Thread by @ForARPeople1

Goooood afternoon! We're about 20 min away from the Joint Education Committee's afternoon edition. Quite a bit more on the agenda.

While we're waiting for the legislators to file back in, we thought it might be helpful to clarify what's going on today. #arleg #arpx

No policy will really be made; there shouldn't really be any major votes today. This is purely a report from BLR and Dept. of Education (our favorite Florida Man, Jacob Oliva, is scheduled for this afternoon) on the state of education.

We wanted to cover this for 2 reasons.

1) curiosity - what *is* the state of education in Arkansas? We're viewing this report as a baseline to compare future years to; some LEARNS provisions kicked in this year, but it's the last year we have before the worst of LEARNS hits.

2) we've mentioned it before, but you really can get a vibe from the room. Our tagline is "connecting people with policy"; people also *make* those policies and so we find it really helpful to get a sense of lawmakers' emotional states.

LEARNS was controversial when it was passed and has continued to be so; the law has intense critics within Gov Sanders' own party (the most vocal of them aren't on this committee). Are other cracks appearing as lawmakers start to see how poorly the law was written?

Today won't explicitly reveal those cracks (probably).

But it's good context for what's coming; the law will get/need a lot of fixes in the next general session and if the education ballot amendment gets passed, meetings like today may provide clues re: how ARLeg will react.

Alright, we are picking back up with Merit Teacher Incentives, Florida Man presenting.

He starts with the salary increase.

As a reminder: salary raises are good and needed; the state is also implementing them in perhaps the dumbest, most harmful way possible.

In addition, something like 3k teachers will receive bonuses. 500 will receive around $5k, and 40 are receiving $10k. Average bonus received was $3.3k.

The bonuses in future will be tied to one of three categories, intended to be reachable by basically any licensed teacher, librarian/library specialists, and counselors. Emphasis on retaining the "home run hitters".

Wondering if this is partly intended to address Wooten's concerns about experienced teachers basically receiving the same $$ now as new teachers? Will have to review text of LEARNS to double check. But he's hitting this hard.

Rep. Meeks: Do teachers have to meet any kind of student growth metric to get a bonus, or could they get one based on geography?

A: It depends; based on subject (ie, tested or not tested subject).

Meeks: What are the potential implications if the education amendment is passed?

A: claims that LEARNS is a roadmap to achieve basically every educational goal ever (wrong). anything we do that disrupts that will take us backwards.

A: We're already seeing the needle on these metrics move. Who wants to see us go backwards? We all have a goal to elevate education. Cites incorrect estimates that the ed amendment will cost a billion dollars. Lying about student performance etc.

Rep. Eubanks: to be eligible for bonuses, they have to be a licensed teacher. How many unlicensed teachers do we employe?

A: Quite a few - subs, emergency teaching permits, etc.

Apologies, missed Rep Duke's Q - too furious about the LEARNS lies, Q is something to do with progress monitoring.

A: Every district has some form of progress monitoring. Year 2 high-performing teachers could receive more money. We want to be sure they continue to be eligible.

Q: do you see trends in districts that are clearly doing something right? Can we replicate it?

A: Yes. We have teachers in F schools get highly effective ratings. We've had staff go interview them.

Q: Aware of any districts that have their own incentive plans beyond the state's?

A: A few. (I would love to know which ones)

Sen. Stone: Anything identifiable about the most high-performing teachers? Experience, higher education, etc?

A: No magic pill. Highest performing teachers tend to have good relationships with students, mastery of content, and teaching of grade level content every day.

Rep. Springer: Does data show teachers receiving incentives the ones that have students meet grade-level expectations?

A: Teachers getting highest bonuses usually have tremendous learning gains.

They're swapping over and just have to say, someone absolutely asked Meeks to bring up the Education Amendment. Pretty gross.

Teacher retention agenda item getting rolled over to August so they can get feedback from the incentive program.

Learning Expectations report up next!

There's a few different statutory requirements for learning standards in 9 categories. Standards are put together by committees of educators in the summer and implemented the following year; updated every 5-7 years.

Schools can offer a number of courses, but SmartCore diplomas require a combo of English, Math, Science, Social studies, Health & Safety, PE, Fine Arts, Speech, and 6 "career focused" courses.

There's also a finance course, CPR (hey didn't know that, that's cool. Good skill to know!), pass a civics exam, and starting in '23, freshman need a compsci class.

(LEARNS will, of course, change all of this)

State graduation rate averages about 89%.

LEARNS adds the community service requirement, child sex abuse/human trafficking education, and a few other new requirements, one being the weird adoption awareness thing we reported on a few weeks ago!

Next up: K-12 Career & Tech Education.

Grades 5-8, districts have to offer basic coding, keyboarding, and an intro to career development.

Grades 9-12: districts have to offer 9 "sequenced career and tech ed courses"; and three different programs of study have to be offered.

Most sequences fall into business or the trades.

Expenditures were about 129mil last year; 95mil came from Foundation funding.

A lot of businesses/groups like Chamber of Commerce directly fund CTE; more trade workers are usually a good thing. It also lets tradespeople sometimes pass along old equipment for training.

There are 30 training centers (with 32 satellites) across the state. This doesn't necessarily count districts with attached training facilities for the trades.

Arkansas has 16 career clusters, with 33 pathways and about 55 programs of study.

Most programs are offered on campus, but lots of sharing between districts, campuses, and those training centers.

Programs of study have 3 levels of specificity, and there are a number of supporting programs available (career readiness, trade organizations, work-based learning, etc).

CTE students make up nearly a quarter of total school district enrollment.

CTE students tend to graduate at slightly higher rates! Matches national trends; holistic educations for the win, folks.

Super high numbers of participants in Ag/Natural Resources, unsurprisingly.

Goals for CTE always to develop practical skills that try to complement their academics.

Nursing and welding tend to receive the highest number of CTE students that graduated.

Rep. Evans: why often significant falloff in participation from year 1 to year 2 of CTE?

A: No definitive answer; differences in data collection between districts, sometimes students just don't like it; and sometimes they only need a few courses to satisfy grad reqs.

Rep. Meeks: any way to know why students who do CTE are more likely to graduate? IE: consistently better outcomes.

A: no way to isolate those data, too many variables based on the data we collect right now. That being said, definitely worth noting and continuing to fund CTE.

Q: Some training centers are based out of local colleges/universities, some in high schools. Can students still get college credits from training programs sponsored by high schools?

A: Shouldn't be an issue.

Onto Teacher Salaries!

National average teacher salary: just under $70k.

Arkansas average: $54k.

Neither salary, before COL adjustments, is keeping up with inflation.

We do a bit better when you adjust for cost of living.

We're just ahead of Missouri and Mississippi.

Salaries are highest in Central and Northwest regions of the state.

Concerningly, last year the teacher pay disparity was quite high; 68k was the highest salary last year, and the lowest was 43k.

Charter schools have about a 50k average salary, which is lower than comparable states.

Upper Delta sees the highest salaries when it comes to charter schools, which is interesting.

Last up for the day: Rep Cozart with an overview of school funding.

It's called "Comprehensive Investment in Student Achievement", a new program started last year.

It changes the K-12 Public School Funding System and modifies accountability systems. Intended to target dollars more effectively to each student's circumstances.

The changes: moving to single funding stream and per-student amount, which eliminates need for student-growth funding. Directing funding and funding formulas are required to be reviewed by legislature. Also includes funding based on student outcomes (concerning)

This is weird. Cozart is talking fast and this is a super complicated new funding structure, and I'm not sure how it's intended to interact with LEARNS, but I think it would reduce funding a bit for special ed? at minimum drastically changes how special ed funding is calculated

Don't quote me on this, just can't work through it properly live.

Anyway. Literacy and ACT testing prep are now directly funds (not weighted, based simply on how many students are in the class).

Should also say this doesn't appear to be law; this is proposed changes? A bill with the same name (CISA) died last year. Here's a better explanation of the original bill would have done. talkbusiness.net/2023/03/rep-co…

Rep. Meeks: Committee would recommend per-pupil amount under this program? (Confirming not yet law, whew. Sorry for any scare, y'all).

A: We wouldn't recommend; would do similar adequacy study.

Rep. Duke: concerned about tying funding to a completion of certain programs will result in schools overly pushing CTE programs.

A: If the outcomes aren't there, they won't get the money. Students would have to complete the program at a certain level to get the funds.

Rep. Beck: How does this interact with LEARNS?

A: still working on a draft bill to integrate it with LEARNS. Don't want to harm it.

Doesn't seem to me that they could work together, but I'm not an education expert. This would completely revamp funding structures, which LEARNS pretty much already did.

Q: Are new special ed funding levels tied to federal designations?

A: yes, not sure of the specifics though.

Q: Can students move between funding levels?

A: Depends on IEP of the student.

Cozart is about to start visiting a bunch of education co-ops over the next couple weeks to talk with them about this. If anybody talks with him, let us know - we'd love to hear more about this.

Alrighty, that's it for today! Other reports required by statute getting pushed to August. Thanks for following along; we'll repost the unrolled threads in a bit.

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