In light of the Little Rock School District's 14 Reform Strategies to fix its middle schools, I'm rerunning a post I made last year regarding middle schools.
Note that one of the two zones which grew in population over the past ten years (4) has no middle school. In fact, there is no middle school west of I-430.
Three of the seven middle schools are located in zones which lost population (1 and 2), two are in a zone which stayed flat (3), and two are in a zone which gained population (7).
Lest anyone wonder why West Little Rock parents are fleeing the district in droves when their children transition from elementary to middle schools, it's because the district has demonstrated, by its inaction, that it does not value neighborhood middle schools where its population is growing.
As their redrawn zones are pushed from the east and squeezed up against the western border, board member Adams (4), Secretary Armstrong (6), and President Carreiro (5) should be moving heaven and earth to find that fourth vote to build a new middle school to better serve their constituencies.
Consolidate, Close, Construct
A new West Little Rock middle school is just one piece of a larger goal to close, consolidate and construct schools and facilities to equitably serve the population. Consider what decades of apathetic or deliberate inattention have wrought:
1) All seven Little Rock School District middle schools are within 3.6 miles of another middle school.
2) Five of seven middle schools (Pulaski Heights, Forest Heights, Henderson, Dunbar and Mann) are within 7.8 miles of each other.
3) Two middle schools - Pulaski Heights and Forest Heights are only 1.6 miles from each other, while Dunn and Mann are only 2.1 miles apart.
4) Three board members have two middle schools in their zones (Johnson, Zone 1 - Mann, Dunbar; Fox, Zone 3 - Forest Heights, Pulaski Heights; and Curry, Zone 7 - Mablevale, Cloverdale).
5) One board member has one middle school in his zone (Nellums, Zone 2 - Henderson).
6) Three board members have zero middle schools in their zones (Adams, Zone 4; Carreiro, Zone 5; Armstrong, Zone 6).
7) Current middle schools extend from: North - Forest Heights (5901 Evergreen), South - Cloverdale (6300 Hinkson), East - Mann (1000 East Roosevelt), West - Henderson (401 Barrow) and Southwest - Mablevale (10811 Mablevale), with Pulaski Heights (401 North Pine) in Hillcrest and Dunbar (1100 Wright Avenue) in Central.
8) Of the seven middle schools, three are magnets - Mablevale, Mann and Henderson, one is a charter - Cloverdale, and two are zoned enrollment - Pulaski Heights and Forest Heights.
9) Roberts Elementary was the first Little Rock School District school to be built west of I-430 since 1978 (33 years).
10) There are 32 elementary schools in the Little Rock School District and five high schools.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
The More Things Don't Change: Court release raises School Board zones issue; by Cynthia Howell, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (June 15, 2007)
In the aftermath of release from federal court monitoring and in the midst of a divisive battle over a superintendent, a state mandate has the potential to force some changes in the Little Rock School Board’s threeyear membership terms and board-member election zones.
Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-631 requires school districts that are released from operating under federal court desegregation orders to comply with state and federal laws on school board elections.
Specifically the state law calls for five-year staggered terms of office for school board members and requires that within 180 days of a district’s release from court supervision that the district create school board election zones using the most recent decennial census data.
The Little Rock School District, which already has election zones based on the 2000 Census data, was released from decades of federal court supervision on Feb. 23. That court release is being appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Should the district have to adjust its election zones, the 180-day deadline would be Aug. 22. However, another provision in the same law says any adjustment to zones must be completed 90 days before the regular school election. That would make the deadline June 20, before this year’s Sept. 18 election.
June 20 is also the first day that people interested in run- ning for the School Board this year can file as candidates in the Pulaski County clerk’s office.
Failure to comply with all aspects of the state law could cost the state’s largest school district 20 percent of its state funding, the statute says. That penalty could be as much as $14 million in a district that received $70 million in state funding this fiscal year.
School Board member Baker Kurrus recently brought the state law to the public forefront and asked for legal advice on how the election zones and School Board term provisions might apply.
“I’m hopeful that we don’t have a problem,” said Kurrus, whose board term expires in September, as does that of board member Mike Daugherty. “But with that kind of penalty attached to it, you have to get it up on the radar screen.”
State Rep. Daniel Greenberg, R-Little Rock, late last month asked for an attorney general’s opinion on the district’s behalf.
Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel responded Wednesday in a letter in which he declined to give an opinion on the application of the statute to the Little Rock district. He said his office has a long-standing policy against opining on matters that are the subject of pending litigation, and he noted the pending appeal of the school district’s release from federal court supervision.
“At this time, that appeal has not been resolved,” the letter said. “Over the long course of the desegregation litigation, issues involving the electoral zones of the District have been within its ambit.”
The attorney general further said that the district’s questions about the applicability of the law “may involve determinations of fact and/or review of prior court orders or settlement agreements that can only be properly undertaken by the District with the aid of its counsel, or resolved in an adversary proceeding before the judicial branch. I do not serve as legal counsel for the LRSD and am thus not the proper official to provide the requested “guidance” to the District on this issue.”
Attorney general opinions, though lacking the authority of a court ruling, are generally given much weight by state and local officials who request them or by anyone who looks for legal guidance absent a court opinion on a particular subject. State law even directs state officials in some instances to seek the attorney general’s opinion and requires him to give it.
Changes in the Little Rock district’s election zone boundaries or in the length of School Board members’ terms could materially change the composition of the board that is now racially and bitterly split over the district’s leadership.
The School Board voted 4-3 on May 24 to buy out the remaining two years of Superintendent Roy Brooks’ contract, after weeks of debate on whether to keep, suspend, fire or buy him out.
Brooks is scheduled to leave in mid-August before the September School Board election. The board has neither discussed who replaces Brooks nor set a timeline for picking a successor.
The state statute requires school districts that have 10 percent or greater minority-group populations as recorded in the latest decennial census to elect their school board members from single-member election zones, or from a combination of single-member zones and atlarge zones.
The zones must be formed in compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, the law says. The Little Rock district has seven single-member election zones.
The law also requires fiveyear terms for School Board members in contrast to Little Rock’s current three-year terms. More specifically, the law says that after zones are established, an election must be held and then members of the new board must determine their initial terms by drawing lots so that one or two board member terms expire and are filled each year. In other words, one or more board members may draw initial one-year terms; others may draw two-, three-, four- or five-year terms.
Some of the questions yet to be answered regarding the application of the statute in the Little Rock district include:
Do Little Rock’s existing election zones — last modified in 2001 — comply with the federal Voting Rights Act? And, if they don’t, can they be made compliant before the Sept. 18 school election?
Do Little Rock School Board terms need to be extended from the current three years to five years and, if so, how?
Do all seven School Board seats need to be opened to election this September?
Do Little Rock’s current election zones — four majority-black and three majority-white in a district in which the overall population is majority white — comply with previous court orders?
Is the district, in fact, really released from federal court supervision while its unitary status is being appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court?
The Joshua intervenors, who represent the class of all black students in the 24-year-old school desegregation lawsuit, are appealing the Feb. 23 unitary-status ruling to the 8th Circuit. If the appeal is successful and the declaration of unitary status is overturned, the district could be returned to court supervision.
But Tracey George, a law professor at Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tenn., who has expertise in federal court procedures, said an appeal of the court order does not necessarily stop the court order from going into effect or triggering the requirements of the state law.
“A federal court order takes effect when the order is entered on the federal court docket sheet — unless there is a second order by a judge suspending the first order until one or more appeals to higher courts are completed,” George said in a telephone interview.
“Based on the federal rules of procedure, and here we are talking about the federal rules of appellate procedure, orders take effect absent a decision by either the district court or the Court of Appeals to stay the order pending appeal. If no such stay has been requested or granted in this case, then there is no reason to believe they have extra time” to comply with state requirements, she said about the school district.
As to whether the Little Rock School District’s existing School Board election zones comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, which is a requirement of the state statute, Tim Humphries, legal counsel in the Arkansas secretary of state’s elections division, said district leaders and their attorneys must make that initial determination.
“If the district’s view is disputed, the issue could wind up in court,” Humphries added.
Section 2 of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act is the basis of single-member election zones as a way to help blacks and other racial or ethnic minority groups elect their preferred candidates.
“No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color,” the section reads in part.
A violation occurs, the act continues, if members of a class protected by the law have less opportunity than others in the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. However, “nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.”
Jim McKenzie, executive director of Metroplan, a council of local governments and the agency that prepared election zone maps for the Little Rock district in 2001, said the district’s current zones were drawn in compliance with the federal law.
“It would be pretty silly to not do it in accordance with the Voting Rights Act,” McKenzie said of the work done by a staff demographer.
“We basically took the existing [election zones] and then played around the margins of the existing [zones] so you weren’t gerrymandering anyone out of a seat,” McKenzie recalled. “We made the changes incremental rather than radical at the direction of the superintendent. We then presented the three alternatives to the School Board for their consideration.”
The current zones — as adopted by the School Board in 2001 — resulted in four majority-black zones and three majority-white zones in a city in which the population in 2000 was 55.1 percent majority white and 40.4 percent black, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.
The school district is slightly smaller in area than the city. The school district population was 54.5 percent white and 41 percent black, according to a Metroplan analysis of the 2000 Census figures.
In contrast, the Little Rock district student enrollment was then and is now 68 percent black and 32 white and other, according to enrollment figures tracked by the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring.
The Little Rock district was first divided into single-member election zones in 1986 when the district, in response to a court order, absorbed southwest Little Rock from the neighboring Pulaski County Special School District.
The original seven zones — two with majority-black populations — were approved by the federal court. When the zones were adjusted in 1993, on the basis of the 1990 Census, they were challenged, and again they were approved by the federal district court and the appeals court as meeting the federal Voting Rights Act requirements.
The zones were adjusted in 2001 to accommodate population shifts reflected in the 2000 Census. Those 2001 changes weren’t challenged in court.
McKenzie said the change in the number of majority-black School Board election zones from two in 1993 to four in 2001 was not planned.
“We didn’t try to make black districts or white districts,” McKenzie said.
Humphries declined to speculate on whether the four majority-black School Board election zones now in place put the Little Rock district out of compliance with earlier federal court orders that approved just two majorityblack zones. But, in general, he said, that would not be the case.
“Taken by itself, without the context of any facts that might be developed either prior to or during litigation ... it is not unlawful to have a majority of majority-black population zones in a district with a mostly white population,” Humphries said.
“Many legitimate factors such as keeping neighborhoods intact, incumbent protection, mindfulness of political and natural boundaries, and undoubtedly others ... could have been considered by the board in adopting such a plan,” he said.
Laughlin McDonald of Atlanta, who as a lawyer and director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, has testified in Congress and written three books about voting rights, agreed.
“There is nothing that says that whites always have to have the majority of the districts if they have the majority of the population,” McDonald said.
“There is nothing to prevent having a majority of minority districts. I think it depends on what the demographics are. There are all kinds of things that go into drawing districts — keeping communities and precincts and other jurisdictional subdivisions intact. You can have a jurisdiction with a slight majority-black population, and the majority of the districts that you draw could conceivably be majority-white.”
McDonald also said he doubted that a 1990s court order approving two majority-black zones would be binding on a school district into the future.
“I think these things aren’t written in stone — when a court enters a remedial plan, it is based on the demographics that exist at the time that it acts,” he said. “If demographics change, I think the jurisdiction would not only be free to alter the composition but have an obligation to do so.”
John Walker, a Little Rock civil-rights lawyer who represents the Joshua intervenors in the 24-year-old desegregation lawsuit, argued that the state law on school board elections does not apply “in any case” to the Little Rock district because the Little Rock district’s involvement in the federal desegregation case — which includes the 1986 and 1993 litigation over school board election zones and the Voting Rights Act — takes precedence over the state law.
The litigation on election zones was part of the desegregation lawsuit. And, while the school district has been released from court supervision in that case, the case still exists. The Little Rock district remains the plaintiff until the Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock school districts are also released from court monitoring.
The statute does list scenarios in which a school district is exempt from its provisions. Those include:
A school district that is operating under a federal court order enforcing school desegregation or the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 as amended.
A school district that has a zoned board meeting the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended.
A school district that a federal court has ruled is not in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, so long as the court order is in effect.
Chris Heller, an attorney for the school district, also pointed to the exception in the law for districts that are in compliance with the Voting Rights Act and said there is an argument that Little Rock is still subject to the exception.
“I thought that was what the attorney general would advise us,” Heller said in response to the attorney general’s decision not to issue an opinion. “It is possible that the district still comes within an exception, and it is possible some part of the state law might apply to the district. There is a significant financial question that depends on getting the answer right,” he added about the potential $14 million penalty for noncompliance.
“Maybe we can ask the Arkansas Department of Education to agree that we aren’t subject to any reduction in our state aid,” Heller said.
Former state Rep. Dean Elliott of Maumelle was the author in 2001 of the legislative language requiring districts that are newly released from federal court monitoring to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act and state law in regard to school board election zones.
Elliott said he was focusing not on Little Rock but on the Pulaski County Special School District and the desire of Maumelle residents at the time to have a School Board member living in that community.
Kurrus, the Little Rock board member, said he hopes the law won’t force immediate changes in the district — particularly in the lengths of board member terms. Still, he believes that some answers are necessary.
“If it didn’t have such a draconian penalty in there, you could say, ‘Golly, just wait and see what happens.’ If somebody objects, we would deal with it,” he said.
Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-631 requires school districts that are released from operating under federal court desegregation orders to comply with state and federal laws on school board elections.
Specifically the state law calls for five-year staggered terms of office for school board members and requires that within 180 days of a district’s release from court supervision that the district create school board election zones using the most recent decennial census data.
The Little Rock School District, which already has election zones based on the 2000 Census data, was released from decades of federal court supervision on Feb. 23. That court release is being appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Should the district have to adjust its election zones, the 180-day deadline would be Aug. 22. However, another provision in the same law says any adjustment to zones must be completed 90 days before the regular school election. That would make the deadline June 20, before this year’s Sept. 18 election.
June 20 is also the first day that people interested in run- ning for the School Board this year can file as candidates in the Pulaski County clerk’s office.
Failure to comply with all aspects of the state law could cost the state’s largest school district 20 percent of its state funding, the statute says. That penalty could be as much as $14 million in a district that received $70 million in state funding this fiscal year.
School Board member Baker Kurrus recently brought the state law to the public forefront and asked for legal advice on how the election zones and School Board term provisions might apply.
“I’m hopeful that we don’t have a problem,” said Kurrus, whose board term expires in September, as does that of board member Mike Daugherty. “But with that kind of penalty attached to it, you have to get it up on the radar screen.”
State Rep. Daniel Greenberg, R-Little Rock, late last month asked for an attorney general’s opinion on the district’s behalf.
Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel responded Wednesday in a letter in which he declined to give an opinion on the application of the statute to the Little Rock district. He said his office has a long-standing policy against opining on matters that are the subject of pending litigation, and he noted the pending appeal of the school district’s release from federal court supervision.
“At this time, that appeal has not been resolved,” the letter said. “Over the long course of the desegregation litigation, issues involving the electoral zones of the District have been within its ambit.”
The attorney general further said that the district’s questions about the applicability of the law “may involve determinations of fact and/or review of prior court orders or settlement agreements that can only be properly undertaken by the District with the aid of its counsel, or resolved in an adversary proceeding before the judicial branch. I do not serve as legal counsel for the LRSD and am thus not the proper official to provide the requested “guidance” to the District on this issue.”
Attorney general opinions, though lacking the authority of a court ruling, are generally given much weight by state and local officials who request them or by anyone who looks for legal guidance absent a court opinion on a particular subject. State law even directs state officials in some instances to seek the attorney general’s opinion and requires him to give it.
Changes in the Little Rock district’s election zone boundaries or in the length of School Board members’ terms could materially change the composition of the board that is now racially and bitterly split over the district’s leadership.
The School Board voted 4-3 on May 24 to buy out the remaining two years of Superintendent Roy Brooks’ contract, after weeks of debate on whether to keep, suspend, fire or buy him out.
Brooks is scheduled to leave in mid-August before the September School Board election. The board has neither discussed who replaces Brooks nor set a timeline for picking a successor.
The state statute requires school districts that have 10 percent or greater minority-group populations as recorded in the latest decennial census to elect their school board members from single-member election zones, or from a combination of single-member zones and atlarge zones.
The zones must be formed in compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, the law says. The Little Rock district has seven single-member election zones.
The law also requires fiveyear terms for School Board members in contrast to Little Rock’s current three-year terms. More specifically, the law says that after zones are established, an election must be held and then members of the new board must determine their initial terms by drawing lots so that one or two board member terms expire and are filled each year. In other words, one or more board members may draw initial one-year terms; others may draw two-, three-, four- or five-year terms.
Some of the questions yet to be answered regarding the application of the statute in the Little Rock district include:
Do Little Rock’s existing election zones — last modified in 2001 — comply with the federal Voting Rights Act? And, if they don’t, can they be made compliant before the Sept. 18 school election?
Do Little Rock School Board terms need to be extended from the current three years to five years and, if so, how?
Do all seven School Board seats need to be opened to election this September?
Do Little Rock’s current election zones — four majority-black and three majority-white in a district in which the overall population is majority white — comply with previous court orders?
Is the district, in fact, really released from federal court supervision while its unitary status is being appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court?
The Joshua intervenors, who represent the class of all black students in the 24-year-old school desegregation lawsuit, are appealing the Feb. 23 unitary-status ruling to the 8th Circuit. If the appeal is successful and the declaration of unitary status is overturned, the district could be returned to court supervision.
But Tracey George, a law professor at Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tenn., who has expertise in federal court procedures, said an appeal of the court order does not necessarily stop the court order from going into effect or triggering the requirements of the state law.
“A federal court order takes effect when the order is entered on the federal court docket sheet — unless there is a second order by a judge suspending the first order until one or more appeals to higher courts are completed,” George said in a telephone interview.
“Based on the federal rules of procedure, and here we are talking about the federal rules of appellate procedure, orders take effect absent a decision by either the district court or the Court of Appeals to stay the order pending appeal. If no such stay has been requested or granted in this case, then there is no reason to believe they have extra time” to comply with state requirements, she said about the school district.
As to whether the Little Rock School District’s existing School Board election zones comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, which is a requirement of the state statute, Tim Humphries, legal counsel in the Arkansas secretary of state’s elections division, said district leaders and their attorneys must make that initial determination.
“If the district’s view is disputed, the issue could wind up in court,” Humphries added.
Section 2 of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act is the basis of single-member election zones as a way to help blacks and other racial or ethnic minority groups elect their preferred candidates.
“No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color,” the section reads in part.
A violation occurs, the act continues, if members of a class protected by the law have less opportunity than others in the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. However, “nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.”
Jim McKenzie, executive director of Metroplan, a council of local governments and the agency that prepared election zone maps for the Little Rock district in 2001, said the district’s current zones were drawn in compliance with the federal law.
“It would be pretty silly to not do it in accordance with the Voting Rights Act,” McKenzie said of the work done by a staff demographer.
“We basically took the existing [election zones] and then played around the margins of the existing [zones] so you weren’t gerrymandering anyone out of a seat,” McKenzie recalled. “We made the changes incremental rather than radical at the direction of the superintendent. We then presented the three alternatives to the School Board for their consideration.”
The current zones — as adopted by the School Board in 2001 — resulted in four majority-black zones and three majority-white zones in a city in which the population in 2000 was 55.1 percent majority white and 40.4 percent black, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.
The school district is slightly smaller in area than the city. The school district population was 54.5 percent white and 41 percent black, according to a Metroplan analysis of the 2000 Census figures.
In contrast, the Little Rock district student enrollment was then and is now 68 percent black and 32 white and other, according to enrollment figures tracked by the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring.
The Little Rock district was first divided into single-member election zones in 1986 when the district, in response to a court order, absorbed southwest Little Rock from the neighboring Pulaski County Special School District.
The original seven zones — two with majority-black populations — were approved by the federal court. When the zones were adjusted in 1993, on the basis of the 1990 Census, they were challenged, and again they were approved by the federal district court and the appeals court as meeting the federal Voting Rights Act requirements.
The zones were adjusted in 2001 to accommodate population shifts reflected in the 2000 Census. Those 2001 changes weren’t challenged in court.
McKenzie said the change in the number of majority-black School Board election zones from two in 1993 to four in 2001 was not planned.
“We didn’t try to make black districts or white districts,” McKenzie said.
Humphries declined to speculate on whether the four majority-black School Board election zones now in place put the Little Rock district out of compliance with earlier federal court orders that approved just two majorityblack zones. But, in general, he said, that would not be the case.
“Taken by itself, without the context of any facts that might be developed either prior to or during litigation ... it is not unlawful to have a majority of majority-black population zones in a district with a mostly white population,” Humphries said.
“Many legitimate factors such as keeping neighborhoods intact, incumbent protection, mindfulness of political and natural boundaries, and undoubtedly others ... could have been considered by the board in adopting such a plan,” he said.
Laughlin McDonald of Atlanta, who as a lawyer and director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, has testified in Congress and written three books about voting rights, agreed.
“There is nothing that says that whites always have to have the majority of the districts if they have the majority of the population,” McDonald said.
“There is nothing to prevent having a majority of minority districts. I think it depends on what the demographics are. There are all kinds of things that go into drawing districts — keeping communities and precincts and other jurisdictional subdivisions intact. You can have a jurisdiction with a slight majority-black population, and the majority of the districts that you draw could conceivably be majority-white.”
McDonald also said he doubted that a 1990s court order approving two majority-black zones would be binding on a school district into the future.
“I think these things aren’t written in stone — when a court enters a remedial plan, it is based on the demographics that exist at the time that it acts,” he said. “If demographics change, I think the jurisdiction would not only be free to alter the composition but have an obligation to do so.”
John Walker, a Little Rock civil-rights lawyer who represents the Joshua intervenors in the 24-year-old desegregation lawsuit, argued that the state law on school board elections does not apply “in any case” to the Little Rock district because the Little Rock district’s involvement in the federal desegregation case — which includes the 1986 and 1993 litigation over school board election zones and the Voting Rights Act — takes precedence over the state law.
The litigation on election zones was part of the desegregation lawsuit. And, while the school district has been released from court supervision in that case, the case still exists. The Little Rock district remains the plaintiff until the Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock school districts are also released from court monitoring.
The statute does list scenarios in which a school district is exempt from its provisions. Those include:
A school district that is operating under a federal court order enforcing school desegregation or the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 as amended.
A school district that has a zoned board meeting the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended.
A school district that a federal court has ruled is not in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, so long as the court order is in effect.
Chris Heller, an attorney for the school district, also pointed to the exception in the law for districts that are in compliance with the Voting Rights Act and said there is an argument that Little Rock is still subject to the exception.
“I thought that was what the attorney general would advise us,” Heller said in response to the attorney general’s decision not to issue an opinion. “It is possible that the district still comes within an exception, and it is possible some part of the state law might apply to the district. There is a significant financial question that depends on getting the answer right,” he added about the potential $14 million penalty for noncompliance.
“Maybe we can ask the Arkansas Department of Education to agree that we aren’t subject to any reduction in our state aid,” Heller said.
Former state Rep. Dean Elliott of Maumelle was the author in 2001 of the legislative language requiring districts that are newly released from federal court monitoring to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act and state law in regard to school board election zones.
Elliott said he was focusing not on Little Rock but on the Pulaski County Special School District and the desire of Maumelle residents at the time to have a School Board member living in that community.
Kurrus, the Little Rock board member, said he hopes the law won’t force immediate changes in the district — particularly in the lengths of board member terms. Still, he believes that some answers are necessary.
“If it didn’t have such a draconian penalty in there, you could say, ‘Golly, just wait and see what happens.’ If somebody objects, we would deal with it,” he said.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Exemption or Not, Little Rock School District Should Hold All New Elections to Ensure 'One Person, One Vote'
Just because the Little Rock School District may have an exemption from holding all new board elections in 2012, doesn't mean it should exercise it. Those starved for open, democratic governance of our public schools should insist that the unitary Little Rock School District follow state law and put all of its board positions on the September 2012 ballot.
Every zone in the Little Rock School District must be redrawn because the two zones which lost population are buffered from the two that grew by three that remained flat. If Little Rock does not hold all new elections, thousands of people will be represented by a board member for whom they did not have the opportunity to vote until 2014. How's that for "one person one vote?"
Unfortunately, because of inaction by the legislature, the decision on whether or not to hold all new elections rests in the hands, not of the people, but of the very incumbent board members whose seats are at stake. One can only hope that the sunshine of public opinion will move them to represent the people instead of their own self interests.
Every zone in the Little Rock School District must be redrawn because the two zones which lost population are buffered from the two that grew by three that remained flat. If Little Rock does not hold all new elections, thousands of people will be represented by a board member for whom they did not have the opportunity to vote until 2014. How's that for "one person one vote?"
Unfortunately, because of inaction by the legislature, the decision on whether or not to hold all new elections rests in the hands, not of the people, but of the very incumbent board members whose seats are at stake. One can only hope that the sunshine of public opinion will move them to represent the people instead of their own self interests.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Takeaways from Town Hall: Parental Choice in Public Schools
"New segregationists." Plantation/slavery imagery. "Choice means escape." Analogies to war with those who challenge effectiveness of public schools. Ongoing obsession, however incorrect, with Waiting for "Superman" imagery. Colorful, but inconsistent and contradictory language. Out-of-the-gate and repeated demonizing of motivations behind free public forum which attracted 413 pre-registrants. Control conspiracy theories regarding motivation of those of means who seek to educate all children, regardless of race, zip code or financial circumstances.
I left the beautiful and relevant campus of Philander Smith College the evening of October 25th not surprised by the arguments of those opposed to choice in public schools - reasonable minds may disagree - but stunned by the beginning-to-end incendiary and filibustering rhetoric of some of the panelists. It was as if they were playing to a small but fervent audience of applauders. Their truth, however, left this father, and most others with whom I visited, cold and incredulous at their defensive, anachronistic take on the current state of Little Rock's public schools.
Sunshine is at once a wonderful and terrible thing. But, better to deal with those you know.
May our citizens and parents, not Superman, save our children and the Little Rock School District. Because without effective public education for all students, our community is doomed.
I left the beautiful and relevant campus of Philander Smith College the evening of October 25th not surprised by the arguments of those opposed to choice in public schools - reasonable minds may disagree - but stunned by the beginning-to-end incendiary and filibustering rhetoric of some of the panelists. It was as if they were playing to a small but fervent audience of applauders. Their truth, however, left this father, and most others with whom I visited, cold and incredulous at their defensive, anachronistic take on the current state of Little Rock's public schools.
Sunshine is at once a wonderful and terrible thing. But, better to deal with those you know.
May our citizens and parents, not Superman, save our children and the Little Rock School District. Because without effective public education for all students, our community is doomed.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
God Speed, Norma Johnson
254 to 162. In the only contested school board race in the Little Rock School District, Norma Johnson defeated write-in candidate Loretta Hendrix in Zone 1.
According to the 2010 census, there are at least 17,596 voting age adults in Zone 1. That means only two percent of those eighteen and over voted for their representative to help lead the largest local government entity in Arkansas.
By contrast, in the preceding week's special election to increase the City sales tax by a penny, city-wide turnout was around 16% of those eighteen and over. For perspective, the Little Rock School District's $350 million annual budget is over twice the size of the City of Little Rock's.
The real winner in this election are those statewide special interests which continue to lobby against any change which would threaten their low-turnout domain - school district central administrators, incumbent school board members, and teachers unions. Those are the groups which lobbied against my proposed legislation to change school elections to the primary to ensure greater public participation. The House Education Committee voted unanimously to send the proposal to interim study, the legislative equivalent of Siberia.
Legislators outside of Little Rock can complain about state spending in Pulaski County's public schools all they want, but the reality is they have perpetuated a system which continues to reap exactly what they continue to sow. When the people are deliberately disengaged from governance of their public schools, a district's decisions will reflect the will of those truly in charge (see list above).
I pray that Ms. Johnson will take her 254 votes as a mandate to immediately lead her Zone and District in putting students first over the agendas of self-serving adults.
According to the 2010 census, there are at least 17,596 voting age adults in Zone 1. That means only two percent of those eighteen and over voted for their representative to help lead the largest local government entity in Arkansas.
By contrast, in the preceding week's special election to increase the City sales tax by a penny, city-wide turnout was around 16% of those eighteen and over. For perspective, the Little Rock School District's $350 million annual budget is over twice the size of the City of Little Rock's.
The real winner in this election are those statewide special interests which continue to lobby against any change which would threaten their low-turnout domain - school district central administrators, incumbent school board members, and teachers unions. Those are the groups which lobbied against my proposed legislation to change school elections to the primary to ensure greater public participation. The House Education Committee voted unanimously to send the proposal to interim study, the legislative equivalent of Siberia.
Legislators outside of Little Rock can complain about state spending in Pulaski County's public schools all they want, but the reality is they have perpetuated a system which continues to reap exactly what they continue to sow. When the people are deliberately disengaged from governance of their public schools, a district's decisions will reflect the will of those truly in charge (see list above).
I pray that Ms. Johnson will take her 254 votes as a mandate to immediately lead her Zone and District in putting students first over the agendas of self-serving adults.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Lyin' or Pickups and Guns...Oh My
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Cynthia Howell, in her July 23rd article, '1 school board race in county draws 2,' quoted 23-year Little Rock School District Board Member Dr. Katherine Mitchell as follows:
Why would the president of the largest local governmental entity in the state not report such threats at the time? Why no police report? Terroristic threatening is not only a felony, but a federal crime. Plus, Dr. Mitchell is a public official. Why wasn't the FBI notified?
I can think of only three reasonable explanations: 1) she was misquoted; 2) she was negligent in her duty as a public official; or 3) she's not telling the truth.
If one, she should seek a correction and issue an accurate public statement.
If two, she should immediately report the incident(s) to the proper authorities and cooperate fully with any investigation.
If three, she should really work on her storytelling. "People...in pickup trucks with guns in the back?" I get the not so veiled stereotypical implication. Throw in a banjo and a washboard, and it reads like the Darlings have come to Mayberry to exact a little hillbilly justice. What next? West Little Rock soccer moms in SUVs with overscheduled kids in the back.
Are we really to believe that in a District where folks don't even go to the polls in school elections, "people," not a single person, but "people" rolled past Dr. Mitchell's house in one or more pick-up trucks with guns in the back. Back window (gun rack) or back of truck? Were there people with guns in the back or just guns? If just guns, were they so big or plentiful that Dr. Mitchell could see them rise above the sides of the truck bed?
I'm not so naive to believe that threats don't occur. My dad was a high school principal in the 60s and 70s. One night, a rock was thrown through my bedroom window. Another night, while I was playing basketball in our driveway, a carload of high school boys stopped in front of our house, called me over, then handed me an obscene note/cartoon to give to my dad. When I read it, I tried to hit them with a rock as they sped away (I was better at basketball). I remember trick-or-treating on Halloween, while Dad sat in the open garage guarding the house. And that's just what I knew about. So yes, threats and other bad things do happen.
If left unchallenged, Dr. Mitchell's story will cast a continued pall over our community and discourage leaders from taking tough positions and/or citizens from seeking leadership roles for fear of their and/or their families' personal safety. The proper authorities should investigate Dr. Mitchell's allegations fully and immediately.
“People were upset with me when I was trying to help get us a superintendent who would be responsive to the total community. That’s when it happened,” she said. “I got a lot of threats. People don’t know what I went through in that period. People driving by my house making sure I lived there and they were in pickup trucks with guns in the back. It wasn’t an easy time for me but I just didn’t say anything.”Yes she did - to Ms. Howell - who reported it in her article. But not before? When it was allegedly happening? Why not?
Why would the president of the largest local governmental entity in the state not report such threats at the time? Why no police report? Terroristic threatening is not only a felony, but a federal crime. Plus, Dr. Mitchell is a public official. Why wasn't the FBI notified?
I can think of only three reasonable explanations: 1) she was misquoted; 2) she was negligent in her duty as a public official; or 3) she's not telling the truth.
If one, she should seek a correction and issue an accurate public statement.
If two, she should immediately report the incident(s) to the proper authorities and cooperate fully with any investigation.
If three, she should really work on her storytelling. "People...in pickup trucks with guns in the back?" I get the not so veiled stereotypical implication. Throw in a banjo and a washboard, and it reads like the Darlings have come to Mayberry to exact a little hillbilly justice. What next? West Little Rock soccer moms in SUVs with overscheduled kids in the back.
Are we really to believe that in a District where folks don't even go to the polls in school elections, "people," not a single person, but "people" rolled past Dr. Mitchell's house in one or more pick-up trucks with guns in the back. Back window (gun rack) or back of truck? Were there people with guns in the back or just guns? If just guns, were they so big or plentiful that Dr. Mitchell could see them rise above the sides of the truck bed?
I'm not so naive to believe that threats don't occur. My dad was a high school principal in the 60s and 70s. One night, a rock was thrown through my bedroom window. Another night, while I was playing basketball in our driveway, a carload of high school boys stopped in front of our house, called me over, then handed me an obscene note/cartoon to give to my dad. When I read it, I tried to hit them with a rock as they sped away (I was better at basketball). I remember trick-or-treating on Halloween, while Dad sat in the open garage guarding the house. And that's just what I knew about. So yes, threats and other bad things do happen.
If left unchallenged, Dr. Mitchell's story will cast a continued pall over our community and discourage leaders from taking tough positions and/or citizens from seeking leadership roles for fear of their and/or their families' personal safety. The proper authorities should investigate Dr. Mitchell's allegations fully and immediately.
All Must Be Fine - Little Rock School Board Races Go Uncontested
The public school board filing deadline (July 22nd) has come and gone, and the two Little Rock School District zones up for election in the fall both have uncontested races, incumbent Jody Carreiro in Zone 5 and Norma Johnson in Zone 1. Katherine Mitchell, the 23-year Zone 1 incumbent, did not file for re-election. The election will be held Tuesday, September 20th.
All adults of influence with the district should ask themselves - "Is the Little Rock School District better off today than when I started?" May their honest answers determine all their futures.
Meanwhile, citizens, particularly parents, should step up and lead to save this community. Nothing's going to change if the leadership is never challenged.
A start would be insisting that, once all zones are redrawn based on the 2010 census, new elections be held in 2012 for all seven seats. Otherwise, it will be 2014, halfway through the decade, before all citizens of the Little Rock School District will be represented by someone for whom they had the opportunity to vote.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2011/jul/23/1-school-board-race-county-draws-2-20110723
All adults of influence with the district should ask themselves - "Is the Little Rock School District better off today than when I started?" May their honest answers determine all their futures.
Meanwhile, citizens, particularly parents, should step up and lead to save this community. Nothing's going to change if the leadership is never challenged.
A start would be insisting that, once all zones are redrawn based on the 2010 census, new elections be held in 2012 for all seven seats. Otherwise, it will be 2014, halfway through the decade, before all citizens of the Little Rock School District will be represented by someone for whom they had the opportunity to vote.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2011/jul/23/1-school-board-race-county-draws-2-20110723
Friday, July 22, 2011
Wake Up Little Rock!
In 1957, nine courageous students risked their lives to enter the Little Rock School District. Fifty-four years later, 10,000 students annually risk their futures because they can't get out.
The continued failure of public education in Pulaski County, and specifically Little Rock, is our community's greatest emergency. It is destroying the City of Little Rock's resident middle class, leaving a city of largely trapped poor, those with means for private education, a shrinking percentage of parents with the initiative to make the best of a dysfunctional system, and refugees in a limited number of charter schools.
We cannot keep, attract or grow business when its workers' children are not being educated.
We cannot keep and grow the tax base when working families' students cannot receive a quality education.
We cannot sustain the economic viability and competitiveness of the community when it fails 10,000 students a year.
Whether or not you have or had children in Little Rock public schools, this is no longer just a "public school" issue. If you live and/or work in Little Rock, it's your issue. If you live and/or work in a community that benefits from proximity to Little Rock, it's your issue. And that issue is the very survival of our community and our state's capital.
Amidst all the haranguing, handwringing and hopelessness, there are actions we could/should immediately take as a community to accept no less than excellence from our public schools.
- In every action, the Little Rock School District should be mission-focused on the world-class education of all students.
- The Little Rock School District's annual budget is more than twice that of the City of Little Rock. At $350 million, that's approximately $14,000 per student. Even if state desegregation funding were immediately ended, money would not an issue; it's how it's spent.
- In 2010-11, 39% of tested students were not proficient in math. 37% were not proficient in literacy, and 74% were not proficient in science. Further, five of five tested grades performed worse in math than they did the year before, while two of five tested worse in literacy. By the time students reached the eighth grade, 58% were not proficient in math. The pattern is clear: the more years a student spends in the Little Rock School District, the more likely he/she will become not proficient in math and/or literacy.
- Implement the strategic plan.
- In March 2010, after nearly a year of intensive work, a 14-member commission released a Strategic Plan for the Little Rock School District identifying actions that "must be taken" in six important areas: 1) Ambitious, eye-popping goals; 2) Research proven strategies for attaining our goals; 3) Adequate and effective funding for our schools; 4) Recruitment and retention of a high quality staff; 5) Data and Accountability; and 6) Effective, performance driven leadership. A year-and-a-half later, even with a third-party consultant being paid tens of thousands of dollars to implement, the plan remains largely shelved. Now, only three-and-a-half years remain to achieve the five-year goals outlined in the Plan.
- Reform central administration to make most effective and efficient use of taxpayers' investment.
- Empower principals to run their schools, then hold them accountable for performance and achievement.
- Reward, retain and recruit exceptional teachers and immediately remove ineffective ones.
- Starting Little Rock School District teachers who are members of the Little Rock Education Association rank 92nd in Arkansas (when factoring in annual dues), while non-union teachers rank 78th. Little Rock starting teachers should rank first in Arkansas and favorably compare to our competitor regions so we may attract the best and brightest from around the country, where "last in, first out" policies are laying off innovative and effective young teachers by the thousands.
- With 1,426 members out of 2,222 total teachers (as of January 2010), union members pay $1,026,720 million collectively in annual dues. And yet, the Little Rock School District pays the union president a full annual salary, not to be in the classroom, but to lead the union. The union can afford to pay its own president.
- The Little Rock School District collects union dues through payroll deduction then sends the funds to the union. It's the union's money. It should be independently responsible for the cost and labor to collect it.
- In the spirit of Arkansas's constitutional right to work law, any Little Rock School District teacher should be allowed to join or quit the union at any time. Currently, a teacher may join when they want, but there is a narrow two-to-three week window in June to quit. If missed, teachers are stuck with another year in dues.
- Tenure should be eliminated. With origins in colleges and universities, where tenure is still earned, it has been bastardized in the public schools and given to anyone who lasts three years, regardless of performance.
- Close, consolidate and construct schools and facilities to equitably serve the population.
- Currently, all seven Little Rock School District middle schools are within 3.6 miles of another middle school. Five of seven middle schools are within 7.8 miles of each other, and two middle schools are only 1.6 miles apart.
- The two zones with the least population (1 and 2) have three of the seven middle schools.
- The most densely populated and fastest growing zone in the district (4) has no middle school. Neither does one with stable population (5).
- Schools - elementary, middle, high - should be clustered in logical, proximate communities of interest to foster parental and community involvement and support.
- Offer, support and celebrate competitive extra-curricular activities and achievement in the arts, athletics, communications, governance, professional development and public service.
- The cover of Arkansas Sports 360 Annual Football Preview featured two Razorbacks, both of whom were from Central Arkansas - Jake Bequette and Joe Adams. Neither were products of our public schools. Little Rock's proud football tradition has been decimated from inattention. Behind Drake Hawkins' leadership and Verizon Wireless' and others' generosity, there is now new, year-round turf at Central High's storied Quigley Stadium, but the locker rooms have been so neglected for so long, players can't even shower there. Sports and extracurricular activities foster school and community spirit and support and provide a fitting incentive for academic achievement and accountability. They are complementary to academics, not contradictory. It's the model upon which Dr. Fitz Hill is transforming Arkansas Baptist College and its neighborhood.
- Communicate clearly, consistently and completely with the public regarding the district's successes, opportunities and deficiencies.
- The Little Rock School District spent tens of thousands of dollars on a search firm, engaged the community in a months-long process, and yet, only brought in one superintendent "finalist" in to interview. With no reasonable explanation, the entire process was thwarted when the district ignored its consultants' recommendation and the consensus of the larger community, and instead, hired the interim superintendent, who did not go through any of the formal application process.
- Compete for students within and without the district without litigating.
- Attorneys for the Little Rock School District should take no action unless directed by a majority public vote of the board.
- After redrawing zones based on the 2010 census, hold new elections for all board members in 2012 and draw for terms.
- Because of population changes in the 2010 census, all seven zones of the Little Rock School District will have to be redrawn. This means that, without new elections, over 5,000 citizens will be represented by someone for whom they did not have the opportunity to vote.
- Follow the 'STEPS FOR CURRENTLY ZONED SCHOOL DISTRICTS,' as issued in the February 8, 2011 memorandum from the Arkansas School Board Association (ASBA) and developed from talks with the Governor's office, Attorney General's office, Secretary of State's office, Arkansas Association (AAEA), and the Arkansas Department of Education and hold new elections.
And here's what can be done at the state level:
- Change school board elections from September to the General Election to assure maximum citizen participation.
- In accordance with A.C.A. 6-13-631, in compliance with the Voting Rights Act, give the people, not the incumbent school board, the power by election to determine how they will be represented: 1) five zones, 2) seven zones or 3) five zones and two at-large.
The Little Rock School District is like a crawdad - it moves backward, attacks anything that tries to stop it, and is oblivious when it's being boiled alive.
In 2011, courageous citizens and parents can save Little Rock by taking back their public schools from the entrenched, self-serving special interests of adults, and get about the business of immediately educating all students, no matter their means or family circumstances. Anything less, and students will get what they don't deserve, while the citizens who fiddled or slept will get exactly what their actions (or inactions) have wrought - the end of Little Rock.
I believe that those parents and citizens and leaders willing to endure the inevitable slings and arrows from those with the most to lose can still prevail. But only if we stand up and trumpet the truth at every opportunity, even if that means being voted down six to one or five to two or four to three at board meetings.
I believe that those parents and citizens and leaders willing to endure the inevitable slings and arrows from those with the most to lose can still prevail. But only if we stand up and trumpet the truth at every opportunity, even if that means being voted down six to one or five to two or four to three at board meetings.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Move Up in Grade, Move Down in Proficiency
In the 2011 Arkansas Augmented Benchmark Exams (released July 19, 2011), results are placed in four categories: 1) Below Basic, 2) Basic, 3) Proficient and 4) Advanced.
Here are the results for the Little Rock School District:
Grade 3 (Of 1,966 Students Tested)
- 30% (590) were not proficient in math
- 38% (747) were not proficient in literacy
Grade 4 (Of 2,005 Students Tested)
- 30% (602) were not proficient in math
- 28% (561) were not proficient in literacy
Grade 5 (Of 1,837 Students Tested)
- 35% (643) were not proficient in math
- 31% (569) were not proficient in literacy
- 71% (1,304) were not proficient in science
Grade 6 (Of 1,694 Students Tested)
- 41% (695) were not proficient in math
- 44% (745) were not proficient in literacy
Grade 7 (Of 1,720 Students Tested)
- 44% (757) were not proficient in math
- 47% (808) were not proficient in math
- 78% (1,342) were not proficient in science
- 58% (968) were not proficient in math
- 38% (634) were not proficient in literacy
So last year, in third through eighth grades:
- 4,255 out of 10,891 students tested (39%) were not proficient in math.
- 4,064 out of 10,891 students tested (37%) were not proficient in literacy.
And in fifth and seventh grades:
- 2,646 out of 3,557 students tested (74%) were not proficient in science.
For grades three through eight, this shows a two point drop in students not proficient in math, a three point drop in students not proficient in literacy, and a five point drop in students not proficient in science.
However incremental, that seems like progress, until you look deeper.
Last year's third graders dropped a point in math and gained four in literacy as fourth graders.
Last year's fourth graders dropped three points in math and gained two in literacy as fifth graders.
Last year's fifth graders dropped three points in math and five in literacy as sixth graders.
Last year's sixth graders dropped four points in math and four in literacy as seventh graders.
Last year's seventh graders dropped 13 points in math, while gaining 11 in literacy as eighth graders. These one year swings for eighth graders are so large in both directions, they should warrant further scrutiny.
See the pattern? Every grade (five of five) dropped in math over the previous year's testing, while two of five grades also dropped in literacy. It seems that the more years a student spends in the Little Rock School District, the more likely he/she will become not proficient in math and/or literacy. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
These test results don't include Pre-K, K, first, second, ninth, tenth, eleventh or twelfth grades. Since those account for half of all grades, it would be generous to estimate that in 2011, nearly 10,000 of the district's approximately 25,000 students (39%) were not proficient in math and/or literacy. Since the trend is an increasing non-proficiency as the grades increase, the actual numbers would be much worse.
Grade 3
Math - 32 of 80 Raw Score (40%)
Literacy - 52 of 96 Raw Score (54.16%)
Grade 4
Math - 35 of 80 Raw Score (43.75%)
Literacy - 51 of 96 Raw Score (53.13%)
Grade 5
Math - 39 of 80 Raw Score (48.75%)
Literacy - 57.5 of 96 Raw Score (59.9%)
Science - 40 of 80 Raw Score (50%)
Grade 6
Math - 38 of 80 Raw Score (47.5%)
Literacy - 57 of 96 Raw Score (59.38%)
Grade 7
Math - 25 of 80 Raw Score (31.25%)
Literacy - 65.5 of 96 Raw Score (68.23%)
Science - 43 of 80 Raw Score (53.75%)
Grade 8
Literacy - 52 of 96 Raw Score (54.16%)
Grade 4
Math - 35 of 80 Raw Score (43.75%)
Literacy - 51 of 96 Raw Score (53.13%)
Grade 5
Math - 39 of 80 Raw Score (48.75%)
Literacy - 57.5 of 96 Raw Score (59.9%)
Science - 40 of 80 Raw Score (50%)
Grade 6
Math - 38 of 80 Raw Score (47.5%)
Literacy - 57 of 96 Raw Score (59.38%)
Grade 7
Math - 25 of 80 Raw Score (31.25%)
Literacy - 65.5 of 96 Raw Score (68.23%)
Science - 43 of 80 Raw Score (53.75%)
Grade 8
Math - 29 of 80 Raw Score (36.25%)
Literacy - 67 of 96 Raw Score (69.79%)
Sure takes the bloom of that "proficient" rose.
The adjective "proficient" means "well-advanced or competent in any art, science or subject; skilled." The noun is defined as "an expert." Educators have simply made up a their own definition and are inexplicably misleading the public.
The illusion, while not stated, being perpetrated on parents and citizens is that "Advanced" must equal an A (90-100%), "Proficient" a B (80-89%), "Basic" a C (70-79%) grade, and "Below Basic" a D/F (0-69%).
In actuality, educators' celebrated "Proficient" (based on 2010) means averages of the tested grades of 41.25% correct for math, 60.77% correct for literacy, and 51.875% correct for science. Two (Literacy and Science) of those three on any grading scale would be consider low F's, with Math hanging onto a D by less than a percentage point.
It's nothing short of fraud.
Nothing and no one should deflect or defer immediate delivery of world class education to all students. Anything less, and misguided and/or self-interested adults are denying our most vulnerable citizens an equal chance to compete in the world's widening meritocracy.
Source: Arkansas Augmented Benchmark Examinations Raw To Scale Score Conversion Tables April 2010 Administration
Source: Augmented Benchmark Exams All Grades' Results within a District (Little Rock)
Literacy - 67 of 96 Raw Score (69.79%)
Sure takes the bloom of that "proficient" rose.
The adjective "proficient" means "well-advanced or competent in any art, science or subject; skilled." The noun is defined as "an expert." Educators have simply made up a their own definition and are inexplicably misleading the public.
The illusion, while not stated, being perpetrated on parents and citizens is that "Advanced" must equal an A (90-100%), "Proficient" a B (80-89%), "Basic" a C (70-79%) grade, and "Below Basic" a D/F (0-69%).
In actuality, educators' celebrated "Proficient" (based on 2010) means averages of the tested grades of 41.25% correct for math, 60.77% correct for literacy, and 51.875% correct for science. Two (Literacy and Science) of those three on any grading scale would be consider low F's, with Math hanging onto a D by less than a percentage point.
It's nothing short of fraud.
Nothing and no one should deflect or defer immediate delivery of world class education to all students. Anything less, and misguided and/or self-interested adults are denying our most vulnerable citizens an equal chance to compete in the world's widening meritocracy.
Source: Arkansas Augmented Benchmark Examinations Raw To Scale Score Conversion Tables April 2010 Administration
Source: Augmented Benchmark Exams All Grades' Results within a District (Little Rock)
Monday, July 11, 2011
Lines Shifting in LR School District
New Census Population Data Require Redrawing of 7 Election Zones
Outstanding reporting by Chad Day and Cynthia Howell in Sunday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (July 10, 2011). You must be a subscriber to read.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2011/jul/10/lines-shifting-lr-school-district-20110710
Outstanding reporting by Chad Day and Cynthia Howell in Sunday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (July 10, 2011). You must be a subscriber to read.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2011/jul/10/lines-shifting-lr-school-district-20110710
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
I Digress...to the Declining State of Church Music
As I waited to pick up my kids at Vacation Bible School, I was at once deeply grateful to those creative and committed adults who teach our children and incredulous at the continuing decline in the quality of church music.
VBS used to feature songs we outgrew, then found nostalgic when they were passed to the next generation. "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart..." "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." "Jesus loves the little children..."
Now it features songs leaders not only won't let go from their youth groups, but insist on dominating worship services.
Those who know (or should know) better seem more intent on assuaging or compromise than in valuing the quality and importance of song service as much as pulpit ministry.
Thirty years of Contemporary Christian/Christian Rock vs. centuries of church music which emerged from and endured through generations is not balance, as if balance were even a worthy goal. I would venture that many, if not most kids don't know the words to 'Amazing Grace,' 'How Great Thou Art,' or 'Peace in the Valley,' songs likely sung at their forebears’ funerals, but they can sure serenade God with how "awesome" and singular He is in dozens of repetitive, derivative and creatively stunted ways.
Even with Contemporary Christian/Christian Rock, I’m sure there are some quality songs, but certainly not the dominating percentage compared to the centuries which came before the 1980s.
For ages, church songs bridged and bonded generations. Today, many are led without reference to words or music, making those of us who don't know them (or choose not to) feel as though we're not part of a club we likely wouldn’t join anyway.
People are attracted to substance, quality and authenticity. Sacrificing those attributes in the name of appealing to the “contemporary” is misguided and ineffective.
When we joined our current congregation, the song service was one of the best I had ever experienced. Led by Jerome Williams, the music ministry was full of the Spirit, worshipful, energetic and diverse. He breathed new life into classic hymns and spirituals, chose and led contemporary offerings with a trained and discerning ear, and lifted every voice in song.
When he left, it was if Don McLean was singing about us. Spirit, worship, energy and diversity seemed to die with the music. Every verse of every song now ends in a ritard.
Like the baby with the bathwater, we've thrown out shaped notes for scooped notes. Church music has lost its soul, when it should be about the business of saving them.
"Don't you see you're not making Christianity any better, you're just making rock and roll worse?" – Hank Hill on Christian Rock.
Gary Newton (aka A Wretch Like Me)
VBS used to feature songs we outgrew, then found nostalgic when they were passed to the next generation. "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart..." "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." "Jesus loves the little children..."
Now it features songs leaders not only won't let go from their youth groups, but insist on dominating worship services.
Those who know (or should know) better seem more intent on assuaging or compromise than in valuing the quality and importance of song service as much as pulpit ministry.
Thirty years of Contemporary Christian/Christian Rock vs. centuries of church music which emerged from and endured through generations is not balance, as if balance were even a worthy goal. I would venture that many, if not most kids don't know the words to 'Amazing Grace,' 'How Great Thou Art,' or 'Peace in the Valley,' songs likely sung at their forebears’ funerals, but they can sure serenade God with how "awesome" and singular He is in dozens of repetitive, derivative and creatively stunted ways.
Even with Contemporary Christian/Christian Rock, I’m sure there are some quality songs, but certainly not the dominating percentage compared to the centuries which came before the 1980s.
For ages, church songs bridged and bonded generations. Today, many are led without reference to words or music, making those of us who don't know them (or choose not to) feel as though we're not part of a club we likely wouldn’t join anyway.
People are attracted to substance, quality and authenticity. Sacrificing those attributes in the name of appealing to the “contemporary” is misguided and ineffective.
When we joined our current congregation, the song service was one of the best I had ever experienced. Led by Jerome Williams, the music ministry was full of the Spirit, worshipful, energetic and diverse. He breathed new life into classic hymns and spirituals, chose and led contemporary offerings with a trained and discerning ear, and lifted every voice in song.
When he left, it was if Don McLean was singing about us. Spirit, worship, energy and diversity seemed to die with the music. Every verse of every song now ends in a ritard.
Like the baby with the bathwater, we've thrown out shaped notes for scooped notes. Church music has lost its soul, when it should be about the business of saving them.
"Don't you see you're not making Christianity any better, you're just making rock and roll worse?" – Hank Hill on Christian Rock.
Gary Newton (aka A Wretch Like Me)
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Failing the Smell Test
With all the hand-wringing over the federal court ending most desegregation funding, the Little Rock School District continues to lose funds all by itself. Consider:
- The combined transportation budgets of the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special School Districts exceed that of Central Arkansas Transit (CAT), and yet no one is leading the charge for an inter-local agreement to save taxpayers' investment by creating a more efficient, county-wide system. Think of that the next time you see a Pulaski County Special School District bus traversing the Little Rock School District to reach its doughnut-shaped district.
- The District, which receives the bulk of its funding on a per pupil basis, loses the largest percentage of its students during the transition from elementary to middle school. And yet, there is no middle school (nor plans for a middle school) in Little Rock's fastest growing Zone 4. There is also no school in Zones 5 (growing) or 6 (flat). Zones 1 and 2, which are losing population, have two and one, respectively, while Zone 7 (growing) and Zone 3 (flat) have two each.
- Even though over $1 million in dues is collected from Little Rock Education Association (LREA) members each year, the Little Rock School District pays the salary of the LREA President to not be in the classroom. Further, through payroll deduction, the District assumes all costs for teachers union dues collection. It also paid a search firm to not find a superintendent, but that's another story.
- The District spends over $350 million a year to produce over 10,000 students (40%) who are not proficient in math, literacy and/or science. That equates to around $14,000 per student. With that kind of money, we could cut out the middlemen, sell all assets, and hire $100,000 per year super teachers (salary plus benefits) to guide teams of ten students each from Pre-K to graduation.
Friday, May 13, 2011
God Speed, Dr. Holmes
As you put students first, implement the strategic plan, and stand courageously against adult agendas - at all levels - which get in the way of the first two.
Monday, April 11, 2011
"One Person, One Vote" vs. "5,999 Persons, Zero Votes"
As the Arkansas Legislature remains in session over one remaining issue - redrawing the congressional districts based on the 2010 census - one question has been noticeably absent from the debate and myriad of maps: What's best for the people?
We are bombarded about what's best for Democrats, Republicans, incumbent congressmen, potential congressional candidates, legislators, constitutional officers and special interests. But no one in leadership is talking seriously about simply taking the state's population, dividing by four, then redrawing the districts in the most efficient and proximate regional clusters to best serve the people.
The Little Rock School Board will soon face a similar re-zoning issue.
The Arkansas School Board Association (ASBA), in cooperation with the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE), Governor's office, Attorney General's office, Secretary of State's office, and Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators (AAEA), in its memorandum of February 8, 2011, outlined steps which zoned districts "must do to meet the obligations of state and federal law:"
- Upon issuance of new 2010 Census figures, the district should either hire a demographer or use the services of the offices of the Arkansas Secretary of State, if available, for the purpose of establishing new zones, if necessary.
- The zones must be drawn so as to be substantially equal in voting age population. (Note: The statute refers to total population, but the Voting Rights Act cases refer only to voting age population in reference to drawing zone lines.
- The zone plan must be filed with the County Clerk so as to enable the Clerk to establish which voters belong in which zones.
- At the next school election, or no later than the regular school election of 2012, following the redrawing of the zones, all school board positions must be up for election, including any at‐large positions.
- Upon the board members being elected, the newly elected board members draw lots for length of terms so that, to the extent possible, no more than two (2) positions are up for election in any subsequent year.
In a March 24, 2011 email to the Little Rock School Board, Chris Heller, the Little Rock School District's attorney, wrote that, "Because of LRSD's compliance with the voting Rights Act, Arkansas law does not require that all board positions be filled by election in 2012."
Mr. Heller also wrote, "The best course of action for LRSD to take in response to the 2010 census and Ark Code Ann 6-13-631 would be to make only the changes necessary to comply with the 'one person, one vote' principle of the Constitution and not to make any changes which would jeopardize LRSD's compliance with the Voting Rights Act."
While I vehemently disagree with his opinion, it will take a lawyer to challenge his legal assertions. Though I once played one on TV, I am not a lawyer.
Meanwhile, when I brought Mr. Heller's opinion to the attention of the ASBA's Dan Farley, ADE's Tom Kimbrell and AAEA's Richard Abernathy, ASBA Attorney Paul Blume did a fast backstroke from his own "must do" list in regard to the Little Rock School District, agreeing "with Mr. Heller's interpretation of the LRSD's obligations, vel non, under the statute."
I recognize that as a non-governmental organization, the ASBA has no standing to compel. But it issued the memorandum as a result of meetings hosted by the ADE which involved the Governor's office, the Attorney General's office, the Secretary of State's office, and the AAEA. Reads mighty official to me. And if not, who is advising the public school districts of Arkansas on this important issue of public school governance?
Understand, despite Mr. Blume's recharacterization, his memorandum exempted no districts in the state. It was only after he/they were challenged by the big, bad, scary Little Rock School District (my words), that he/they backed away from their own "must do" steps.
Even though the Little Rock School District has been declared unitary, lawyers seem to still be leading the district, both directly and passively.
So far, there is no argument that the district must redraw its zones based on the 2010 census. The question becomes, Who will redraw the zones and how?
With nonpartisan elections in the Little Rock School District, race (both black and white), not party, will likely drive any gerrymandering attempts in the redrawing of zones.
In the district, whites are more concentrated in Zones 3 (86.3%) and Zone 4 (78%) than are blacks in Zones 1 (68.3%), 2 (66.1%), 6 (60.3%) and 7 (60.3%). Even though the total percentage of whites in the district is 47.4% compared to blacks' 44.1%, because of whites' lopsided zone concentrations, four of the district's seven zones are, and will likely remain, majority black. Hispanics, which make up 7% of the district's population, are most concentrated in Zones 6 (16.5%) and 7 (13.64%).
My response to all that is, "So what." No group - white or black - should gerrymander the district to serve its respective special interests. Zones should be drawn to most equitably, effectively and efficiently represent the people in the governance of their public schools.
Little Rock is constricted in that its school district does not match the Little Rock city limits, and therefore, doesn't mirror or grow with the City. Most of Chenal, for example, is in the fiscally distressed Pulaski County Special School District.
There is also disagreement as to whether the zones should be drawn based on general population (as they have in the past) or on the voting age population, required by Voting Rights cases, as described in the ASBA memorandum.
Once decided if the district will be zoned by population or voting age adults, the board, through its demographer, should take the number, divide by seven, then draw the most efficient, logical and proximate zones to best serve the people, without regard to race. Then, let the voters fall where they may. Metroplan has created a map of the Little Rock School District zones and their respective 2010 census numbers, by both general and voting age population.
Zoning by Voting Age Population
To achieve average zone voting age populations of 19,457, Zones 1 (-1,861), 2 (-2,479) and 6 -1,660), which lost voting age population, will need to be expanded geographically in order to gain voting age adults.
Zones 3 (+1,710), 4 (+2,033), and 5 (+1,423) gained voting population and will need to be contracted geographically in order to lose voting age population.
Zone 7 (+833) also gained voting age population, but because it's within 5% of the zone average (973), it is considered in range.
Zoning by General Population
To achieve average zone populations of 25,484, Zones 1 (-3,989) and 2 (-3,065), which lost population, will need to be expanded geographically in order to gain population.
Zones 4 (+1,962) and 7 (+3,452) gained population and will need to be contracted geographically in order to lose population.
Because Zones 3, 5 and 6 are within 5% (1,274) of the zone average of 25,484, they are considered in range.Since not all of the zones which lost population are contiguous with those that gained or those that aren't balanced by needs of loss and gain, it seems that all zone boundaries will have to change. In a worst case gerrymandering scenario, one could imagine a "Fayetteville Finger" for Zone 2 sticking up to pull 2,000 voters from Zone 4, even though it currently shares only the tips of corners.
If after rezoning by voting age population, the Little Rock School District follows its attorney's recommendation and does not hold new elections in 2012, as many as 5,999 voting age adults of the district will be represented by a board member for whom they did not have the opportunity to vote.
If after rezoning by general population, the Little Rock School District follows its attorney's recommendation and does not hold new elections in 2012, as many as 5,414 citizens of the district will be represented by a board member for whom voters did not have the opportunity to cast a ballot.
If the district and its legal team are truly committed to "one person, one vote," how will they justify their decision to not hold new elections to the over 5,000 with no vote?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
My Response to John Walker's Latest Email
On this blog, I choose not to post personal email directed solely to me unless it has been made public by the author to others. I do, however, post my responses in an attempt to bring sunshine and transparency to the governance of the Little Rock School District. Unlike his previous email, which he copied to the entire board, John Walker wrote a second time just to me. What follows is my response.
Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 5:01 PM
Representative Walker,
Please know, I do not wish to take time away from your service on behalf of your constituents, which I greatly respect.
I'll reiterate, on issues related to the Little Rock School District, I am my own man. I do not speak for the Chamber nor Jay Chesshir, and neither speak for me.
You and I, however, are in agreement on your initial characterization of Jay...as well as the unacceptable condition of our public schools. As for your three points:
1) My suggestion of a debate wasn't a challenge, but rather an offer to better motivate the public to become engaged in the governance of our schools. You're right, I have no standing, other than being a motivated citizen and father. But I couldn't offer without being willing to participate.
I also believe that, in the case of our schools, advocacy is best conducted in public, so people may be privy to opposing viewpoints.
There are many well intended means, not all of which are effective. I have to believe that over the past 30 years, not all of your initiatives in regard to the district have worked out as you would have wished. Some, perhaps, may have even been detrimental. I'm simply looking for effective ways to engage the people.
Rightly or wrongly, in different circles in our community you are alternately cast as the savior or the destroyer of the Little Rock School District. I think it would be healthy for people in all zones to hear your and others' (e.g. Ms. Koehler's, Mr. Chesshir's) perspective and ask questions. What our district needs is sunshine, not only for the board and administration, but also for those exerting influence.
As it is, no one is responsible for all the students, just those in respective zones. So it is up to the community's big-picture leaders to bridge that divide.
If Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton can tour the country (together) on behalf of education reform, John Walker, Cathy Koehler and Jay Chesshir can tour Little Rock. Again, I don't speak for Jay, and I've not suggested this to him, but I think the idea is worthy of consideration.
2) We don't implement the strategic plan, we don't administer triage to the over 10,000 students who are not proficient, but we sure fight when changes are proposed for a school election date and who determines board representation.
What we're doing/not doing is not working, and I simply don't see leadership in the district putting students first.
3) My effort was to empower the people to determine how they will be represented, not the incumbent school board members, whose positions are at stake. That issue is now moot. I lost. Badly.
As evidenced by our communications thus far, we will likely disagree on many means to ends we likely hold in common - immediate world-class education for all students.
Yes, I was here when the lawsuit began. At the time, my aunt was director of special education in the North Little Rock School District, and I was a senior executive with the Chamber, so I was very familiar with the intent of the litigation. I left in 1988 for New York City, then Los Angeles (1992), then returned to Little Rock in 2005 for a better life for our children.
My great disappointment upon returning was finding a district in worse shape than when I left, despite years of litigation. When I witnessed first hand the detachment most people had with their public schools, rather than simply complain, I set out to seek changes which would empower and enfranchise the people in the governance of their district.
I have no problem with folks disagreeing on the merits with any of my initiatives. I do, however, take great issue with those who mischaracterize my intent and motives.2) We don't implement the strategic plan, we don't administer triage to the over 10,000 students who are not proficient, but we sure fight when changes are proposed for a school election date and who determines board representation.
Even though it was not in our zone, we sought out Fair Park Pre-K because of its quality and cultural and economic diversity. My wife (a Detroit native) and I were thrilled that our four-year old twins got to attend an excellent school, not in our neighborhood, that reflected all aspects of our community. We regretted the same model did not continue in other grades.
While my children are my catalyst, I don't approach my advocacy with a myopic vision. My kids will be fine. I'll see to that. What motivates me are those with no advocates and the lives, families and futures that are being denied because of the lack of leadership at the board level.
The very survival of our community depends on the success of our public schools. So again, I think we share that common ground.
I was puzzled, however, by your characterization of the Chamber's involvement in the school board race. When the Chamber opposed the incumbent, you saw it as racial. But when you opposed him three years later, it was on substance.
Of course I'm aware of your role in litigation among the three districts. It just seems to me that your best intentions over the past three decades haven't worked as you intended, as witnessed by the current state of the district. And yet, when I suggest that the people instead of the incumbent school board should determine how they're represented, you believe that singular change would be the final nail in the district's coffin.
In my opinion, continuing to cast the struggles of the Little Rock School District as an either or between one race and another or the poor and the not poor is a false competition for mediocrity.
I liken it to blaming lack of parental involvement on students' not learning. Or not having high expectations for all students. The reality is the district is not working for anybody, including the 21% and declining of folks of my race.
Fifty-four years ago, nine courageous students risked their lives to enter Little Rock's public schools. Today, it is unconscionable for students to be risking their futures because they can't get out. The relevant achievement gap is between all of our students and the developed world.
As for now, my advocacy will focus on getting the board to implement the strategic plan that you and others invested so much in only to see it essentially shelved as the board inexplicably waits, and waits, and waits...
Sincerely,
Gary Newton
P.S. I'm not joking. Please consider that debate/forum idea. We've got to be creative and aggressive in breaking down these walls and prompting our leaders to lead or get out of the way.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Strategic Plan - One Year Later: From Eye-Popping to Heart-Breaking
In March 2010, after nearly a year of intensive work by a 14-member commission appointed by former Superintendent Dr. Linda Watson, a Strategic Plan for the Little Rock School District was released.
The Plan, subtitled "Target 2015: A Performance Work Plan for the Little Rock School District," identified actions that "must be taken" in six important areas:
- Ambitious, eye-popping goals;
- Research proven strategies for attaining our goals;
- Adequate and effective funding for our schools;
- Recruitment and retention of a high quality staff;
- Data and Accountability; and
- Effective, performance driven leadership.
One year later, even with a third-party consultant being paid tens of thousands of dollars to implement, the plan remains largely shelved.
Now, only four years remain to achieve the five-year goals outlined in the Plan.
Why? After hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on the Plan and an implementation which hasn't occurred, the district waits, while students, parents and citizens wonder.
2011 Benchmark exams are coming up. Last year, over 40% were deemed not proficient in math, literacy and/or science, equating to over 10,000 students district wide. Another year has passed, leaving behind students, families and futures.
Contact your board member(s) today, and insist on immediate implementation of the Plan.
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