FAYETTEVILLE : Officials: Education reform getting results
Posted on Saturday, April 26, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — The state’s education system requires further reforms to ensure all students can play a role in the future work force, Education Commissioner Ken James said Friday.
“All of our hard work has paid off, but we cannot become complacent,” he said. “What we keep preaching is that we cannot rest on our laurels.” James joined David Driscoll, a former Massachusetts education commissioner, as the latest speakers in a lecture series hosted by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s department of education reform.
James advocated making the state’s high school “Smart Core” curriculum mandatory.
Specifically, James said Friday that all students need to take algebra II to prepare them for life beyond high school.
U. S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has highlighted Arkansas and Massachusetts as examples of improving student performance through accountability, based reform, which is using standardized tests to measure student achievement and improve policy.
Arkansas tests students through end-of-course exams in math and literacy. Starting in the 2010-11 school year, students will be required to pass the tests to graduate.
The exams, combined with surges in state funding and an emphasis on professional development, have helped the state improve its measures on all indicators of student achievement, James said.
Arkansas scores rank in the top 10 of all states in every area of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationwide student achievement test also known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” Massachusetts saw similar effects when it introduced testing reforms in 1993, Driscoll said. Students must pass an eighthgrade level exit exam to graduate after 12 th grade. In 2000, 48 percent of students earned their diploma on the first attempt. By 2006, the number rose to 84 percent.
“It was really a case of setting standards and sticking with it,” he said. “Once you go down that comprehensive reform chute, you kind of get it in your head that, no matter what happens, you’ve still got more to do.” James said reforms in Arkansas will become more difficult for parents and students “when the rubber hits the road,” and the link between tests and graduation is strengthened.
“When you take away someone’s diploma, that’s when you start to see lawsuits,” he said.
But further reforms will be necessary for the state to attract industry with a skilled and trained workforce, James said. Arkansas ranks 49 th in the nation in the number of high school graduates who go on to obtain bachelor’s degrees, at 18 percent. Only West Virginia is lower. To better prepare graduates for college, James would like to tackle the “political hot potato” in the 2009 legislative session by making Smart Core classes mandatory. Across the state, 14 percent of parents allow their children to opt out of the high school course list, which includes four units of English and math and three units of science and social studies. “We’ve got a cultural gap in terms of expectations,” he said.
To contact this reporter: eblad@arkansasonline. com
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