important aspresentative Mayberry mentioned earlier, you know with our students how do they want take interest in and buying into our assessments I think this becomes an important part in our
schools you know they're required and have been required my entire educational career to have three career and technical education programs on campus how intently they've paid attention to them or how serious they've taken the programming they're offering and how rigorous it is and how appropriate it is and how it aligned is to their community needs I think it's something that can be of question sometimes but now that we have this in our school accountability it definitely has our schools looking a lot more at the programs they're offering and their alignment with that and then ensuring that
students are leaving with two things and always go with merit and distinction there are two important pieces one is they're completing a pathway which is at least3 courses and those three courses is we built a foundational set of skills and knowledge that they can go on to work they can continue their education they can enlist in the military but they also have something tangible they can take with them beyond their high school diploma when we have conversations with employers and we do on a regular basis a lot of times what we hear is that high school diploma doesn't mean a whole lot to us
it's like most people have that so what what else do they have with them? what other skill do they have beyond being a high school graduate and so that becomes a really important part of our success ready graduates is there's something tangible that they're taking with them whether it be an additional credential that's been to earn it's a different additional postsecondary credit it's scores on different assessments it's going to put them earlier in line for maybe an interview or opportunity is really what we're looking at and when we discuss mayor and distinction and these two slides really talk about the
two differences in those. something that I do want to point out a fact to you is the class of 2024 so when they graduated obviously the learns actct was still very new obviously they'd been in high school through pretty much the entire process if we would have taken that class and looked at merit and distinction we would have had 9,028 students out of the36,000 plus students we graduated that would have met merit and distinction. OK like that's not a number that I'm necessarily proud of umm to say that we had 9000 students that were considered success
ready by how we define merit distinction. Now again the class of 2028 our current sophomores this year they will be the first class that has gone through the full four years of high school under these new rules and regulations. so my hope is by the time we get to the class of 2028 we see this number has had some tremendous growth but it's also kind of our baseline to watch because that becomes a really important part of our conversation when we have employers that are looking to locate in Arkansas and they're in that process of trying to determine is there a workforce
to meet that we know a lot of times most of the times they're looking at what are we what are we graduating out of high schools out of postsecondaries because they don't want to steal from the workforce that already exists a lot of times so how intentional are we when I look at this number 9028. it's not a perfect number of exactly every student being success ready but it paints a picture based off the programs we've built and the op port un ities we've provided students and so I think that's a challenge to us and our schools right now is how do we continue to grow that and they're doing a great job we've had lots of trainings lots of questions,
lots of changes in programs that maybe have always traditionally been offered to meet the workforce needs of a community of a region as we go forward so as we look at enrollment to give you a general idea we do have middle school career and technical education courses and so from the previous school year we had about 106,000 students in a career in technical education course in grades6,7 or 8. a lot of that is around exploration so they are exploring careers that exist and why then if we look to the
high school side 912 enrollment we see it over 252,000 I always like to add that can be a duplicate number we have a lot of students who are taking a lot of courses within a pathway that might be 23 periods of their day so we have a very healthy enrollment in career and technical education. I think the part that then becomes something that we have to continue to look at and have conversation about is this right here so we use the term concentrator and completer in career and technical education and that's a federal term but also we use it heavily in our state and that's the number of
students who are completing programs so concentrators means they completed two courses in a program or a pathway and then we have a completer where they completed3 which is the full program so you can see that from last year we had73,000 students who would have met the concentrator number OK? and then completers it goes down to32,000. so I think we go well how did we lose more than half of them like what what's happening there that should be concerning and it should be and there's a lot of factors that go into play and
sometimes it's the student has found they are not interested in that career field or that pathway that is just not right for them and they make a switch and that is perfectly ok I think it's great to learn that you have a fear of needles and blood before you go deep into a medical profession's pathway but we also know we have a lot of students who have a lot of other opportunities at school or they're not required to be at school all day and they don't have to finish a schedule and so they leave and they go to work and we do have workbased earning programs that allow students to earn credit while still being enrolled in the school
getting credit for it but also working they would be included in this count so we do see a significant turn there so it's also a big part of our conversation around letting students complete pathways and so we anticipate these numbers to get better but it is our reality of where we live and they've been pretty consistent for this way for some time as we look at the pathways that are offered and then there's secondary career centers that I know you are very familiar with across the state so we have31 secondary career centers not including satellites and those are very regionally
focused and then very d driven programs meaning that students are going to have to usually take at least half of their school day to be there so it's not necessarily right for every student and then of course we don't offer every pathway known to mankind. they are usually very regionally focused on the workforce of those areas but you can see we're averaging a little over 10,000 students there a year which is a good number but at the same time we have31 of these centers across the state and the continual growth in that and then our connection with postsecondary there for the
vast majority of these they are on a postsecondary campus which means those students are earning concurrent credit while they're doing this work which means moving them closer or they're already earning a certificate of proficiency a technical certificate or an associate's degree while enrolled there and I think those become really important pieces and so our continued growth of this we know as we discussed success ready pathways and we put out a merit and distinction that we've already seen more of a demand for these programs and more enrollment occurring at a faster rates which then puts us
to this last bit of factx so in the 2425 school year we had over 19,000 industryrecogd credentials earned in our state. and so we're happy with that number but I will tell you that number is not necessarily always the greatest industry recognized credential known we have spent the past year really reviewing this and as we go into the current school year that we're in we have really narrowed our list of what's industry recognized credentials and this list has become, I'll be honest, kind of a headache to manage. I
mean it's become very vendord driven we have vendors that can come with credentials for about anything in the world but then when we talk to our employers our employers are like I've never heard of that or I don't know what that is or I don't need that or I'd rather teach them myself and so we're really trying to revisit the industry recognizecog credential piece and being very intentional with that so you might hear some conversations about that over the next year because we are really tightening that list down to what we feel like is more appropriate and then really driven by Arkansas workforce and what Arkansas workforce needs and
then the postsecondary credentials here this is something that the numbers now we we don't love but we know that we are already on a path to see great changes here based off of things from the Larings Act and the Access Act. so keep in mind these 2 425 numbers are focused on mostly students who would have graduated this past spring but a little over 2500 certificates of proficiency 137 technical certificates and five associate's degrees. These are all specific to career and technical education, so earlier when the secretary mentionedalestine Wheatley and hope those are probably more in
your general studies area. these are going to be in very technical fields and those are all coming out of our secondary career centers so those numbers aren't where we want them but from the legislation that has been passed and the work that has been put in and we've already see it very much uptick in this trajectory as we go forward and anticipate these numbers to be at a much greater scale in the next 2 to 3 years and especially that class of 2028 our sophomore class seeing it almost double or quadruple and what those numbers would look like as we meet Arkansas workforce needs
and so that really is where we sit in our current reality with career and technical education as it extends on what the secretary shared earlier but also the success readyady pathways there's a lot of opportunity here it's also brought up a lot of conversation with school leaders communities around what are our needs and how do those align and then of course at the same time with postsecondary ensuring that we're creating pathways for our students that we know the vast majority of them are going to continue their education and some for more fashion it might not be a fouryear baccalar art
degree but there's going to be some additional training and that we're able to break down some of those barriers and make those pathways a little bit more seamless for our students and the process but also filling Arkansas workforce needs as we continue forward. last one so
Chair
Unverified
1:35:37
I'll take any questions you have. Senator dotson you're recognized for a
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:35:41
question thank you, Mr Chairman. ross a couple slides back where you were talking about
the class of 2024 the merit and distinction
graduations 9028 do we have any numbers in like 20232022 leading up to that and I'm sure you don't have 25 yet so yes and no. so we have some numbers we could run based off of
Speaker 158
1:36:04
what merit and distinction looks like it's just not a perfect exa perfect example of it but I would say we've looked at it and I know the team the public school accountability team has done a lot of work in here and it's been pretty consistent. I'm around when we look
specifically in the realm of just career and technical education and completing a pathway and earning that credential or postsecondary credit that we've been running about 10,000 or so usually is
Speaker 163
1:36:36
the ballpark of what our graduating class is that's
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:36:40
pretty so roughly 25% is that is that consistent nationwide or or with other states it varies so you have
Speaker 158
1:36:49
states who have a requirement of career and technical education,
workforcec specific so obviously theirs is going to be tremendously higher than ours and then you have some states who have no requirements so it's going to be lower than ours. I would say we kind of just run in the middle of the pack when we look at career and technical education, especially when we start talking about like completers ofcTE programs which is meaning three courses. we always just kind of follow fall right in the middle you know, probably 2530 when it starts to look at number of completions. Now I think the other part we have to take into consideration there is number of completions is great but then
also what are they taking with that besides just completing the program because I gonna have a student at one school that completed a program and I can say man that was extremely rigorous they're very trained and I could maybe have another program in another district and just the quality of the educator might not be as great and it might not mean as much so that's where we've added in that readiness factor that second piece that is some outside piece of credential postsecondary accreditation piece assessment that is carrying with them that shows they have a skill set that I think it's really important
that's new to us that we wouldn't have had prior to this previous year so states
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:37:59
that don't have it as a mandatory we're we're right in line with where they're at more or less yeah. OK sir. thank you. Representative Duke you recognized my apologies for getting there . thank you thank you Mr Chair
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:38:25
thank you for the presentation it was very interesting on that right the the slide I think it's slide 15 right before the end where you talk about the cer certifications and the postsecondary credentials earned. um, are those I'm assuming those are like 137 technical cer certificates represent 137 students correct so can you give examples of what these certificates in all of those areas maybe your top ones so for technical certificates it's typically going to be in
Speaker 168
1:38:55
the medical field those are going to
Speaker 158
1:38:58
be our most common there your certificate of pro fi ci en c ies is typically going to be a lot of automotive, a lot of welding those are usually our biggest numbers because these are coming specifically out of our secondary career centers and so those are gonna be most common you might see in advanced manufacturing thrown in here depending on the area but definitely medical, automotive, welding a little bit of construction tech but some of those are specifically to construction a lot of those
have industry recognized credential that sometimes the employer is looking more for than necessarily the postsecondary credit. but those would be our most common that we're going to see from that list that's there and do you have follow up if I may? do you have
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:39:37
are we tracking these kids at all or any of these groups or career center is tracking them after they leave I mean I have a little bit of knowledge over the welding I was as I got introduced to that how much they're making whenever they're graduating with
some of this are we tracking that so we know and do you have that so one of our federal requirements but as a
Speaker 158
1:39:58
state we are doing a much a a very good job at this is this number right here so our concentrators and completers those students we have to track 18 months post high school graduation. I mean we have to track them on what's called postsecondary placement but it's just placement in either the workforce part time or full time enrollment in postsecondary the Peace Corps or the military and so we do have to track all of our students 8 post eight months past high school graduation with that so we have that information in all of our districts receive that annually on kind of where
they're at I will say our postsecondary placement based off of those students we typically run about 80% are meeting the placement requirement which means 80% of them are either enrolled full time , part time are employed what's considered full time are in the military or are in theeace corps so is that information that you could get us as well so that we can see you can give
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:40:47
it to you by district by school district they
Speaker 158
1:40:49
have their amount that that we have to track that annually and submit it to the US Department of edd. so we know basically this kid took the welding
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:41:00
classes or on moved classes and they stayed in the industry a couple eight months later or they did not or so yeah, I
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:41:14
think that would be great to see thank you. in ner flower she recognized thank you and thank you for the presentation I wanted to know about the certified pre-apprenticeship leading to registered apprenticeship and just general overall how how is CTE set up with
school districts individual school districts is it left to the school district to determine and to fund the career technical courses
or'll start with that question and then we'll go back to the certified pre-apprenticeship
Speaker 155
1:41:44
if you're with that. so in our schools standards for accreditation
Speaker 158
1:41:47
they are required I believe it's the secretary mentioned earlier they have to have three career and technical education programs of SEI and so that's a part of accreditation which then goes to the foundation funding so that's one of those requirements and
then one of them has to be that high wage high demand that was new from the Learns Act and so every school has to have3 again most districts actually have more than3 it's pretty common it's our our smallest districts typically are just having the three but I'll be honest, most have more than that and so that is where their requirement is they have obviously in their foundation funding the piece that comes in with career and technical education as a requirement in standards for accreditation and then we do receive federal funding so thearldiserkins Act or Perkins
funding that comes into the state now that is a state award and then we have to use it and higher ed and in K12 so right now70% of it goes to our K-12 districts and30% goes to our postsecondary campuses that are eligible and they receive a federal award with that it is a very very small amount of money of money our state federal award is a little under $15 million as a whole that then we have to split among every K1el district in the state and then our postsecondarries who are
eligible for Perkins so always remind people the federal award is not really a lot of operational it's typically supplemental piece that helps offset the cost of equipment or credentialing and then for the certified pre-apprenticeship so we have two options with apprenticeship. we have certified preapprenticeship which is newer for our state. I mean that's what the officefice of Skillsvelopment over the Department of Commerce and students who have the opportunity to go into a apprenticeship opportunity but it's the pre side of it because they might not be meeting the
age requirements that the apprenticeship might require and this allows them to start working in that field and gaining on the job training and related technical instruction hours towards the apprenticeship once they reach the age that they're able to be an approved apprentice through the United States Department of Labor and then we have a youth apprenticeship which is very similar and it is where they're identifying they are a youth and they are aligned with a principal career in the hours they earn while they're in that youth apprenticeship count towards the amount of hours that have to be
earned in the actual apprenticeship once they become of age so really the only difference is there is a certified pre-apprenticeship is more Arkansas controlled and local. the youth apprenticeship is through the United States Department of Labor and has a little bit more federal oversight. but both of those are opportunities we have for students for appreniceable careers in our state that have been approved approved by the feds so good question so there is on the youth apprenticeship side obviously we would have to have an approved apprenticeship within the state that's been
approved through the United States Department of Labor with a certified preapprenticeship it's pretty much the same because we also want it to be an approved apprenticeship which as of right now our state is we go through the federal side of it for us for the apprenticeship to be approved so you do have to file an application with the United States Department of Laboor Labor to have that apprenticeship career appro ve d oncece it's an approved career in the state providers can go from there if if
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:45:02
a school district is allowed to just
or or required to just choose one subject matter from your success ready pathway. ma'am the other two but
Speaker 163
1:45:19
they're supposed to have3 yes they're required
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:45:21
to have3 for accreditation purposes so the other two
how how are they funded? I mean and what is what qualifies them as a program that would be acceptable as a career so we spell out our pathways and
Speaker 158
1:45:39
our courses so they obviously have standards just like we have for all of our other courses we have standards for each course and so they're choosing the pathways that they have for their community. also we have a state plan for Perkins federally that defines size scope and quality. those are the three things federally we have to define and so it defines what is the size of the program the scope of the program and then how do you identify quality in the program and so every district there are programs they offer have to meet those and so we have at actually each of our
education cooperatives we employ a CT coordinator each one of them that is there to support our districts across the state and making sure they're meeting size scope and quality. and so I mean it it's no different than them having in my opinion a math, English science program we have staff that's there to support them we have standards that are set and they implement those programs because they're part of their requirement for accreditation purposes.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:46:32
so at some point at the local level those leaders in that school district and the business community I
suppose would come together and figure out those other two and that's
Speaker 158
1:46:43
a good question so that's a requirement they have annually is they're supposed to have what's called a stakeholder engagement and that's a meeting between the educators there at the district the education leaders the those teachers but also then their business and industry and what programs do we need to be offering? what are the needs of our community? what are our workforce needs to identify the programs that they need to offer there and they're able to choose those at the local level
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:47:11
and last question US Department of Education do they fund any of this career technical education so that's at Carl D Perkins act that
Speaker 158
1:47:18
I mentioned earlier. so the Perkins funding that we receive comes from the feds and that is what is coming from the US Department of Ed to fund career and technical education in the state in all states projected to receive some P perkins so
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:47:30
we've received our initial payment for the or our initial payout for
Speaker 158
1:47:34
this year and we have our obviously we'll get our second one in October 1 and it's just right under $15 million as
I mentioned earlier. so it's not a big pot of money but that is what we received and then we split it7030%,70% goes to K12 local education agencies and then the other30% goes to our postsecondary education agencies that meet
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:47:58
the requirement but only the agencies that have the have met the requirements for whatever the department of ed
through Perkins has outlined that so our-2 districts all of
Speaker 158
1:48:09
them meet it because it's a
requirement for them for accreditation so all K12 public districts are eligible. on the postsecondary side that they don't have a requirement so they're able to do that but pretty much all of our twoyear community colleges received Perkins on the so what you're
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:48:26
saying is through 12 all K through 12 in the state receives is it split proportionate it's a formula so the formula is looks
Speaker 158
1:48:35
at two things and the formula is given to us by the feds as well. it looks at the population of
the community and then the poverty of the community and those are the two things that calculate in to form that it's similar to how title one is funded in districts it's
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:48:52
the same formula and it is all this data on the department of Education website go
Speaker 158
1:48:57
to the division of elementary and secondaryducation page and on finance you can see the breakdown of how much dollar amount each district receives under the finance section. I will tell you districts have the option to join a consortia with the career and technical education funds which means
they're putting all their money in one pot together and working as a group and most of our districts chooses to use that because it's such a small amount of money and so we have a consortia at each of our education service cooperatives and so most of our smaller districts of course which is a large number of our districts are a part of a consortia but every district that's K12 that's public does receive a a piece of that dollar each year and then they choose to either keep it or put it in the consortia. and we can get you that list if you would like a breakdown mean that
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:49:44
that's not that savvy with this computer and going online all but at like whatever kind of breakdown you have for students that are engaged in that career technical but the districts but you've you've given us some because we can look
at what you have from 2425 to kind of see because some of this
is backed by Perkinswright and the department of laborbor ma'am and so
it is it correct to assume that these numbers that are up here for concentrators and completers
was all federally funded No I mean so I would say no because again our
Speaker 158
1:50:31
federal funds that are coming in are such a small amount they're usually there to help provide above and beyond what is we are schools already received because again it's a part for our K-1el districts it's a part of their requirement and so when we go back to just their funding as a district then that is what
they're receiving for all their requirements under standards for accreditation and they're required to have those programs. What comes in with the federal dollar amount is a very small amount so most of our districts are using that typically for educator training equipment that they're buying and I say equipment it's usually one or two pieces of equipment a year and then paying for students who are sitting for these credentials that they're having to pay for and they're covering the cost of those credentials so it's not going to the student but like our largest recipient in the state is
probably not as a district as an individual district receiving receiving probably400,000 dollars and that's all they're receiving and that's our largest in the state and we have some districts who receive less than $10,000 in Perkins because of how the formula works and it's just such a small amount of money and that comes from a to us federally so I would say we have way more state invested funds than we have federally invested funds into a
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:51:45
career and technical education because the federal funds would have to be targeted for certain types of courses
Speaker 158
1:51:53
they just have to meet that federal definition of size scope and quality which all of our programs meet that when they implement them because that's how we ensure that they're meeting that when they offer
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:52:04
them whether it's state or federal dollars even
Speaker 158
1:52:08
the ones that are not on this list this is just the ones that are meeting wage and demand we have we offer63 programs of study 22 of them currently meet the state's threshold for high wage
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:52:21
high OK well whatever you think might help
in understanding how how this works and whether it's new this is my first year on education committee so I'd like to know more of the background of thecTE and if it's regional I think over in sheridan they connected with Malvern and some other places so that's a regional kind of career tech OK thank you Mr chair thank you senator seeing no additional questions Mr.yi thank
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:52:59
you for your time. there's no additional business force so we want to give a reminder that we are meeting tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. in pine Bluff where no doubtinner flowers will roll out the red carpet for all of us. so we're excited for that. So seeing no additional business joint education is adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the June 16, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Consideration for Adoption of Interim Study Proposals (ISPs) [Exhibits C1-C3]
D. Overview of ATLAS Testing, School Scorecards, and Career Readiness [Exhibit D1-D2]
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 17
Speaker 18
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 33
Speaker 27
Speaker 35
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 47
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
Speaker 49
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 91
Speaker 42
Speaker 86
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
Speaker 127
Speaker 103
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 143
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 155
Speaker 158
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
Speaker 163
Speaker 168