ADE Briefs

ADE and all state offices in the Little Rock area will be closed Tuesday, Feb. 9, due to inclement weather.
Posted by JJT.

Upon a recommendation from the Commissioner of Education, the State Board moved for the Arkansas Department of Education to take over the Twin Rivers School District after hearing the report from department staff concerning accreditation violations by the Twin Rivers School District. An administrator will be placed in the school district to work with the building level administrators for the continuance of the school year. Then the State Board will review a plan for consolidation of the Twin Rivers School District into one or more contiguous school districts by July 1.
Twin Rivers has continued in accredited-probation status for two consecutive years which, under Arkansas law, triggers action on the part of the Arkansas Education Commissioner and the State Board. A team from the Arkansas Department of Education found that a number of violations were occurring at the district, including the failure to teach all 38 of the required courses.
This is the final item heard by the State Board today. The board will reconvene February 19.
Posted by JJT.

The State Board is adjourning due to the heavy snow. An announcement will be made about reconvening.

The Arkansas State Board of Education denied a request to consolidate two districts that are more than 200 miles apart from each other. Representatives from the Weiner and Delight school districts appeared before the Arkansas State Board of Education to petition for voluntary consolidation of their district to form the Arcadia school district effective July 1.
Both districts have fallen below the minimum 350 enrollment required by Arkansas law under Act 60 of the Second Extraordinary Special Session of the 2003 General Assembly. This was the first request for consolidation of noncontiguous districts under Act 60, which sets a higher bar for the districts to meet before approval could be granted by the State Board. Those criteria include that the consolidation result in the overall improvement of the educational benefit to students of both districts and that also in a significant advantage in transportation costs or services to all students involved.
Posted by JJT.

State offices will open two hours late today. We are awaiting word on plans for today’s State Board meeting. We will post here as soon as a decision is made.

The Arkansas Department for Career Education announced today that Governor Mike Beebe and Martin Luther King, III, are among the guest speakers slated to address the Jobs for Arkansas’s Graduates (JAG) Student Leadership Conference, which will be held Feb. 8-9 at the C.A. Vines 4-H Center in Ferndale. Approximately 200 students from across the state are expected to attend the two-day event.

JAG is an extremely successful school-to-career program that has as its mission to help at-risk youth achieve high school graduation and acquire work-based learning experiences that will lead them to further education and training and rewarding careers.
Posted by JJT.

ADE staffers Heather Gage, Bill Goff and Patty Martin met with school district personnel via compressed inter-active video this morning to share updates and also bring up some reminders regarding the process for spending funds and reporting expenditures under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The PowerPoint they presented stressed the fact that ARRA Title I spending must follow the same rules and regulations as regular Title I spending, new edit checks built into the planning and reporting system will be available next week, and where to find posters and information about other necessary signage for ARRA projects.
Posted by JJT.
Posted by JJT.

In his latest video address, Education Commissioner Tom W. Kimbrell talks about the recent good news concerning Arkansas’s education data system as well as the remediation report released by the Arkansas Department of Education last month.
Posted by JJT.

The February meeting of the Arkansas State Board of Education will start at 9 a.m. Monday, February 8, in the Auditorium at the Arkansas Department of Education. The agenda is now online.
Posted by JJT.

A new Data Quality Campaign report released today finds that Arkansas places second among states for taking the necessary steps to ensure that longitudinal data systems are used to improve student outcomes and system‐wide performance. The results are based on a survey of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

This is the first year that the Data Quality Campaign has judged states for how they use the information. The report grades states on the basis of a series of 10 actions determined by the campaign to ensure effective data use.

Two years ago, the Data Quality Campaign recognized Arkansas for being one of the first six states to implement all of 10 elements the organization says are essential for a robust educational data system. Even now, only 12 states have achieved all of the elements.

See the complete report at the Data Quality Campaign Web site.
Posted by JJT.