School Reform Efforts Succeeding in Arkansas

by Luke Gordy

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Sunday, January 1, 2006

You’d expect nothing less of the leader of the nation’s most powerful teachers union than a bit of schoolyard bullying from the pulpit (“Teacher union chief challenges task force advice,” Dec. 20). When Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, used his time in the limelight at the Arkansas Democratic Party’s Black Caucus’ King-Kennedy Dinner in December to bash education reform initiatives that Arkansans have been sensibly moving forward on—most notably charter schools and merit pay for teachers—he managed to blindly step on the toes of some of the state’s most innovative and forward-thinking practitioners.  Perhaps he didn’t get a chance to read the accolades in this very paper given to Scott Shirey, the founding director of the acclaimed Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Shirey is director of the Delta College Preparatory Charter School in Helena and recently received a $25,000 Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award, which is given annually to those who further excellence in education. 

Shirey has been able to make a real impact in the lives of the Delta’s children precisely because he runs a charter school. In return for strict accountability for student academic performance, public charter schools are exempt from some of the laws and rules that dictate the operation of traditional schools. This freedom allows the schools to be innovative and responsive to the learning needs of their students. It has worked: last year’s seventh-graders at KIPP Delta scored at or above the state and national averages on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and above the state averages on the Arkansas Benchmark Exam. 

And how can anyone overlook the resoundingly positive national news stories about the work of principal Karen Carter and the teachers at Meadowcliff Elementary School in the Little Rock school district, who have energetically and successfully embraced merit pay, and seen its payoff: improving test scores at their school by 17 percent in less than a year. And this is with a student population that is among the neediest in the state: More than 80 percent of Meadowcliff’s students are minority and more than 90 percent are at or below the poverty level. Carter and her teachers have not been left standing alone in taking this up. The Meadowcliff program has the support of both Little Rock’s superintendent, Roy Brooks, and Arkansas’ director of education, Ken James. All of this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the nation. The Wall Street Journal was impressed enough with the program to declare that “The biggest urban school systems—New York, Chicago, L.A.—get most of the ink. But maybe the solutions are going to be found in places like Little Rock, where talented people can fly beneath the radar long enough to give good ideas a chance to prove themselves.”  These are the kinds of important education reforms supported by the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education in their recent report on Arkansas. The Koret Task Force’s scholars noted that the seeds of some important reform work have already taken root in the state. More work needs to be done, to be sure, but it’s clear, despite Mr. Weaver’s comments, that some Arkansans are no longer content to play follow the leader in education reform—they’re taking the lead themselves.

(Luke Gordy is executive director of the Arkansans for Education Reform Foundation.)