Education Committee- Joint

Cher she's decorum. Members, welcome to joint education. We think our Senate partners who've, uh, who are here and House members, thanks for staying after as well. Uh, this afternoon, we're going to hear from Secretary Jacob Aliva on the 2024 NAEP scores, uh, Secretary Leva has a PowerPoint which will be up, I believe it's also in front of you, uh, it's gonna take about 15 minutes or so and then we will open the floor for questions for the secretary. Uh, Mr. Secretary, you recognize, if you please, um, introduce yourself. And we will hear from you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Jacob Oliva, Secretary of Education. And just wanna thank you uh for taking time out of your busy day to spend some time kind of in a joint committee session to review some data that we just recently received um from the federal level so uh what I'd like to do as as Representative Burke stated it's just kind of do a little bit of a walk over what is the data telling us what are some things that we may want to consider? What are the things we want to make sure we maintain our focus on and use maybe some of this as a dialogue or a foundation that we can build on to enter into some, some great dialogue. So I always, um, I, I like this time of year just to kind of put into context of what the national assessment of educational progress, most people refer to it as NAEP really is, so most of you have been watching football to see the playoffs, to see which teams are gonna go to the Super Bowl. This is my Super Bowl, right? Like getting back these scores, this is more important to us than watching to see who's gonna win the Super Bowl and so when I think about putting things in the sports analogies and building out frameworks and developing. formulas of what's working. One of the biggest things that comes to mind is, um, some of those legacy Super Bowl teams, but it was on on a Monday Night Football game, uh, uh, the New England Patriots started off the season 2 and 2 when they were supposed to be a dominant force and had a blow up game against the Chiefs, which I know a lot of you are rooting for, um, coming up here in a few weeks and the press was talking about how there was just a lot of distractions between the quarterback and the coaches and everybody was not aligned and at that press conference, Bill Belichick said something that they maintained in their locker room, painted on the wall that counted them to numerous Super Bowl championships for many years on, and he basically said, ignore the noise. Right now you all are listening to a lot of people that have a lot of ideas on how to fix education, because one of the things that I know about education is everybody's an expert because they all went to school. It Sometimes we got to step back and say, are we listening to noise? Or are we staying focused on what we know is gonna produce best outcomes and evidence for our students. So every time you guys send me a bill to review every time I do, um, professional development with districts and leaders and teachers and talk about why are we doing the work? I keep focusing back to what I call the three E's. Is everything we're doing all the decisions we're making to help students become enlisted, enrolled or employed. So as we go through this data and we start answering questions and start having idea and start looking at what's good for students to help them achieve those three E's, just know that those are the core values that I look at everything that we're gonna do and every question you ask me today, I'm gonna respond to what's best for students at achieving one of those 3 goals. So when we talk about NAE scores. The kind of biggest places that people hone in on is this snapshot in time in 4th and 8th grade reading and math. It is the assessment that's given every 2 years and I'm gonna go through some historical context of what that data um says many people refer to this as the nation's report card and this report card data and information is robust, was released yesterday, and while we knew this release was coming up, that's when we met with Senator. Representative Brooks and some others and said, hey, we're gonna have some fresh data. We're early in session. If we're gonna use data to guide and inform conversations because we talk about making data driven decisions. This is a pretty good snapshot that can tell us how we're doing compared to our peers across the nation, as well as some of the work that we're doing right here, um, in the state. One of the conceptions that I always like to make sure people understand is when you look at the state by state comparison. There is a sample size that's collected. Not every student in the United States stopped and took one test and this is an aggregate of all the students in the United States test results, so, uh, nationally you can see that the data um spreads out to about the number of schools of just sort of 5000 schools and 100,000 students that are sampled in those reading and math courses in the 4th and 8th grade level as well as other content area, but more specifically when you look at, um, Arkansas. saw it, you can see that we had about 90 schools, um, that were sampled in both those subject areas and both those grade levels in about um 1800 students in each one of those samples, so it's a good reflection of the types of students. Now when they collect those sample size, um, they're very deliberate about the schools um that they pick because they wanna make sure that that sample size is reflected of the demographics of the state, making sure the sample size aligns with the number of students are English language learners, the number of students that come. From poverty, the number of students that may have specific learning disabilities, so there's a very um scientific formula and methodology that goes into Um, how the schools and students are selected, so. As we go a little bit deeper into details, I'll probably spend a little bit more time just kind of explaining how these charts and graphs work on the first graph in 4th grade, but then you'll understand how it works and what they look like as we go through the other grade levels and get that um. Uh, kind of snapshot in time and, and see how our students are doing. So I, I've been here for about 2 years. We worked together on some comprehensive initiative called Learns. I often get asked a lot of times about why do we get the data that we get? Why do we get the rankings that we get? What is it that we need to improve to get the system right? So I can tell you so many that has traveled this state. I've been in just at every school district, been in a lot of schools, met with a lot of teachers, met with every superintendent, been to every single educational co op. I can tell you we have a lot of talented folks. Working on some amazing work to do what they can to lead and teach the young scholars that are in our classrooms. But I've often said is that bad systems be good people every single time. And I think when we look at this data, we can ask ourselves some questions about the systems that we've built around improving education to make sure that it's aligned and when I talk about making sure we have clear alignment, that means that teachers, students and parents can know and understand what we expect students to know and learn in each subject area and how we monitor that student performance is um appropriate feedback to help deliver and drive that instruction. So I often kind of say, have we been working on the right stuff. So if you look at this map here, you can see, um, Arkansas is in the middle, and I, and I think, you know, a lot of us like to look at how do we compare to states around us regionally because I often hear about some of the challenges we face in this region of the state. If you look at where the color shades are dark blue means that you're statistically significantly above the national average, the medium blue means you're within a variance of the national average light blue, blue means your statistically below the average. So you can see where Arkansas sits and this is for reading in grade 4 in our snapshot that we're kind of in the middle of the pack, but when we break the data down even further, we're on the bottom, bottom of that. middle of the pack of statistical significance, and then you can see even some of our neighboring states, some of them are in the same group that us that we are and others are statistically ahead of each other, so we started asking ourselves questions. Why are we seeing some of the results that we're getting. So I think it's important to like, if you look at grade 4 and take kind of a historical perspective, you can see that this chart goes all the way back to 2003, and it starts breaking down, where does our students perform compared to that national average. So the, the dark line, uh, the black line that goes across the top is the national average. The national public average and the green line is how Arkansas students perform overall. So you can see historically. Um, in the previous decade, there were some places where our Arkansas students were pretty close to meeting the national average or making gains above the national average. If I was to ask you to draw a dotted line down that graph. The first question I would ask people, is what happened between the 2013 and 2015 administration. Cause I think we can all look at this and say something happened where our students in 4th grade reading may have still been below the national average, but we're 2 points below, then we were 3 points below, then we were 5 points below, and then made 4 points below. So what happened? During that administration. Now that's pre-COVID. So if you look at the timeline, you can see that there is an assessment done in 19. Those were all odd years. There wasn't an assessment done in 2020 because of COVID, which is now why we're getting back to 22 and 24. We have even year administrations because it's given every 2 years, so this is something happened in the state before COVID. Cause a lot of, a lot of times we like to point to the COVID, um, learning loss when we took away the opportunity for students to learn. A lot of people talk about the learning loss associated with COVID, I said it's not that kids lost learning, we took away their ability to learn. There's a difference. We took away their opportunity to be in front of a highly skilled teacher. But in 2013, 2015 in the middle of that time frame, that's when the state made a decision whether it was political, whether it was educational, that's for y'all to decide. I wasn't part of that decision where we move from a criterion reference assessment, the state was moving forward with the consortium of it was either park or smart or Balance to give um grade level expectations of what we started want students to know and learn and adopted an assessment called ACT aspire. That assessment was to tell people that what they were doing was good enough, and I'm here to tell you that it wasn't. That was a college and career readiness assessment that nobody knew what was on it. The blueprints were never released. It was not telling you if you were meeting grade level expectations. It wasn't built on the criteria of Arkansas standards. It was just a snapshot so that we would meet federal reporting and that's the assessment that we use to build out school grades. And I remember when I first got here, I'm standing in a room full of superintendents. I had been here about 3 or 4 days, introduced myself, talked about how we're gonna start working on some of this work. And I remember asking, and I would go to principals, conferences, co-ops, everywhere I'd go. I said, I keep reading this data that y'all gave me that says 35% of your third graders are proficient. What does that mean? I would ask everybody, what does that mean? In the response I'd get was about the same response here, silence. So we've had an assessment in this state for several years. We never really unpacked what it means because we like to use that term proficiently, fluidly, meaning that students are meeting at or above grade levels. So I think one thing we could say deductively is if 35% of our students are are not at grade level, that means or, or are at grade level, that means 65% aren't at grade level. But that, that assessment wasn't measuring whether students were not at grade level, it was a predictor. It was, if you meet this benchmark from 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, year after year after year, we expect that by the time you're an 11th grade or taking a high school ACT assessment, you score at least a 22. The 22 is a predictor of if you take a college level enrollment class as a freshman, you have a 90% chance of getting an A or a B. We're not, we weren't telling these great teachers and leaders, giving them good information about student performance that can inform their craft. We were taking predictive data and making instructional decisions around it. So if I told the teacher 65% of your kids need intervention. What happened to grade level instruction? It became intervention. So part of the work that we've been engaged with the last 2 years on how we're gonna right this ship is having robust conversation about what grade level instruction looks like and how do we make sure that every single student has access to grade level instruction each and every single day. I'm not saying that students don't need remediation, but some students also need acceleration, and that's gonna be kind of the premise of the conversation of what we're happening today. Um, you, you've heard Governor Sanders reference Doctor Hate's work in ancient generation. He, he even link in some of this drop in educational decline well before pump, uh, the pandemic towards social media and, and the impact of of of phones. The nation has been in decline pre-pandemic levels. We have been mirroring that as a state, if not at the same level, a more rapid level. So we're gonna make some conversation and decisions and how we can Um, write that. So if you look at kind of that data and you break it down. Where do we rank as a state? So this graph, you can see the line goes up. You actually want that line to go down. So this same data, if we just put it on the chart of Arkansas students where we have those variables and said, you know, 1 to 50, whatever it is, what is our ranking, you can see that we've just kind of fluctuated but we maintain somewhere in the 40s. Right, I think we want to see something better. We want to see some better outcomes. I drew a red line on 2023, because that's when we work together to implement the boldest, most comprehensive educational reform that I'd like to say that we've seen across the nation with Arkansas learns that touches everything from cradle to career, to start to write this ship. So anything right of that red line every time I come to present you new information, I'm gonna start a drawing a line in that sand and said this is when we started making some decisions to fix this. And these are some of the things that we're gonna do. There were other states that neighbor this state. They've had better outcomes. So I looked at their data and drew a line when they did some major reform. Cause a lot of people like to talk about the Mississippi miracle that happened in 2013. That wasn't a miracle. That legislature worked with the state to make some reformed decisions. In fact, in 2013, they passed what was called the literacy-based Promotion Act, and they required all teachers. To be certified and trained in the science of reading. No, I'm not saying that we didn't make initiatives around that because in 2017, we did some pretty good work around the rise initiative. But it was exposed teachers. To the science of reading. It wasn't a requirement. They drew a line and said if you wanna be a teacher in our school, this is required, this is what we expect. Look at where their journey is leading them. I put Louisiana on there and 20,019, you could see a red line, they passed the schoolwide reform legislation. They did a big initiative around K3 literacy assessments similar to what we're doing with our unified coordinator progress monitoring, a big focus on high quality instruction materials similar to what we're doing with Lawrences. In saying that we're gonna support teachers with good data, good standards, and the right materials to make sure that they have what they need to support their students, and they did a lot of work around early learning reform and, and raising kindergarten readness, very similar to the work that we're doing in Louisiana or in um learns, look at their story. So when you go back and everybody's complaining, the secretary wants to get rid of 4 day schools. He doesn't want to do makeup days. He wants teachers to be licensed. This is why. Yeah, I, I got beat up over AMI days. Time in front of teachers matter. I want our story to be very similar to this journey. If we were to break down who these students were even further. This is a telling graph that I want to share with you, and this is called our data in quintiles. So this takes all of our students that took that sample size, and then takes our actual data as Arkansans and says, of these students, let's draw a line and say this is our 10th percentile, or 75th percentile, or 50th percentile or 25th percentile in our 90th percentile. So you can see of our students, if you were to go back to even pre-pandemic levels are 90th percentile students have maintained. Kind of some integrity. Even our 75%, that'd be the brown and kind of the black line. And then in the middle, the golden line is about the 50th percentile. But when you start talking about supporting our most struggling learners, our students in the lowest quartile. This is where we're still seeing some significant drops. And in fact, our lowest quartile students in 4th grade reading at a 149 is almost the lowest score you can get at 140. My question is, who's teaching those kids? Who's making sure they're getting access to a high quality teacher that's been trained in the science of reading. Are they getting a 90 minute uninterrupted reading block. How are we making sure they're getting access to high impact tutors. Those are some of the questions that we need to ask, because if you say, well, where do our top performers rank compared to our lowest performers, you can see even our top performers all the way on the top chart, if you looked at the yellow line of the 90th percentile, our highest performing students are still 3 points below the lowest the the national average. So even though they're not maintaining and showing in and learning loss, we're still below the national average. Our lowest performers, our lowest quartile or our lowest 10, or excuse me, our bottom 10th percentile is 8 points behind the nation. That should lead to some conversations. If I was to tell you to earmark any page in this PowerPoint. That's the one I would earmark. This is why we've got the keep the conversations around access to high quality early learning, deploying the literacy coaches into our most struggling schools, making sure that every student has access to a high quality teacher and get systematic explicit instruction uninterrupted 5 days a week. If we were to break that down in math. This is 4th grade math. You can see, um. In, in the light blue where A little bit lower even in reading with the number of jurisdictions that were within. Kind of a statistically significant range, about 37 other states are statistically outperforming us. And there's only about 3 that are below us, so math has been quite a journey. As well, and you can see I, I say draw that line. 2013, 2015, what were we testing students on what were information were we given to schools? How are we supporting teachers, we started seeing a rapid decline, uh, 5 points below the national average, all the way down to 7 where we maintain. There's a lot of reasons for that, which is why we spent a lot of time updating our ELA and math standards, especially in those primary grades, our ELA standards now are really more robust around the science of reading, or unified coordinated progress monitoring system that goes all the way from kindergarten through high school is embedding the dyslexia screening at K3. Teachers know what we expect students to know and learn because we gave them clear and concise language. We're also built out an assessment that's built on the criterion because we're getting away from this college and career readiness assessment that's not giving good information back to teachers. Teachers are now able to pull down test items and create their own assessments based on standards and see how students are progress monitoring. So we're going to see growth in this area, but one of the biggest things that we accomplished through the math standards revision is we got rid of confusing math. I, I, I don't know what it was like in a lot of your households, but I can tell you my daughter who's a junior in, in university now. I'll never forget the one day when she came home in 3rd grade and asked me to help her with her math homework. And I had no idea what they were doing. Has anybody lived that experience? What we've been doing in math, we have lost control and we have got to go back to basics. We went to from this kind of nuance where we expect students to learn and know their math facts to really focusing on conceptual understanding, which I'm not saying is a bad thing because you have to know how the math concepts apply to real world problems so that you can apply math and use that in your everyday life. But what happened is we created standards and we're really confused teachers and parents because the math standards were built around strategies, and we were teaching kids that you have to only learn a strategy. Not letting them choose the strategies that work best for them. So we would tell a first grader, solve 8 + 3. A kid can say that's 11 because they have procedural fluency and they can do mental math. But we would say, no, no, no. Using a thought bubble map, regroup 8 + 3, see how many ones you have left over with how many tents. And if the kid feels the strategy wrong and the thought bubble map wrong. We told them they got the the problem wrong. So we've made a big shift back to procedural fluency to make sure kids know their math facts. If you can't multiply in 3rd grade without using a calculator, you're not gonna be able to factor in pre-algebra. It's too much cognitive load. So our teachers are getting better informed to fix this practice so that we can lay down the foundation in our in our math years. So if you put that same ranking, you can see, um, there's opportunity that we can do in math. I put some other states because Mississippi, just like they mirrored in literacy, did some stuff in math. This state I, I've pick another state because I'm looking at our borrowing states, Tennessee in 2021, did some robust, um, school reform. In fact, they had us the Tennessee literacy Success Act. In fact, they even went so far they required every teacher in the state when they get license renewed to have demonstrated proficiency in the science of reading or they didn't get renewed? And then in math, they adopted all new standards just like I'm talking about and started supporting teachers with the right tools and professional development to help um hone in their craft. That's their journey. So I get beat up all the time over waivers, over nothing matters. We, we love to pass laws in the state and rules, but then tell people they don't have to follow them. To date, 2 today cause I pulled it. Whether it's a statute or roll we have 8,433 waivers. Does this work matter? Yes or no? Cause I know it's easy to get caught up in the noise. When we look at those same quintiles. Um, you can see it paints a similar story that Matt took a definite big drip, uh, over 19, but you can see our lowest um 10th percentile student is still significantly below the nation. And our highest 90th percentile student in 4th grade math is still significantly below the nation. So there's a lot of work that we have opportunity to do. When we go to grade 8. We see a similar story. I'm not gonna, excuse me, spend a lot of time. But I think a grade 8 is kind of an interesting outlier because you can see that gap between the national average and the state average closing. Hmm. I start wondering why, why, why are we seeing that? What, what did we see a little bit of a spark in our 8th grade ELA scores that we didn't see everywhere else. Part of that is because when we did learns it was comprehensive and you could see some of these other states really focused on primary, but we're doing a full comprehensive approach. And when we break down these quintiles, one of the things that um I like to point out is we gave teachers clear standards. And when we rewrote our standards in ELA that we've been implementing now for just over almost 2 years, we were very explicit with examples of types of text that students should be interacting with text text complexity matters. So if you have a 7th or 8th grade standard says reader selected tax, uh, identify author's purpose and main idea and not tell them what kind of text it is, what is of green eggs and ham or Romeo and Juliet, that matters, right? So we're giving teachers better training, but one of the things that we did. The one of the things that we did is that we created reading courses for struggling readers in middle school that could count for credit. We did that with Las two years ago. We had not done that before as a state. We worked with the schools to identify programs, reading programs that were aligned with the science of reading in support of them with that and then we required the teachers that were going to teach those students to be trained and demonstrate proficiency in the science of reading. And we're seeing a little bit different result. Teacher quality matters. Instructional materials matter. You can see this is one of the areas where if you look at our 90th percentile student or 10th percentile student. Our 10th percentile student is a performing higher than the nations. It's the only category. Because we're investing in teachers, we're giving them better information. We're giving them the tools they need and we're holding our, our students and everybody to a higher standard and we're seeing those results. In 8th grade math. This is an area where I think we have a lot of opportunity. Um, you're gonna hear us talk a lot about acceleration. You can see that. We've really when I draw that line at 13 and 15, have fallen behind the national average in math. Part of this, I think, is because we don't have an accelerated math path program. We do not have enough students earning high school credit and middle school. 17% of our students last year took algebra in 8th grade. Our readiness rates set about 52% of the students were ready for it? So we've got to do a better job at identifying students who are ready to be an accelerated math path, and give them an opportunity to be in those courses. Our kids can do it. One of the other things that I know we did this year with Atlas is went back to end of course exams in geometry, algebra, biology, because what we were doing is giving, we were putting teachers in a moral dilemma all the time, like, so say I was teaching 8th grade algebra. And that's what the students were assigned, but our assessment was on 8th grade math. Does the teacher not teach algebra to teach to an assessment, so their scores look good in the grade or not worry about the assessment and teach the course that they're assigned to teach. We're not doing that anymore. We're giving everybody clear, concise language. It's very systematically aligned, students, teachers, parents will know what we expect of them and we're giving them information along the way so that they can know and understand what we're doing. So when you look at some of these other states that have done some reforms, you can see that change over time. Math is something, especially when we look through those primary and secondary grades, when we talk about acceleration is, is something that I've been working with school districts, education cooperatives, superintendents that we really need to be more aggressive, and you can see even our highest performing math students still um lag well below the national average and our bottom um students are still are about 2.2 points, um. Behind the national average, so I wanted to just kind of So where our students are performing on the nation's report card. If you remember when we um developed and implemented the Arkansas teaching and learning and assessment system, we're very deliberate about cut scores. That was a big conversation that we heard because we wanted to make sure when we say a student is all 123 or 4 that we have confidence that that is their level and then that they didn't get the appropriate grade level instruction, acceleration opportunities or intervention that they need. So I, uh, go to let you know that everything we do, we're gonna come through the lens of making sure that the decisions we make, the professional development that we lead, the guidance that we give is make is is putting every student on a pathway to be enlisted, enrolled or employed. So with that chair, I'll, uh, kind of pause on, on the overview of the data and then be happy to entertain any questions. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. We will go ahead and open up the floor for questions. uh, first on the list, Senator Sullivan, you recognize? Chair, am I on? Yeah, there you go. So we spent a couple of days this week talking about what the characteristics of a teacher are. You just showed us a lot of data and things that we need to be doing to help our students achieve. I didn't see anything in the report. That said what the teacher needed to look like. They're immutable characteristics with their race, their gender, their, uh, sexual orientation. The background. None of that Showed up here So although those may be important and are important. What I'm hearing you say, there are things that are a lot more important and we've got a lot of ground to make up and we need to really focus on the areas that you're describing right here, would that be accurate? Are close Well, so I, I would say that. Teachers are the greatest impact on the predictors of the outcomes of students' performance. Teachers come to classrooms from many different pathways and um many different backgrounds and experiences. I think oftentimes you would like to see your teacher population mirror the demographics of the students that you serve in an ideal situation. And there's not a greater investment that we can make in investing in teachers. So when we look at what we did and learns by raising teacher salaries, establishing teacher merit pay, making sure that we celebrate, recognize, try to retain, um, our most talented teachers, there's a reason for that, but to grow your own, um, programs, I think some of the times we see that have a greater impact, especially when we can find teachers that are in communities, paraprofessionals, um, that want to become teachers. we've done a lot as a state to make that pathway more obtainable. Where, where I get frustrated. Is saying that in, in let's say in K3, making sure teachers are trained in the science of reading and assigned to students that they can support and not take that serious. When, when we go through our university partnerships and programs and have been doing reading audits around the science of reading. We're gonna give some of these programs F's. I shouldn't ever have to sit in front of a a superintendent or a principal that says, I just hired these people fresh out of college and they're not day one ready. So when we look at that experience and teacher residency and apprenticeships, holding um all of our partners accountable is gonna matter, but to your point, getting the right teacher in front of the students that has the skills that has the support and the training they need is going to be the greatest impact for moving the needle. Yeah, that would be my point that that we are behind. We need to make up some ground our students need to make up some ground. Our teachers need to make up some ground in training. at us provide those resources for them and those are the most important things, not the only important things, but those are the most important things in closing those gaps. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative McKenzie, you recognize? There we go. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, Secretary Leeman, thank you for this. Uh, this is a. It's eye opening, um. It's significant data. I did wanted to to dive into. Kind of the last little bit of 8th grade math. So you, you mentioned the accelerated math path, um. Obviously that helps my estimation is that helps, you know, potential achievers achieve higher or greater skill sets, so that upper quintile, um. What needs to be done because the language between our 10th percentile or our lowest quintile is only 22 points, and, and we looked at the 4th reading and 4th map that chasm was much higher. What can be done for for our lowest performers in math, that's not 1 to 1 intervention. Uh, the, the why I mentioned the accelerated math path, that helps. I mean, obviously we want those who have proficiency to achieve bigger and better above. the national average, but what can we institutionalize that helps those who are languishing, that isn't just 1 to 1 intervention. So great question. And when, when you look at that math path, which is why this state, I think, gave us the right support to establish a unified coordinator progress maring system. When we're able to take that snapshot in student performance in the fall, winter and spring, we can see who's needs additional support, which we want to make sure teachers have access to um the right materials and interventions supporting teachers, but who's ready to move on? I can tell you in 3rd grade who's ready to move on. And when we build out that math path, what we're looking to get through by this summer to help support districts is what is 3rd grade advanced look like? What is 4th grade advanced look like? How does this path lead up to a kid getting into pre-algebra, um, by 7th grade or even 6th grade. We had less than 100 students take geometry in middle school. Well, if you're gonna be on a path where you're gonna get an International Baccalaureate diploma or become an AP scholar designation, you need to finish algebra and geometry by the time you're in middle school and start your world languages. Very little schools do that. So when we look at um pushing acceleration, it's about. supporting those districts and making sure that they know you, you can't just take a kid from 7th grade math and put them in algebra where they skip pre-algebra because they're gonna lose some foundational skills that's gonna show up in geometry, um, calc and trig is that path start all the way back in elementary school to see which students are ready. Right now, we tend to have this mindset that we have to teach to the bottom and we hold kids back, right? And if you Look at what, 90% of what the research says and it and it's done at a national level and we, we could find the same thing here is I can go into any school and log in to any teacher's grade books. 80% of the students are gonna get A's and B's on the assignments we give them. But 20% of the time it's on grade level. If we're gonna fix this math path, every student needs access to grade level instruction each and every single day. I like to challenge these instructional myths where people tell me I have to meet the kids where they are. We have to meet them on grade level. Our kids can do this work. We have to stop thinking we're protecting them. I'm not saying they don't need intervention and support. I, I've even presented at some conferences lately, so I feel like our most neglected students in their state are our highest performing students. Not enough opportunity to be accelerated to get advanced coursework in middle school, not enough students in this state are graduating with their AA degree. When we should be able to, we, I think what 117 last year in a state where there's 35,000 students at a grade level. When you look at what's the greatest predictor in post-secondary opportunity to graduate with your bachelor's. One of the biggest things that they would look at is college algebra or it's equivalency. How many of our students are leaving high school and going into remedial math. Right, so like we started pulling that data. 65% of the students that were in high school that went to a state college in the state of Arkansas that was put into remedial math, meaning that they weren't ready to be in a college. I'm not saying you're not gonna be successful and graduate, but you, you need some intervention and support. 65% of students that left the high school that got put into remedial math had a 3.0 GPA. So what point are we gonna start being honest about grade level expectations and making sure that students are on a path of those students that we polled 47% of our high school seniors last year didn't have a full schedule, let alone a math. In their research will tell us if a school if a senior in high school takes a math course, whatever level math, exponentially increases their success at the next postsecondary level, but we've created this mindset that going to school is not important. Taking extra rigorous opportunities is not a big deal, and we wanna, we wanna help support districts with that, which is why we're looking at establishing diplomas of merit and distinction. So we have our graduation requirements. A lot of students are gonna meet that graduation requirement, but we have a lot of students that are gonna do above and beyond. Maybe they take some concurrent credit. Maybe they take an AP course and pass it. Maybe they take an IB course. Maybe they earn an certification. How do we establish a diploma with merit that we recognize as a state and incentive. districts to push and let parents know that that happens, which would require getting accelerated math earlier and then how do we develop a diploma with distinction. How do we recognize those kids that earn in AA while they're in high school. Talk about changing the career and saving dollars and in the, in the treachery of these students' lives. Hope, hope, school district graduated the most students in the state with the AA and their bachelor or their AA and high school diploma at the same time. Hope They graduate 32, the majority of the students that did this, did that in hope. Kids can do it. We just got to give them exposure and make sure we build that acceleration. Follow up Thank you. I appreciate that rising tide lifts all boats. Higher accountability. Science of reading. We've done a lot of science of reading with the Lawrences Act. But I mean, if we were to strip all of this away. We are in a hypothetical vacuum chamber. What is stopping us from getting how much time, how much money, what resources are stopping us from getting every teacher qualified, trained, and certified in the science of reading tomorrow. So that's why I start with we have to ignore the noise. And we, we, we get a lot of constituents that are trying to say we need to undo learns it's the worst thing that's ever happened to state. No, I'm telling you this is the best thing that the state has ever done, because we're investing in early learning. When we look at what we're doing to support um even students becoming to us before kindergarten, the amount of training we're doing, we, we've established what's called local leads, and there's one in every county now, and they're working with their early learning providers to support a transition. which takes time, from moving away from an environmental scale on how do you define quality in early learning to what's called a class observation tool. So we used to rate quality in early learning based on the environment. Do you have books? Do you have a water table, a sand pit, a fire extinguisher. Now we're starting to measure what's the interaction between the teacher and student. So that's gonna take us time to train in, in the play. We've deployed literacy coaches to all of our failing schools. We need to stay the course. We cannot go backwards on that because they're supporting teeters. I was, I, I've been following some of these literary coaches and, and, um, as we're scaling this out, I can tell you I was in a school not that far from here, um, that was a. Struggling school and I was shadowing a literacy coach for the day, maybe I was, if you all would love to do that too, we'd love to have you do this cause this is powerful. You talk about game changing, um, I, I was in a classroom. It was in a first grade class where a teacher was struggling and the, the coach had been working with her on basic strategies like I do, you do, we do, classroom management, um, things were going on, so they had mapped out and scripted out a lesson. They were implementing the lesson and the teacher even asked the coach in the middle lesson, I feel like we should change and pivot and they're like, OK, of course, you know, do what you need to do. And this teacher looked at the coach in the middle of the lesson and said, I'm so glad you're helping me become a better teacher. In the middle of the lesson. And then we sat down and debriefed and the coach was giving feedback. The teacher is eating it up. I asked that teacher, I said, how long have you been a teacher? She said 10 years. 10 years she's been begging to become a better teacher and nobody was giving her help. What is that? 200 kids? Does she impacted? So we've got to stay the course. Does it take time? Yes. We're gonna see rapid improvements because we had to build a system. That took us about 2 years. New standards, high quality instruction materials, professional development in the assessment system that we have now rolled out. We're not gonna be able to pull real-time information on data and identify at a quicker pace that we've ever been as a state to figure out which schools and districts need additional supports. How do we organize for the district? How do we support co-ops? How do we make sure that they're aligned, um, when do we arrive? I don't think we ever arrive. We're always going to be trying to get better, but we have to maintain this momentum and focus or even double down on these foundational literacies. Representative Duke, you're gonna be up next, uh, but I want to follow up just real quick on Vice Chair McKenzie's question relative to science of reading. So great information about our approach to currently help our existing teachers continue to be better. What do we need to do, if anything, with our higher ed partners to ensure that our teachers who are graduating, um, from our post-secondary schools are already on day one to implement what we're attempting to implement. So I, I, I think the, the shorter answer to is why y'all empowered us to do a science of reading audit and, and I'm gonna tell you, you know, we, we, we partner with some folks to help train a team and build a system because we're we we partner with a group called um the Teacher Preparation Institute, like this is what they do internationally, not even nationally they help evaluate teacher preparation programs. And they're helping build our team so that we can build it to scale and build a system and standardize it so that everybody knows what we expect, right? The amount of times a Dean would say we're not allowed to come to observe is embarrassing. Because there's this mindset that you can't go into a tenure professor classroom, they have all the autonomy and freedom that they want. No, we, we need you to produce high quality candidates. And we're gonna make sure you're doing that where it's not to be punitive, is to be supportive, and if you need help, I can tell you. We've had to call presidents to say we need help getting in. We did have a university. Where we had scheduled outsiders and our folks to go. It was clearly marked on the calendar what day we were coming to do an observation on a reading lesson in the professor showed up 45 minutes late. I can't fix that. Either we take this work seriously or we don't. We have to change cultures and mindsets that students matter and everything we do and invest in them makes a big difference. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Representative Duke, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm sitting back here having to control myself from saying amen about 10 or 15 times during your presentation. And again, right now, I, um, raised kids during the time period that you've had on most of these graphs, and I served on the school board and I've listened to teachers and I've listened to parents. I've been one of them. When you talked about the bubble math when you've talked about, um, Sometimes Not reaching our kids that are at the high airport too that we've kind of forgotten about them. These are conversations I have heard for years, and I am just very thankful to hear those conversations taking place on the state level because I know oftentimes on the local level, people are having those conversations, they can't figure out why, why at some point in time in the state of Arkansas, we thought it was a good idea. Maybe it wasn't all the way across the state to not teach math facts anymore. And so I'm, I'm very appreciative of what you've, the data that you've given out here for me, at least in the area. that I represent. I've seen all of these things play out in conversations that we've had and frustrations that we've had. A couple of questions that I have, um, and I would say to your point that you just hit on higher ed, and a professor that wouldn't let somebody in. In my experience, people are good at their jobs and know they're good at their jobs, like to show off that they're good at their jobs. And I've seen that with teachers and whenever, you know, some teachers get nervous when somebody's coming in and I get the nerves. I get nervous when I'm just speaking here, so I get that. But when you know that you perform well and you produce students who do a good job in whatever it is. Most of the time they're like, bring one into my classroom. I want them to see, because they're confident. And so, um, it always concerns me when someone doesn't want you to come into the classroom or doesn't want to show off what they did. Um, but my questions are on number one, and as you are implementing this, and I think the data is great and something that I think we've needed to see a long time in our state. I think there's many of us who thought that there was some correlations going on and it's really nice to see it out here. Laid out for everybody. What are you gonna do to prevent school districts from getting into a mode of just, OK, we got test, test, test, test, test, so we can be prepared for the test. And so that they're not. You know, continually doing that with the kids, and they actually are teaching the standards and doing that day to day work. So I don't know if you've seen that yet. I know that's been a cycle that I've seen over the years in education, and so that's one concern I have. And the second concern I have. In relation to what we see going on in schools, again, as feedback, we've talked about it before. Um, how to address the growing, because I see correlations in some of this too with some of the discipline I see with the phones, but I see it with discipline as well. So that growing concern I'm hearing with teachers is the disruptions are taking place in their classrooms are also making it difficult for them to give that quality instruction time and some of that legislation we've passed down here that have created some of those hurdles for teachers. So is there any effort on you all's part to work with us or maybe in rules wherever to address that issue as well. Thank you. So, um, to your first point, Uh, I agree. People love to show off their craft, especially when they're good at what they do and they're welcome feedback. So I, I do want to make sure the legislative delegation knows. we may have some people that need some drastic improvement in teacher prep, but we've got some rock stars in this state as well, like I and I and I and I think that's why we want to go through this process so we can identify those rock stars, build on the scale and help lift everybody up because they're, we've got amazing. Dedicated practitioners that are skilled at their craft that are engaged in a cycle of improvement, so I don't want to paint it doom and gloom. We've got to build them up. So the, the first question you asked was about teaching to the test. I would tell you, um, did I get that right? Not teaching to the test, but practicing in a day or in a week, constantly testing the kids as opposed to, I mean, as opposed to teaching the kids, so I. I would say is if we focus on implementing the standards, monitoring student performance will take care of itself. Oftentimes, um, it's easy to try to focus on the outputs and figure out how to just make simple movements, but at the end of the day, a crafted skilled teacher can monitor student performance without giving a formal test. Teachers are evaluating students each and every single day. I can tell you when a student walked into my classroom, I could tell if they're having a good bad day. I didn't need to give them a, a, a smiley face, a sad face, or a harder. Some say stick it on a chart, you know your kids, like you're constantly evaluating how they're doing. If all your focusing us on test prep and teaching like test taking strategies, that's a fail, that's a failed experience. We need to focus on implementing um systematic explicit instruction that we know as a part of positive impact on student performance and that support starts with making sure the teacher understands the standards and their content and has the right. instructional tools so that they can implement what we call tier one fidel uh instruction with fidelity, and that's what we need to focus on. Well, I hope that because I agree with you and I think probably most teachers across the state would agree that they know their students and then without having, I'm I'm a fan of tests. I think that they're important and they give us measurements, but I also know sometimes in education systems, we can struggle to seed on doing the test rather than trusting sometimes our teachers know their students to your point. And so that's the concern I have. I think I agree with pretty much everything you said. I just, that, that's a concern I have is that we may end up with districts. Who decide we need to constantly test and not let their teachers do their job. And could you go ahead and maybe speak to the discipline piece portion of it um thank you for that question. What schools need to be a safe place, and students shouldn't be allowed to disrupt the learning of others and themselves and then have free reign of that. We, teachers need to be empowered to teach. Period. If we have unruly students, we need to address that appropriately and we need to be honest with parents and hold them accountable. I, I, I don't have any problem going out and saying parents, we need to do a better job talking to our students about what it means to display appropriate behaviors in a classroom, because we're here to learn and get an education. Typically what I find is if you have engaged classrooms, you don't have disruptive students, and that's where professional development and support, making sure that students are coming to a welcoming and learning environment, um, goes a long way. There are gonna be those outliers like the 1 22% of the where maybe that classroom isn't the right environment for the student, they made the additional support beyond that classroom, we should not be afraid to make those decisions to support the schools in that way. I do also appreciate the point that you made that, that I used to tell my kids and learned that from my brother, you know, school is your job and what I used to tell my kids, and it paid off for them is if you will treat that as your job, you may find yourself actually getting paid to go to college, and I think that's an important thing that we've forgotten sometimes is that this is not just fun and games, it can be a lot of fun and. names, but it is, you know, their job to get better. So I really appreciate your efforts. Thank you. Representative McGruder, you recognize. Thank you, Chairman, uh, as a fourteen-year uh educator, uh, want to thank you for what you're trying to do here in Arkansas, uh, truly matters. Uh, but my question is regards to uh statements you made earlier about uh educators. Uh, I love what we're trying to do with literacy coaches and things like that, uh, and I love how we've raised the salary for uh starting teachers, uh, but my concern is, uh, highly qualified teachers, uh, teachers with years of experience who can handle, uh, every level of a classroom, um, I, I, I never, I will always recall a teacher in kindergarten who was able to teach to students who are highly achieving and those who are struggling. Uh, she had different levels in the classroom, which I try to mimic uh in my classroom, but it's uh, it's difficult when you can't recruit teachers because of the pay. Uh, and we need veteran teachers and a lot of them walked away from it. So what are we doing to make sure that we're compensating uh veteran and Highly qualified teachers. Um, first, I, I think we're, we're like-minded and one of the things I think we have opportunities when you talk about pathways or licensures to make sure those teachers that we have evidence of impact can get that professional licensure, there's opportunities. One of the things I think we need to look at as the state is oftentimes when we're bringing in somebody into the classroom that might need a provisional license or they're considered non-licensed or a waiver. Those waivers are going with districts and not individuals. Like we need to look at how do we qualify and certify. by teachers at the individual level so that they can be certified to go whatever district they want. Our current system uh uh could allow a possible educator to come in and be on a waiver and work in a district for 5 years, do nothing to become certified or improve their craft, and then just go to the neighboring district, do another 5 years, go an entire 30 years in the state without ever being licensed and then in some districts may not even be evaluated, so I think part of that conversation is things that we can do to tighten that up. But, but in regard to salary, I, I, I always kind of like to look at but I, I like to look at data and research. I think, I think you make that kind of correlation here. There, there's a, a professor at Stanford that's done a lot of work around teacher salaries and compensations and scales, and his name is, uh, um, Shafford, I think it is or Hannah Chuck, Professor Doctor Hanna Shuck. And he's made a statement like if you look at all of his bodies at work, if I was the kind of the simplify and do a meta analysis is you can never pay a good teacher enough money. Right, but you can overpay a bad teacher sometimes and then, then that may garnish profession, but what we did by saying teachers matter in this state by raising the starting teacher salary to about to a minimum of $50,000 a year, moved us to number one in the nation when adjusted for cost of living according to the new teacher's project. What we did by establishing a teacher merit pay that every teacher can qualify. by far. It doesn't matter if you're a kindergarten teacher or a music teacher, a school counselor. There's a path to qualify for some sort of teacher merit pay recognition. We recognize 10% of our highest performing teachers. I think we have an opportunity to look at hopefully expanding that cause I'd love to get to 20 to 30% so that more teachers can receive that teacher merit pay, that goes a long way in trying to keep people in the classroom. But if you look at what the average start, the average teacher Because you're talking about hiring teachers, years of service. We gave flexible and autonomy to school districts to develop salary schedules that work best for them, but pre-learns the average teacher's salary in the state was around $53,000 on average. Post learns when we just pulled this data, it's now around $59,000. So our average teacher salary the state one of $6000 in just under two years. That's a big commitment for the state. Have we arrived? I don't think so. Do we want to do more? Absolutely. If we can get the best teachers in front of our students, there's no greater impact on improving the needle, then we need to have those conversations and how do we allocate more dollars and resources. Follow up, Mr. Chair. But I, I understand, uh, that we're trying, but, uh It's very important that our students have highly qualified teachers and we don't want to flood them with, as you stated earlier, kids who are straight out of college. So, uh, the concern is getting teachers with those years of experience where I already have the science of raising training in front of our students and also those literacy coaches who can Make sure they're enhancing those teaching abilities. And, and, and honestly, and this is why I came here to just have honest conversations. I think a lot of those teachers already exist in school districts or in co-ops, my question is, why aren't they working with students? So I actually pulled some data cause I, I love data. And I like to go to pre-COVID levels and as a state, um, the number of people that worked in education. Uh, in 2019 was just over 77,000, and that means that you are coded as a teacher, a principal, a bus driver, or a parapro, it doesn't matter. We had that many people working in education. And we had almost 500,000 students in 22 when we last pulled this, we actually went down a little bit in students we're, so we're we're about 4 493,000, so we're, we're down about 3, just over 2000 students as a state. But since pre-COVID to now, we added 1,489 district administrators. The allocations are there. I can't make the decision for every single district and every single board. They need to figure out what these people are doing and get them in front of students. Thank you. Represented Gonzalez Worth and you recognize. Thank you, Chair. I was wondering, I first, um, I am totally in agreement with um all of our students being grade level reading, um, proficient by the 3rd grade. We, we know, we know that that's a, that's a very, um important time in a student's career. What I'm wondering is, um. But how could, how can we ensure that Every student. is not only 3rd grade, you know, 3rd grade reading level. They're proficient, but that they're kindergarten ready. In other words, we need to look at how can we look at increasing the amount of opportunities for parents to send their children to pre-K. Um, and we know that pre-K is a very, very good, um, way of Pulling pathways involving parents, parents learning, there's a lot of parent involvement in pre-K. That's part of the curriculum so that parents, um, do know how they can, um, Um Model and and share with their children while they're at home with just regular everyday things that they're doing, um, so that they are ready for literacy, they're, they're reading, they're ready for math. They're, in other words, they're engaging with their kids already with pre-literacy skills and math skills, um, From I, so that is, that is a that's one of my questions because there's, there's opportunities to be provided, I feel for all parents that would like their kids to go to pre-K so that they are ready and their kindergarten ready and then we continue that along the way. I have, um, so that's 11 of my questions. I have a couple of follow-up questions, um, but that will be my first one. So. First You're 100% right. You know, that 3rd grade benchmark is critical. And the reason it's critical, especially in those foundational literacy years is because when you look at the systematic explicit instruction around phonics, phonemic awareness, measuring fluency, building vocabulary that leads a comprehensive comprehension that looks very different, K1, 2 and 3, then it does 456, and beyond because we go from kind of phonics that we, uh, Awareness in teaching students how to read to that reading to learn and how to interact with text, so a lot of times the students may be still moving on and continuum, they need intervention if they have holes. We, we know that they can still get those holes built, but it takes identifying and supporting teachers, but the best intervention is early intervention, and the better we can get at kindergarten readiness in the and access to high quality early learning, it's probably the best investment we can make as a state, and I. I know there's some studies, I, I think that I've done and, and, and I'm, I might be getting it wrong, but it's something like every dollar that you invest in early learning, you get like a $6 return because you, you don't have to spend as much time with the remediation. Students are being more successful, they're becoming more productive citizens. So the short answer to your question, which is one of the primary goals of Learns, which is why I was saying we need to stay the course and ignore the noise and keep moving on the fermentation is is we have a bunch of funding mechanisms for early learning, but depending on the funding mechanism depended on who oversaw that early learning program and define kindergarten readiness. We didn't really have a good statewide definition of kindergarten readiness, so we've moved all of that umbrella under the. Department of Education because of learn so that we can start building out this pathways, the establishment of the local leads, meaning that it was a competitive process where somebody had to say we want to be the early learning local lead and there's dollars to support them. Um, it, it took us about a year or so to establish 3 rounds of competitive biddings to get all these courses together is now fully established where there's one in every lead. What we're doing now is having all those local leads do a snapshot so that we can get real data on who's participating in early learning. Because when we had um different definitions of kindergarten readiness in different programs that were being oversaw by different agencies, there wasn't one data set or platform, I couldn't run a report that said who did early learning or not. Because nothing talked to each other, none of the system. So we actually rebuilt an entire early learning program portal that has just been rolled out so we can start getting better data and what we're doing now is getting actual real snap counts in finding, trying to find out where their seats because there's a harsh reality in this state is that in early learning. There are some deserts and islands. Where you have parents that want to participate, but access is an unfortunate reality because it's not there. Where I think you have an even deeper conversation is high quality childcare. Cause if you can find high quality childcare, you probably can't afford it or you're gonna be on a waiting list to get in it. So I think the short answer to the question, have we arrived? No. Have we laid the foundation to keep building on? Absolutely. Are we getting more sophisticated in that process? Yes, do we have a lot of work to do to invest in early learning, I think so, and that's why I'm willing to be thought partners as we engage in this journey. Thank you, Secretary. Follow up. Representative, let me catch up the folks who in the queue if you moved to the bottom of the list and I'll come back to you. Represent Bayrry, you are recognized. Thank you. First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you for this open dialogue and being willing to talk and share the results of this and, and I'm sure it's not easy sitting there and listen to all of us ask you all these questions, so I don't mean to make you feel like you're on a hot seat or anything like that. I'm just trying to create dialogue. Um, so in looking at, at what you presented with the, the scores here. Yes, um, Arkansas numbers go down, but also nationally, the numbers go down. If you look, they kind of parallel each other. So it's not just what we're doing in Arkansas. It's kind of what's going on in the, in the world as a whole. And, um, I agree with you. I think that, uh, first of all, I, I, I have 4 daughters who were all in school during this time period. So I experienced it firsthand. But I, I do agree that, um, social media and these things being in their hands too often, probably if you were to look at the big picture of what's going on, um, you know, nationally, that's also taking place and I think it does show some, some decline there. I think, I think we're, we're on something, but I'm not trying to get into a cell phone debate. I'd like to actually talk at a much bigger picture when we talk about education. I don't think we're doing enough in the school. system to really educate our students on how to handle this, the pros, the cons, there's lots of great things with, with our phones and communicating and, and everything. I, I, I use it all the time and I use it to communicate with my own children. Um, I have friends who know exactly where their child is driving based on, on their phone and how fast they're going. Um, but the bigger picture is, is what are we doing to teach our students and several other states have already taken initiative, Florida being one of them, to make sure that we are including digital media, digital citizenship, um, in not just, um, one class in high school, but all the way through 12th grade, because really we have to start at that age, um, and I think it can be intertwined in Um, science classes, English classes, social studies classes, math classes, um, all of those classes, I think we can give some pros and cons on, um, and the dangers of it, mental health, um, I did file a bill. I'm not asking you to say, yeah, yeah, yay or nay or whatever, but I'm just asking for your overall opinion. Is there a way to, um, include more of this in our everyday teaching. We need to educate our students because, you know what, they're going home. and they're using this, no matter how much you try to keep it out of the classroom. They're going home and they're using it. So, um, kind of to your, to your first point and, and I'm glad you kind of brought that up is when, when you kind of look at our overall results as a state. We're not any statistically significant different than previous. Administrations we've we've kind of stayed steady. I think they're the conversation is around we're taking some strong stances in bold reform because. The bottom 40s isn't good enough and I don't think there's anybody in this room that thinks that that's good enough and when I think about the opportunities for students and families in a state like Arkansas, it's robust, it's exponential, it, there's no reason for us to be in the bottom portal when we should be leading the top. But I, I think to your point around the cell phones, I, I think that's why I applaud Governor Sanders and some of our initiatives and her stance that she's taken on social media companies, right? Like some of these companies can be considered predatory, addicting, um, her stance on cell phones in schools, we, we started with some pilot programs and we're hearing from school districts that teachers, um, applaud some of the state initiatives because those distractions are coming away from the. students, they, teachers, we, we talked about discipline and in representative Duke um had brought that up. Teachers shouldn't be cell phone police, right? Like we, we've got to empower them to teach. We, we need to take these distractors out of the classroom. Um, you, you kind of ask, like you say you dress some language, so I, I, I'm gonna go back to I started this conversation by saying everything you're asking me to review, I'm gonna say is gonna help students be enlisted, enrolled and employed. So, uh, I was gonna put those questions back on you. I think you're gonna probably make an argument that it does, but I would say I, I would welcome to have that opportunity and conversation around digital literacy. I mean, there, there's a reality, right? this is life in in the modern era. There is, I mean, uh, so now my student, my, my children are all in college. And they're majority of their classes, even if they're on campus in a dorm room, they have a lot of online classes. That's just the way we're, we're seeing it in colleges, that's how they're trying to survive. Um, so if we don't introduce that in, in K-12, they're not going to be prepared for that when they get to college. So it does prepare them and also for the workforce. I mean, right now at o'clock I'm supposed to have a teams meeting with DHS. I just told them I'm going to be about 15 minutes late, but, you know, there, there, there is a use for all that, and so I want to make sure that we're, we're teaching the proper time, um, and, and checking uh we had a, a student in a school district that shared something. That appeared to be a threat. That's not what that person was planning to do. Um, when they shared this, they, they didn't recognize that it was a threat that or that could be considered a threat to the school district, the school district had to close that day. And so I think we need to be. Sharing with our students the importance of making sure that what you're sharing that you think twice about that, um, that you, you confirm what it is. How do you know that this is true and with artificial intelligence out there, it's even harder. You know, I mean, we need to have those discussions and, and it needs to feed down to our students. And it is preparing them to be enlisted, enrolled, and employed and that's a sad, we welcome any conversation and I, and I always like to say. this work isn't easy, right? If, if this was easy work, we would have figured this out a long time ago. Uh, we're, we're engaging in, in, in deep robust conversations about improving the lives and outcomes of our students. I'm never gonna tell you I'd know all the answers. I think collectively in this room, we can put together a lot of really great solutions and I would welcome opportunities to talk to you about how we can make sure that when students are leaving with us that they're ready for. in the real world as well, and if that includes the digital media literacy. I'm ready to have a seat at the table. Thank you. Moved to the other side of the room. Senator Murdoch, you are recognized. Thank you so much, Chair. uh thank you secretary, uh, for being here once again. I, I, I, I'll say it publicly. I always appreciate your engagement and your willingness to engage, be responsive to the needs of, of all of us and specifically the some of the most needy in this state, so I say that to you publicly. Thank you so much. It matters a lot. To the process, um. Several things have been mentioned that we'll get a chance to talk about it as we go forward, but one thing I want to bring out is The shortage of teachers situation when you talk about all these um getting these quality educators in front of our children, which ultimately will make the difference. I think that's everybody agrees with that. And we know that but there are areas in the state where There's a shortage And you went a little bit to the waiver situation we had some conversation about that in the last couple of weeks about Excuse me, waiver teachers. Uh, alternate forms of of of educating our children, and I'm not debating at all. Traditional certification versus waiver that's not a debate I'm having. But what I am wanting to talk about is strategies. And, and one that you mentioned is grow your own. Uh, I've seen it happen, uh, in, in, in one of our districts years ago, my wife was superintendent. That's the only way we've survived was a lot of that grow your own, but that included Taking the non-traditional route of of of people that lived in the community had degrees in biology, science, or whatever, and was interested in the educational. Process, so they, you know, became A part of the process and it has worked in many areas, not that they just utilize the the process to move from district to district every 5 years, but they actually stayed instilled there, some of them, and have matured on to be good teachers and be difference makers. So and in areas where there's shortages, and if we don't have a flexible way of Of qualifying, if you will, uh, our teachers, then we're gonna have a problem because I don't care what we say in Little Rock, it's hard to get people to come to the delta. And live there. For what we need, I mean, you know, they'll come stay for a moment and then they'll get the experience and they'll move to other areas where their communities are more vibrant, etc. but there's real children in the delta. You've been there, and there are people doing real work over there to try to educate those children, but we're gonna need some flexibility or we're going to need some help with that shortage because that shortage situation is real. And again, I'm not debating, but I'm just saying that's, that's a real problem we have. And, and thank you. In the short answer is I'm not saying that we need to get rid of alternative pathways to earning a license, right? We need to look at making sure when we put students in front of our, or put teachers in front of our students, they have to have some basic provisions to be able to get their foot in the door and to grow your own program, I think is one of the best that we could ever invest in because typically when you get somebody from a community, they want to stay in that community, and you know that just while we've had a lot of conversation on this. But there are other additional strategies I think we can help to address critical shortage areas, especially in those geographic locations. I know that was one of the qualifying conditions for teacher merit. So we have a lot of people asking us if I was a go teach in some of these harder staff regions of the state what I still qualify for teacher merit, yeah, but you still have to be highly effective. You still there's still some things you have to do. But we do have some districts that have done some innovation, um, like looking at building teacher housing so that um there's affordable housing for families that want to locate into that area. But one of the things I think we need to do and, and I, and I often started just saying I think retention is our best recruitment like we, we're losing too many teachers out of this profession because we as a society do not revere this profession, but go ahead. The biggest thing that I think that disheartens me the most as an educator is if I'm standing in front of a room full of teachers, and they say the last thing I would ever tell my child to become is a teacher. That's a problem. So we need to collectively how we do that, that's why I'm, I'm wide open. We need to celebrate scream to the tops of the hills about how wonderful our teachers are in the difference that they're making and um always looking for ways to celebrate and and have some strategies around that the staffing, um, we talk about deserts and islands with access to childcare. It's the same thing with teacher quality, but it doesn't mean we should just throw our hands in the air and let an adult that we know is not good for kids, lived there for 30 years. I, I can't do that, right, and I totally agree with you on that that there definitely needs to be standard still, but we have to figure out that. That formula you mentioned, you went on to mention the, the, the The shortage even in higher ed when you go to your universities and talk to your presidents, there's so few students now choosing this profession. And when we're not producing, Um Students out of our colleges and universities and his education arena, that's even making it, it's making it even tougher for us to uh recruit to certain areas, specifically certain areas of the state where you don't have a lot of the amenities of other areas. That's real, um, that's something we have to deal with the, the, the, the pool is, is, is smaller, uh, the need is greater and, you know, so that's a real, real challenge. And I appreciate the flexibility when you've been called upon that I know of that you give to districts and to and and superintendents to engage and make a difference in their districts for their unique situations. I think that's very, very, uh, needed and necessary and has not always been present because of how different we are in different areas. I appreciate that. Well, and, and I think to your point. We have to revere this profession, and to me that takes strategies and, and that's something I think we could work on, maybe I can um call the Senator Murdoch Foundation to donate some money to recruitment strategy effort or start something because we have to elevate and celebrate and there are so many programs that a lot of young students may not even realize, but with some of the work that this legislation established with kind of that teacher pipeline, you can pretty much go to any state college or university. in the state, if you agree to teach back in our schools, and it costs you nothing. In all of your tuition and books are covered and I don't know if a lot of people know that. So we, we probably Can do a lot better job marketing this profession, but then also for future candidates, um, making sure they're aware of programs that are available to them, uh, one of the things. That, um I know is important to the state when looking at establishing apprenticeship programs is making sure there's a teacher apprenticeship program. And in fact, we established one of the first, I think it may be the first and only in the nation for special education apprenticeships because we know that's a typically historically a critical shortage area. But, uh, expanding, um. clubs and activities in high schools around becoming teachers and future leaders, I think is an opportunity as well. So there, there's, there's strategies. I agree. Thank you. Vice Chairman McKenzie, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, it's, I think it's easy to note when we start talking about education, we start talking about all elements of education. That's the series of questions here today. It brings up in my mind the cliche about seeing your house on fire, and then you see, OK, we think to yourself, what are the things we want to grab? Do we want to grab the photo album or do we want to grab Grandma's vase, when the, the reality of the thing is grab the hose. Let's, let's resolve the problem here now. So I'd love the opportunity to hear more about your plans or You know, the ADE's plans on what can we resolve this session in the immediate future in front of us, um, to help improve these scores. Yeah, so I, I think there's opportunity to like a teacher licensers that that's kind of the first thing that comes to mind. But part of some of what we heard. Governor Sanders talked about in her state of the state is looking at supporting higher ed and making sure that we're producing better quality candidates to come into our classrooms and building out accelerated opportunities for our students so that they can see themselves be successful. We've made a large investment in literacy coaches. We've made a large investment in progress monitoring. We made a large investment in high quality structural materials, raising teacher salaries, establishing the local leads, we need to make sure we keep that. And then just build on that foundation that's been laid. I think as we. Look at some of the practices that we have in this state. And I'm coming from this lens of I'm done with waivers. Either of these laws are good laws, and these rules are good rules, or we don't need them. I don't understand why we have over 8000 current waivers in this state. If it's a bad law that needs to be waived, let's just get rid of that law. But when we start saying that going to school isn't important, being in front of a licensed teacher isn't important, I think there's things we need to do. And I get asked a lot, like I heard you're going after 4 days a week. What I wanna make sure we establish is kids get access to 178 days of school. And if you want to go 4 days a week, you still have to go to 178 days of school, you may have to add some more weeks. But we have districts in this state that kids are in front of teachers 152 days. I don't understand how we allow. In fact, I pulled a RAND report. That talks about the 4 day school week. And, and this is a quote, says math and reading, because this is what all these superintendents keep telling me, well, our data is not that bad and in in in attendance is better and teachers are happier. Math and reading didn't fall when they switched, but they didn't grow, the students didn't grow at the pace of other schools. So the students may still be learning and achievement may not show up as losses overnight, but they're not learning as much as they're learning in schools that go 5 days a week. Students fall behind little by little. After 8 years. The gap was roughly equivalent to the achievement losses that schools saw during the pandemic. After 8 years on a 4-day schedule, that equates the learning loss that we saw in the pandemic. Nobody's sitting in this delegation would argue with me that closing schools in the pandemic was the smartest thing we've ever done. But we allow this. So where, where am I coming from? If we need to update our rules in our regs, and our statutes, that's good for students. Then we're gonna have a great session. If we're coming to the table with noise. That's not aligned with these priorities, then I worry that we may be making decisions that will be a detriment to the schools. Reps in Garner, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you Secretary Lee for being here. There's so many things that you've said today that I love, I love so many things in the Laws Act. Uh, I do have a couple of questions and one is, um, when we're looking at this information, you said that the data is pulled from schools with demographics from our, our state, right? So, do we have the data that show, um, economic, uh, racial rural versus urban. We have all of that information to show where these, where these folks are that are They're more highly, um, accomplishing and those that are, are, are not doing, do we know that and, and can we work toward making sure that we're. Spending time and our efforts and money dealing with those. If that's part of it. So, uh, great question. So sample size matters, right, like so, um, the, the testing. Process is very deliberate in their approach to make sure the demographics of the students reflect the demographics of your state. So, um, there's probably manuals that go for pages on how that process goes through. I think the short answer that I could say to your question is. Do you want a list of the schools that were in this sample because I can send you that list. I'm going with that is that I want to know how much socioeconomics plays a part. It's not just the teachers, it's not just the reading material. It's not just the, the literature, it, it's socioeconomic um issues as well, and that's where I'm going do, do we have that information? Do we know, are, I mean, I don't want to assume that our lower learners are, are in that low. socioeconomic bracket, but I, but I'm guessing that there's a correlation with poverty, right? So we know that that's statistical. When we look at the Arkansas line. The students that make up that line, their demographics mirror the demographics of the state. Otherwise they wouldn't validate it. It would be, it would be an insignificant sample size, so they're very deliberate on ensuring that this data reflects the student population of the state. And I, and I guess I just wondered what those demographics were, what, so it is socioeconomic or socioeconomic status, English language learners, students with disabilities, there, there's probably a few other, yeah, there they do rural versus urban. I mean, there, there's, there's a lot of different categories and, and we can send you kind of the technical. manual if you want, but yes, they, they factor all that and then even kind of nationally, they have other measures that look at real large urban districts, you know, across the nation and the, this is one. that's why I kind of put the website on there. There, there's so much data and information that you can dig down into. I just pulled over two grade levels, 2 continent areas, and gave you a snapshot, but there is a lot of data that you can go a lot deeper in, I think to answer your question. Great, thank you. Represent Gonzalez Worth and we'll recognize you for one final question, and we don't have anyone else on the board and then, uh, Secretary Lee like to close and we will finish. Thank you, Chair. Secretary. I coach teachers at the higher ed level, and one of the things, and that these are the, these are teachers who are, uh, working, um. Toward, uh, English as a second language endorsement. And I have a lot of teachers who are veteran teachers and a few new ones, and some of the areas that they struggle with are contextualization of instruction, uh, student to student interaction, um, communicating with parents. These are all typical areas that, that they need a lot of, uh, support. And once they learn that through additional academic knowledge that they're receiving, um, not only are the students, the multilingual learners and emergent bilingual students, not only are they excelling in class now, um, but some of it all of the students are excelling because those strategies are beginning. To be seen and work through that other students now all of a sudden they're. They understand and they're coming to the table. They understand that the examples that the teacher is using, they get those examples, you know, versus something else. The textbooks that they're reading, they get those textbooks because they, they understand those experiences because those experiences match their experiences. And so my question is, how can we ensure, um, that the literacy coaches. Who are working through the science of reading are meeting the needs for Multilingual learners. Students from different cultural backgrounds as Arkansas continues across the state, um, to have students from different, uh, languages, cultures, countries that are, that are moving in, um, how can we ensure that they are prepared and our teacher workforce as they're coming out of um university uh instruction that they're, that they're prepared so that they can, uh, serve all students so that they are all able to be, can be enrolled. enlisted and employed, um, and so that's a question that I, I'm, I'm totally on board with you on that, uh, enrolled in listed employed. I think all of us, we want that. So I, I think what I just heard is we have a state expert that's gonna be willing to meet with our coaches and ensure that we have all of the appropriate strategies on contextualization, um, we, we do work with some national coaches to train our literacy coaches. In fact, it's kind of a train the train model, so hopefully at one point we'll be able to phase it out. But strategies for all students is part of that, so they do explicitly get trained on strategies for English language learners, students with disabilities, um, students with dyslexias, uh. You know, there's a whole gamut and and bucket, but I, but I do think, um, to your point about all students learning and growing, especially in Um, like a dual language environment, there's opportunities in the state. There, there's, there's growing more and more bodies of school across the nation and, and, and I'm not maybe I'm, there's some in Arkansas. I'm just not aware of it, starting all the way down in elementary school that are doing dual language schools, and those are becoming some of the highest performing schools in the nation because you have to understand language, right? There, there's language acquisition and the pragmatics of how sentences are formed and structured, and if you're going to do that in two different languages, you have to know how it works and so I Maybe that's something we wanna talk about is incentivizing pilot schools that'd be willing to take on more strategies, love free to meet with our team around the coaching to make sure we're not missing the mark on any of that support because it is important. Thank you. Remember seeing no further questions. Thank you for being willing to stay late, Secretary Lebe, thank you for presenting and answering a lot of questions for us, so we appreciate the dialogue and look forward to continuing to move forward and, uh, to the good of students in the state of Arkansas, uh, members, we are adjourned.