Joint Education Committee: Feb. 3, 2026

Representative Keith Brooks All right. Joint Education will come back into order. Ladies, if you would, please go ahead and just introduce yourself and then you can begin. 

Elizabeth Bynum Elizabeth Bynum with the Bureau of Legislative Research. 

Adrienne Beck Adrienne Beck, also with the Bureau. 

Leah Headley Leah Headley, Bureau of Legislative Research. 

Representative Keith Brooks You’re recognized.

Education and Accountability

Leah Headley Good morning, thank you for your patience. So today we’ll be presenting some information related to accountability and achievement. In past years and past adequacy studies, this information has been provided across multiple reports and different presentations. This year we’ve combined the state and federal accountability systems– 

Representative Keith Brooks Could you bring your mic a little bit closer to you, please? Thank you. 

Leah Headley Is that better? Okay. This cycle we’ve combined the state and federal accountability systems, as well as student achievement reports with academic standards, which includes career and technical education or CTE. And this report today will meet the following requirements as identified in the adequacy statute which you heard about in length yesterday. 

So those separate reports are attempts to fulfill these specific items as they’ve been amended to reflect the current accountability systems in place. So for around 10 years or so since the passage of the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act in 2017, this adequacy study process has included a review of these systems. 

As you can see in your tracking sheet, which is tab 1A in your binders, this is an excerpt of what’s required to accomplish some of the broader duties, which for these items include the meetings of the education committees to review what constitutes an adequate education, as well as the method of providing equality of educational opportunity. Today this information will assist in this review. 

As far as what constitutes an adequate education, we do have the working definition of educational adequacy, which you also heard about yesterday. Our resource allocation presentations next month will go over part three, but parts one and two of this definition will be related to the information provided today. So today is an overview and a roadmap for this presentation. 

As Jasmine noted yesterday, we’ll be going over the statutorily required topics. But rather than follow the order in statute, we’ll be discussing them by topic and in sections and discussing throughout the areas that connect and identify and align with parts of the definition of adequacy beginning with the academic standards, the accountability system structured around the standards, and then Elizabeth will get into related accountability measures as far as school performance ratings and district letter grades. Since those are not established in Act 930 of 2017, she’ll be approaching those, as well as Adrienne, and providing detailed student achievement results related to the systems. 

And then lastly, as statutorily required, Elizabeth will take you through fiscal distress and facilities distress. So first, with Arkansas standards, to fully understand the Arkansas academic standards that we have today, we can look back at the ways that the state has established the state’s curriculum and set up accountability systems in response to Lake View. 

Specifically, we’re going to review the state curriculum as referenced in the definition of adequacy and the expectations enacted in three different pieces of legislation. So beginning in 1997, we have the Public Education Act, which established several specific state goals, but overall for Arkansas to provide a quality educational opportunity for every public school student. 

The academic goals for students were to graduate academically competent students, and as Elizabeth and Taylor discussed yesterday, over the course of the Lake View decisions, the Supreme Court and masters’ conclusions were identifying ways that the Arkansas General Assembly was working towards defining adequacy. This act was identified in the Lake View case of 2002 as well on its way. 

The following acts in 2003, the Quality Education Act or Act 1467, as well as Act 1761, both were identified as a good beginning towards an assessment of curricula, specifically with improvement to show in five to 10 years. And so as we are past 10 years past those dates, I will go through each of these acts a little bit in detail and identify the ways that they are related to academic standards. 

So in Act 1108, also known as the Public Education Act, the overall goal for the state of Arkansas was that its public school education system will raise student achievement in a basic curriculum, increase graduated students as well as the courses required, and ensure overall that students are graduated, prepared for society, college, career, and communities. 

Specifically, it identified that public schools in Arkansas should graduate academically competent students, qualified teachers, as far as several other goals, but overall make sure that they are supported and assisted by the state where necessary As far as its public education students or public school students, they were expected to achieve competency, meet required standards in several academic areas as you see here. 

These were identified as well as several other skills and competencies and expectations for the public schools, which included requiring that they offer vocational courses and that students receive instruction in music and education as well– music and art education, excuse me. So the Quality Education Act, also referred to the Omnibus Act of 2003, established our comprehensive accountability system that Elizabeth went over yesterday, so I won’t get too deep into those. 

However, as far as the curriculum frameworks that were developed, those were in place as well as the requirements for accreditation and schools and public school districts to meet those standards for accreditation. This act amended the 1983 act, which required the state board to develop comprehensive rules, criteria, and minimum standards. And so in 2003, they removed the word minimum and required schools to meet all of the standards for accreditation. 

While most of this act was repealed by Act 930, also known as the Educational Support and Accountability Act, which I’ll refer to as the State Accountability Act, several items including the fiscal and academic distress measurements remained in statute until the repeal of them in 2017. Following the passage of that act, as well as identifications from Lake View and the Supreme Court, the adequacy definition was updated by the Joint Education Committee, or Joint Committee on Educational Adequacy, to include– the standards included a grade-level curriculum, a mandatory 38 units, all defined by the standards for accreditation, which was still defining what was to be taught at the high school level and taught to students broadly. 

So now that we have a state curriculum, Act 1761 specified more along the identifications of content standards for coursework. This is where curriculum frameworks were reviewed by the State Board of Education and established an ongoing review for both the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education and the State board in which curriculum frameworks were meaning the content-specific standards per subject area and core academic areas that you see here. Most of this act has been repealed in statute. 

The DESE rules governing this law have been– and the DESE rules governing this law have not been revised since 2005. Statute still requires that each public school district provide written assurance that the course content in each class and subject area is consistent and aligned to board approved standards. And that is measured by the statement of assurance provided by each superintendent. 

So in the last several years, the last 20 years, the academic standards have been referred to by several different names, as far as the accreditation standards that govern them. And talking about them fully, we need to understand that there are several different references, but they do identify what students are expected to learn in the public school system, as well as the criteria that they’re expected to meet in defined specific areas. 

So we don’t have an exact definition of academic standards in statute or in rules. We do know that the curriculum standards established so far are defining what students are to be taught. Over the years, academic standards has included a description of expectations as well as have included a description of academic expectations as well as specific courses that have been included to what students needed to be educated in to graduate as academically competent. 

We also have a description of these standards identified in the adequacy definition. But as far as the Arkansas rules governing the standards for accreditation of Arkansas public schools and school districts, academic standards are defined as the curriculum that’s provided to each student in an academic system of each public school district. There is a definition for written curriculum that identifies the sequences used to teach the Arkansas academic standards. 

But again, the actual phrase academic standards is not defined explicitly. However, as of the Act of State Accountability Act, it did direct DESE to establish and define academic standards that cover what students shall know and be able to demonstrate in each content area. These standards are both established by DESE and published by DESE, but the state board approves them. 

According to the Division of Learning Services, the standards and their courses outline academic expectations for the state. The Accountability Act defines English language arts as the academic standards for English reading and writing. And so with history, geography, and civic standards encompassed by social studies, several of these areas identified in Act 1761 of 2003, as well as the competencies identified in 1997, which include computer science and other technologies, as well as practical, economic, and consumer skills can now be found in DESE’s Arkansas Academic Standards published on their website. 

They have additional standards related to those same skills and expectations for fine arts, health and safety education, and physical education, as well as library media standards and world languages. Part of the Accountability Act was to make sure that these standards were periodically reviewed and revised to ensure that they were rigorous and prepared students for college, career, and community engagement, which is also referred to as college and career readiness in other parts of rules and statute. 

So while State Accountability Act called for the review of these standards, the rules identify what this review must entail, which includes review and input from Arkansas communities, as well as an assessment and consideration and study from external sources and national organizations. Generally, this review has been provided on a six-year cycle, according to DESE. However, they are frequently updated in response to legislation or changes as needed. As part of the accountability system established, the core academic subjects areas were not identified in statute. 

However, DESE has kept these same content areas for the last several years. And they are each provided with grade span, specifics and courses. So for example, social studies will include perhaps a kindergarten through third grade expectations and identify per subject area and academic course what that student needs to meet at each level as far as what’s needed to progress to the next level of academic achievement. So lastly, we’ll be reviewing the standards for accreditation. This is codified at Title VI in the Code of Arkansas rules. 

And these standards all work to reinforce that the academic standards are available and accessible to all students and that all students have an equal opportunity and access to the state’s curriculum. This is not an exhaustive list of the changes and revisions that have been made to standards, but I have provided here the more substantial changes that have made. 

Required courses and curriculum

So in 2015, the legislature changed what considered a course to be taught as far as the required courses, which were previously outlined in the rules governing standards for accreditation. However, in 2018, one of the bigger overhauls of these standards included the removal of those specific content standards, and so those identifications of geometry, algebra concepts, statistics that were specific that you saw earlier in those acts were now summarized in different content areas by grade level. 

And the courses that were required to graduate as well as the courses required to be taught each year were also removed from the rules governing. And DESE is now publishing those separately each year. So generally, the academic standards do outline activity for students’ required instruction and the required curriculum as identified as an adequate education and the definition of adequacy currently. 

The public school districts’ board of directors must adopt a curriculum aligned to the academic standard. But as I mentioned, those standards are not explicitly outlined in these rules anymore. They are, however, provided content areas by grade level which are kindergarten through grade four, grades five through eight, and then grades nine through 12, which are often referred to as just at the high school level. Because the academic standards prepare students to demonstrate achievement, they include a lot of the competencies that are published. 

All students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade are instructed and required to have annual instruction in English language arts, or ELA, mathematics, science, fine arts, social studies, health and safety, and PE. Grades five through 12 also get instruction in career and technical education. These are pretty similar to the content areas that DESE has established in their academic standards. In addition, the standards for accreditation ensure equal access to a rigorous core curriculum by requiring AP course offerings in these core subjects of math, English, language arts, science, and social studies. 

Following the passage of the Arkansas Access Act of 2025, an accelerating learning course will be able to be taken to fulfill that requirement to ensure that students are still getting access to a rigorous core curriculum as well as the core academic standards. So career and technical education are not included in DESE’s academic standards as required for the review for this adequacy study. 

However, it is one of the topics that we’ve elected to cover at the request of the committee in past years. It is also consistent with the definition of adequacy which was added specifically to include and reflect the standards for career and technical educational as it was recommended in 2018. 

So because they’re separate in grade spans, the rules governing the stands for accreditation identify what’s required for the middle school grade levels, which according to the rules governing a career-ready pathway to diploma include four career awareness activities. This is new for the 24-25 school year. It was passed in 2023. The requirements for each of these activities is just to ensure that the student is participating in something that links what they want to do in life to what they do in school. According to those rules, there are several different criteria. 

But overall, the Division of Career and Technical Education approves which activities are provided at each public school. Within the required units for ninth graders through 12th graders, DESE rules require that one of the pathways offered must be designated by the department as high wage and high growth. 

And the career pathways in CTE programs of studies were also recently revised in 2025 for full implementation in 2029 to make sure that these students are participating in pathways that are designated according to Arkansas’ labor standards and statistics. And there were 16 of those pathways identified this past school year. 

So back to what’s included in the rules governing the standards for accreditation, additional instruction in Arkansas history is also required for all grade levels. It’s embedded in social studies at the elementary level and then required to be taken as a semester course before graduation beginning with seventh grade. There’s also additional instructional time outlined for recess which is consistent with the health and activity academic standards as well as music and visual and performing arts instruction for grades one through eight. 

Separate rules govern these sections, but in those rules, academic standards is defined as discipline-based documents approved by the state board for those specific areas of content. So visual and performing arts have their own standards and the instructional time for all three of these is a minimum of 40 minutes of a school day. 

You’ll notice that these areas are broadly consistent with those academic areas of kindergarten through grade eight, except we have computer science and foreign languages added. The academic standards for foreign languages are identified as world languages. That language was changed in statute, but it has not been updated in the rules just yet. These CTE requirements requiring that three programs of study, which encompass three sequenced courses, are a new requirement for the 24-25 school year, also enacted in 2023. 

Previously they were requiring three different occupational areas. This one identifies simply just three programs of study that must be offered, one of which is one of those high wage and high growth areas. These are the same 38 units referenced in the adequacy definition that are required to be taught except where these same 38 units required to be taught and identified in the IPC definition. However, they are not the same required courses. 

They are just the areas that DESE has identified that correspond to those. So the courses that correspond to those 38 units are published and approved by the state board every year. Schools must offer them according to the department’s required high school courses publication. They are published each calendar, each school year. The process requires a statement of assurance that the academic standards and curriculum are embedded into single courses for changes made to embedded courses. 

And the courses considered taught have been changed by Act 1853. And so the chart in front of you shows the general kind of broad changes that have been made regarding these 38 units. So because the definition of adequacy refers to them as units and the Department of Education refers to it as courses, there’s a little bit of inconsistent language when you’re looking between rules and statute. 

However, they are specified that the courses are required according to the rules governing standards for accreditation. For 25-26 school year, there are actually 38 and a half total required credits as identified through the courses. The list itself includes over 50 courses that schools were able to offer to fulfill these units. A half credit would be a semester course. And so while oral communication is required under English language, sorry, English language arts, it is identified separately as an additional credit. So the total amount is more than the 38 required units. 

However, because of the language change in statute, while schools are required to offer these courses, if no students enroll in those courses, the class is still considered taught as far as violation of the standards. And so the curriculum and standards included in those course may not necessarily be taught to each public school student each year, because of the basis on student enrollment. And so it’s a bit of a deviation from the definition of defining of what students are to be taught. DESE rules still identify which units are included to be thought but they are not technically taught. 

It’s a bit of a different specific of languages similar to the difference between curriculum frameworks and academic standards. But that distinction here is more significant based on what courses are actually offered in each school district. So this table is a summary of the required courses for high school students, both required to graduate and those courses that are required to be offered. As I just mentioned, these are the 38 and a half credits that currently are required to be offered at each public school in the state.

 These specific courses are published separately by DESE in the course catalog as an appendix each year. Generally, this table will show you the difference between those two courses. Within the list of required course offerings, students could earn the minimum 22 units required to graduate. The courses identified for both of these columns haven’t changed significantly since 2015 apart from that addition of two units, sorry, apart from the addition of two additional requirements for computer science and personal family finance standards. 

The course requirement for computer science, as you can see here, is not identified as one of the 22 units, but it is separate from these. And so with those two courses, we have a total of 24 that are required to be taken to graduate in public schools currently. The major differences between these two lists are that English language arts, ELA here, and science fine arts have fewer courses required to graduate. 

And so, with these courses being considered taught in compliance with standards, but not necessarily taught to every class in the state, the minimum graduation requirements are more reflective of what every public student in the State is being taught and the academic standards being taught in each of those student courses. So as far as pathways to graduation, we have two general pathways. We have traditional and alternative, which has been defined for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Both of them are required to earn that minimum 22 units. 

There are alternate academic standards provided for the alternative pathway, as well as an alternate assessment program, which Adrienne will get into in detail when she goes over the assessment system. The success-ready pathways you see here have been added for 24-25 year also. This is the first year that students were able to start that pathway. DESE’s identified these two different ways as a diploma with merit and a diploma with distinction, which is the difference between the credential that’s earned at the end of that graduation pathway. 

And so for further detail here, a credential of value is meant to be earned at the both of those pathways. It depends on which credential is earned that makes that distinction between merit and distinction diploma. Success Ready, generally, is just identifying what students will be graduating with, which includes the knowledge, skills, and abilities and habits chosen on their path, which DCTE has identified as anything that would result in including, but without limitation, enlistment, enrollment, and employment. 

The standards for accreditation generally reinforce the state’s expectations, and beyond the statutory requirements, there are additional requirements for the career-ready pathways. And so according to rules, the minimum academic core required for graduation, that 22 plus those additional two courses required, are also embedded with career and technical courses in these cases. And so for the first time in 24-25 school year, a career-ready pathway to diploma was identified. 

And this is more consistent with the requirement that schools offer the high wage and high demand jobs. As you can see here, there’s a difference in language, in statute, and in rules. According to DCTE, their H2 designation is high wage, high demand, but the credential is also demonstrating the Arkansas labor market’s high wage and high growth fields. So in addition to those graduation requirements, we have a review of past legislation that are related to the academic standards. 

So as I mentioned earlier, the review of the academic standard is on a cycle. But pursuant to legislation, the social studies academic standards are going to be reviewed and updated by the 26-27 school year to include the following requirements based on the U.S. Government systems. There’s also an additional unit dedicated to the veterans and their families that’s to be embedded in Arkansas history courses, which would include those units in social studies at the elementary level, and then that separate course at the secondary schools. 

And lastly, we have two acts that were embedded to be included in the academic standards wherever at the earliest grade appropriate. The firearm safety instruction is to be developed in consultation with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. And the discussion of human fetal growth and development is to made in discussion and consultation approval by the Department of Health. 

Both of these are going to be implemented– I’m sorry, both of these legislations have not identified an implementation year. But they have required that they are embedded. So sorry, the firearm safety has embedded in 25–26. The discussion of human and fetal growth development has not identified a specific implementation year, but they are going to be implemented whatever relevant standards. 

And so DESE’s discretion, they will identify which ones of those will get implemented and at what point they get revised in the academic cycle. So in summary, by applying the definition of adequacy, we’ve got two broad ways to describe and review academic standards for students in Arkansas. We have what’s to be taught, which is included in the state curriculum and the academic system implemented in each public school, what students should be demonstrating through achievement as measured by the standards included in the state’s testing system per the adequacy definition but also corresponds to the State Accountability Act. 

And so DESE’s established academic standards are defining what students should know and be able to demonstrate at the end of each course. And so, comprehensively, we identify the ways that the curriculum and standards are connected to each other and define what students are expected to know as far as the accountability systems in place to monitor that. We have the standards for accreditation and the systems that Elizabeth will take you through. 

Elizabeth Bynum Excuse me. So now we’ll move on to our accountability systems. So as Leah just described, the standards and the curriculum frameworks are defining what Arkansas students need to know, what we want Arkansas students to be able to know and be able do. The accountability systems are the methods for ensuring that students are actually learning what’s in the standards. 

We do have a federal and a state accountability system and we’re going to go through both of those. We’re going to start with the federal law, which is the Every Student Succeeds Act, which we’ll refer to as ESSA. ESSA, excuse me– as we remember from the statute, and as Leah mentioned earlier, one of the requirements in the adequacy statute is for the committees to review the ESSA state standing under ESSA. 

Representative Keith Brooks I’m going to interrupt you for just a second. I think we had a couple of member questions or at least one. So I don’t want to get too far down into another presentation before we address those if that’s all right. Representative Duke, you’re recognized.

Course waivers

Representative Hope Duke Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know everyone’s surprised that I would have a question. I didn’t want to disappoint anybody today. So my question is kind of a– I had a couple of questions about the Act in 2003 and it referenced the waivers. And then my understanding from your presentation is that at one time they were not allowed to have waivers. And then I know you said a lot of that’s been repealed. So was that portion of that where, when it was repealed, then they could ask for waivers in those areas? 

Leah Headley Yes, so regarding the required courses, and so anything identified as what a required course in the standards for accreditation, from, I believe, it’s Act 1015 of 2007 that granted the authority to provide waivers for those courses, so from 2007 to 2015, they had waivers. 

They could request and petition the state board for a waiver for not teaching and offering one of those required courses. And so, Act 853 of 2015 repealed the requirement that they petition for a waiver and then just decided and redetermined what a course considered as taught would mean. 

And so that was, if they could provide a schedule that included that course, if they had qualified personnel to teach the course but no eligible student or any student enrolled to take that course, then that would still be considered taught and they wouldn’t need a waiver to submit saying that they couldn’t teach the cause because it was now considered to be taught because they offered and attempted to offer and teach the courses to students. 

Representative Hope Duke So is that the only area the waivers or their ability to apply for or not apply for waivers, is that the area that was, as far as the course offering, that that was addressed? It did not address any other areas of applying for waivers? 

Leah Headley So there’s separate waiver authority broadly in state statute for the rules governing standards for accreditation. One of those waivers is the request to embed and combine curriculum into one course. And so that was the embedded content. And so, that still requires a waiver. Those are submitted to the state board. 

Other waivers, as far as, because the standards for accreditation include more than academic standards, right? So we have the requirement that they have library media specialists, the requirement that have guidance counselors. All those just public school system requirements, each of those waivers are covered and just broadly by waiver authority, which is, I think, in rules just defined as something that they can do for the state board. 

Representative Hope Duke Okay, so that was kind of waiver specific in that instance. Okay, my next question is, I guess, for the chairs and for staff. I would think if we could do it, it would be helpful to have, at least for me, a kind of chart comparison of this is what– because we went through those different acts and then you talk about, well, this is repealed and this is not. 

And I would find it beneficial if we can have it in a chart so we could see, was it in 97, 2003, and see when things came and when they went. Because there may have been some things that were there, they got repealed, that we might want to look at maybe we shouldn’t have repealed that. 

Maybe that didn’t go so great when we changed that. But it’s kind of hard to compare and contrast through– I mean, the presentation was great. And thank you so much, because I know it’s a lot of work. And I really appreciate it. I find it fascinating. But just for me to glance and to look at and to kind of see, analyze a little bit more. 

If it would be possible to have it in that type of format, I think that would be helpful for me. I’m hoping ChatGPT world, I know you do more than that, but to be able to put it in a chart, that type format would be really great, at least I think for us to utilize as we go forward and review, if that’s possible. 

Representative Keith Brooks If staff says it’s possible, then I’m sure it’s great. They’re generally more competent than ChatGPT. 

Representative Hope Duke Oh, I know they are. 

Leah Headley Yes, it’s possible we can do that. 

Representative Hope Duke Yeah, I mean, I’m hoping it’s not a significant amount of work. Just that layout, I think would just be, at least, like I said, at least helpful for me to see how it’s kind of progressed at a snapshot. 

Leah Headley Are you wanting those transitions for the course curriculum and state curriculum specifically? 

Representative Hope Duke I would just like the laws transitioned. And I don’t, again, I don’t know how encompassing that is. Because I know you mentioned that you didn’t really go into detail all the different aspects maybe that were repealed and I appreciate that. But I don’t know how detailed that is and that’s why I was a little concerned.

I don’t want to put, you’ve done a tremendous amount of work here already. But I would like to see by that kind of detail just because it helps us to see where we were, why maybe one legislature changed something and another legislature may want to come back and either implement or maintain or tweak a little bit more. 

And being able to contrast that progression in a chart form, I think would be in much easier reading, at least. This was great. I don’t want to seem critical of this at all. It was great. It’s just kind of the ease of comparing them, I think. You’ve sparked my interest to where I’d like to be able to do that a little more in depth. 

Leah Headley Yeah, I can say that the Quality Education Act of 2003, which Elizabeth talked about yesterday, is very similar in structure to Act 930 that established the current state accountability system. It really, in several instances, is a matter of substitution of words. 

And so curriculum frameworks for academic standards, No Child Left Behind, Every Student Succeeds Act. Previously it was the ACTAP, which is Arkansas Comprehensive Testing and Assessment and Accountability Program substituted for the new system. And so yeah, we can go through those comparisons of– because those have been the two systems that we’ve had so far is that it was 2003 and then out 2017. So we cross compare those ones as well as the changes and requirements in each of those. 

Representative Hope Duke That would be fantastic. I really appreciate your willingness to work with me on that one. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Representative Keith Brooks You’re recognized to continue. Thank you. 

Every Student Succeeds Arkansas plan

Elizabeth Bynum Okay, moving back to the Every Student Succeeds Act, a few notes about how ESSA works. ESSA has requirements in a number of broad areas for states. Each state is required to submit an ESSA plan to the Federal Department of Education for review and approval. Arkansas’s plan was most recently approved as amended in 2022. So the six categories that you see on your screen are the six categories that Adrienne and I are going to take you through in this section. 

For each of these categories, we’re going to show you what ESSA requires, what is included in Arkansas’ plan for how Arkansas is going to meet that ESSA requirement, and then what’s currently happening in the states. And we’ll start with academic standards and assessment, as it requires that the state have challenging academic standards in English language arts or reading, mathematics, and science. 

And as you know from Leah’s presentation, the state does have academic standards for each of those subjects. And then regarding assessment, the State has to have an assessment, and it must contain at least three levels of achievement. So under the Arkansas plan, Arkansas schools must administer assessments to at least 95% of their students annually. 

And this is a requirement in Arkansas and schools can be held accountable for violations of the standards if they are not testing at least 95% of students. And then Arkansas’s summative assessments in English language arts, math and science have four levels of achievement. Adrienne is going to talk more about those in a few minutes. I do want to note here, in the Arkansas ESSA plan, at the time the ESSA Plan was originally passed, the Arkansas was administering the assessment known as the ACT ASPIRE. 

As of 2024, Arkansas now administers the ATLAS examination, but the ESSA Plan continues to refer to the ACT ASPIRE. The next as a requirement is a statewide accountability system. Arkansas does have a statewide accountability system that is the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act. And following our ESSA section, Adrienne and I will take you through that accountability act. And now I’ll turn it over to Adreinne for our next couple of sections. 

Adrienne Beck Thank you. So with that, we’re going to get into the ESSA student achievement progress portion. So we’re going to get into some of the achievement data. And so within that, we’re to get in to some of long-term goals laid out in ESSA on student achievement specifically within Arkansas’ ESSA plan, how that’s being met and then available corresponding data. 

To start us off, here are the first set of achievement requirements from ESSA. So states are required to set long term goals on proficiency on annual statewide assessments, progress towards English language proficiency and high school graduation rates. 

Arkansas goals and benchmarks

To meet those, Arkansas’ ESSA plan first created in 2018 and last approved by the US Department of Education in 2022 sets four long term goals, meaning they have to be met by 2030. So the first achievement goal is to have 80% of students achieving a test-based grade-level proficiency score in ELA and math. While science is required to be assessed, science is not included in the long-term achievement goals. 

Next, we have in the ESSA plan a goal of 52% of English-language students on track to English language proficiency, a 94% four-year graduation rate, and a 97% five-year graduate rate. Additionally, as part of the long-term goals, Arkansas’ ESSA plan includes interim checkpoint goals to help determine progress towards that 2030 goal. So we’ll include those as available throughout this portion. The next set of ESSA requirements include student growth or another indicator that allows for meaningful differentiation of school performance. 

This is achieved in Arkansas’s ESSA plan through the ESSA school index score. This measures academic achievement, English language proficiency, graduation rates, and school quality and success indicators. Additionally, ESSA requires that this particular goal and the previous two goals, the last slide, encompass economically disadvantaged students, students of racial and major racial and ethnic groups, excuse me, children with disabilities and English learners. S

o they are required to call these ESSA student subgroups. So we’ll see those throughout as well. So in Arkansas’s ESSA plan, their student sub groups include African-American students, Hispanic or Latino students, white students, economically disadvantaged students, which in Arkansas, this refers to students who are eligible for free or reduced price lunch, English learner students, and then students with disabilities or those in special education. 

So as noted earlier, ESSA requires states to have at least three performance levels on their statewide assessments. And you heard that under ATLAS, the statewide assessment used in Arkansas, this includes four that are shown here. For the review of student proficiency levels in this portion, we’re going to look primarily at the percentage of students scoring level three or four proficient or above. So with that, Atlas assessments for grades three through 10 assess in three main subjects, English language arts, math, and science. 

So you’ll notice math and science here only go up to eighth grade. That is because ninth and 10th grades include end of course assessments and specific subjects, including algebra, geometry, and biology that we will go over in a later section. In 2025, 35% of students scored proficient or above in English language arts or ELA, 39% in math and then 38% in science. 

Testing results

All of these were increases were from the previous 24 school year. So broken out by the grade level, starting with English language arts, you’ll see here in 2025, all grade levels had between 31% and 39% scoring proficient or above in 25, which is a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year. Next, we have that grade level by math. So in 2025, all grade levels had between 32% and 43% scoring proficient or advanced, which were mostly increases from the previous year with the exception of fifth grade, which had a slight decrease in 2025. 

Finally, we have science. So all grade levels here had between 37 and 39%, scoring level three or four, proficient or advanced, and all of these were increases from the previous school year. Then we have those proficiency levels broken out by our ESSA student subgroups. So across all three subjects, English learner students had the lowest percentage of students scoring proficient or above, ranging from 5% in ELA to 11% in math. 

White students had the highest percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced, ranging from 42% in ELA to 48% in Math. So our next long-term goal within ESSA is to have 52% of English learners on track to English language proficiency by 2030. So to be considered on track for English language proficiency, an English learner student must meet one of the following criteria. 

So they have to either exit status as an English learners student, they have to meet time expectations on three or more domains within the ELPA 21. The ELPA 21 is the alternate assessment used specifically for English language learner students. And we’ll get into those specific results a little bit later today. And then the third expectation or the third criteria, I should say, is to meet time expectations on non-exempt ELPA domain. 

So this is very specific to that ELPA21 exam that we’ll get into a little later. So this chart shows the percentage of English learners on track to English language proficiency going back to 2018, which was when that ESSA plan went into effect. So we’re going back to that original baseline. So you’ll see in 2018, 44 percent of all English learners were considered on track. That decreased to 38% in 2021 and then back up to 41% in 2024, which is the most recently available data for this measure. 

For English learner students with disabilities and long-term students, that percentage on track remained below all students for all years reported here. So the boxes in green, these are our interim checkpoint goals that were listed in the ESSA plan as kind of ways to kind of monitor progress towards that 2030 goal. So you’ll see in 2018, Arkansas’ percentage of all students on track exceeded that goal and then fell just below those goal checkpoints for 2021 and then 2024. 

Moving on to graduation rates, so we have two of these. We have a four-year graduation rate and a five-year. So four-year refers to students who graduate at high school in four years. And then five years, of course, refers to those graduating within five school years, or excuse me, five years. Both include those with a regular diploma as well as those with significant cognitive disabilities who earned a state-defined alternate diploma. 

Arkansas’ ESSA plan sets a four year graduation rate goal of 94% by 2030. Similarly, we have progress goals here shown in yellow and they are a little bit different that they begin in 2019. So as of 2019, almost 88% of Arkansas students graduated high school in four years, just under that progress goal of 88.76 in 2019. 

Arkansas’ four year graduation rate increased to 88.2% in 2022, and then fell below that progress goal of 90.5. As of 2024, in the most recently available data we have for this, 89% of Arkansas students graduate at high school within four years. Then we have our four-year rates by our ESSA student subgroups. So white students had the highest four-year graduation rate with 91%. 

And then English learner students had the lowest of 83% for the 2024 school year. Next are five year graduation rates. So again, the 2030 goal is 97%. So in 2019, just over 90% of Arkansas students graduated within five years, exceeding that progress goal of 87%, or almost 87%, and then that five year rate decreased to almost 90% in 2022, which just missed the progress goal of 90.2 for that year. 

As of 2024, that five-year graduation rate was 90.2% overall. And then finally, our five-year graduation rates for our ESSA student subgroups a similar pattern here with the four-year rates. English learners had the lowest five-year graduation rate of 85%, and then white students had the highest with 92%. So that concludes the student achievement portion, and I’ll hand it back to Elizabeth for the next category. 

Elizabeth Bynum Our next category is school support and improvement activities. 

Representative Keith Brooks I’m going to interrupt just one moment, Elizabeth. We have a question. We would all be disappointed if we didn’t have a question from Representative Duke. So, Representative Duke, you’re recognized for a question 

Representative Hope Duke Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m glad not to disappoint. So my question is, do you know offhand right now, and if not, can you get to us the year that we are the highest on this percentages, on our proficiency? So start we at 2018. On all of those, on your English language and stuff, can you give us the highest year that we have on record and the lowest year that we have on record? 

Adrienne Beck Not off-hand, but we can certainly get that to you for the English learners and their graduation rates. And we, of course, have older percentages for the state level assessments, but we just don’t include them because they’re not comparable because they are ACT Aspire and then ACTAP. So that is a little bit different. But for the other two measures, we can certainly get that. 

Representative Hope Duke Well, they’re testing relatively over the same standards all these years. I mean, those different tests, whether it’s ACT Aspire or whether …. benchmark world. And I know we change the standards a little bit over time. But some of the basic things are still there, the basic things we want them to teach. 

So even though I understand it’s not apples to apples, it’s as close to apples to apple as we’re going to get looking at those tests. So I would like to know, I mean, you can put like an asterisk or whatever by it, as far as this is an ACT Aspire, or this is a benchmark exam. But to be able to look back and see in history, if there was a time period that we had 80% on anything or 60% on any thing, I think it behooves us to go, okay, what were we doing then that we’re not doing now? And if it’s not comparable, that’s fine.

 But I think, it would be useful for us to see. Because the 2018– and I understand, but I’d like to know the highest we’ve ever had and the lowest we’ve ever had. So then we can go look or maybe ask more questions of you all. Okay, what was going on at that time period? I wouldn’t think that would be that big of a– 

Adrienne Beck Absolutely not. We definitely have that information and can get that to you pretty quickly. 

Representative Hope Duke Thank you, I appreciate that. That’s the only one I have. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Meeks, you’re recognized. 

Representative Stephen Meeks Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I’ve got two so I can top Representative Duke. So my first question, with these benchmarks, are there any penalties if we fail to meet those benchmarks? Or does the federal government provide more resources? What is the ramifications of failing to meet these benchmarks? 

Adrienne Beck So if you’re referring to the interim ones, I’m not aware of any penalty for that. In terms of the long-term goals, I don’t know for sure what the ramifications of that would be. That might be a question for the department. For those large, like 2030 goals, I’m not sure about those. 

Representative Stephen Meeks Okay, I’d just kind of be curious if it’s, we’d like you to meet them, if you do great, if you don’t, no big deal. Then what’s the point, right? So my second question is, in the LEARNS Act, we included tutors to try to help with reading proficiency to bring those up for our 3rd grade students. 

When might we start seeing, or have we already started seeing the impact of that on the student test scores for the 3rd and fourth grade classes? Would we already start seeing that or is that something that we’ll start seeing this year to know what kind of impact those are having? 

Adrienne Beck Overall, I would say that’s probably–  I don’t have expertise in terms of measuring effectiveness of that program. We’ll look at grade level results for 3rd and fourth, for that level, for reading and for writing as well in a later portion. So we can see the 24 and 25, but I can’t say confidently if that’s going to reflect that or not. 

That would be better answered by the department. But I’ll also say to the accountability piece for the long term goals– there are other accountability measures that may or may not be directly tied to those long term goals but do look at other measures within the achievement system to look at other ways of supporting districts that might not be meeting those. 

Representative Stephen Meeks Okay. All right. Thank you,

Representative Keith Brooks  Representative Andrews. 

Representative Wade Andrews If you go back and look at some of the slides with the graphs, to me, it looks at pre-pandemic, we had higher rates, and then they took maybe one or two back before then. You had higher rates right there before the pandemic. We took a nosedive in the pandemic. How long before we get to pre-pandemic rates and fix the errors of the shutdown? 

Adrienne Beck That’s a good question. I don’t think I would be able to– I think that might be better by the department. They’re more familiar with that level of information. 

Representative Wade Andrews I’m just worried we’ve ruined a generation of kids by sending them home and not letting them learn. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Mayberry. 

Representative Julie Mayberry Thank you. I’m just curious, that 80% goal, our state has set that as the goal. That may not be the same goal that other states have. Am I understanding that correctly? 

Adrienne Beck That’s correct. Every state has a different plan, so they’ll have different goals, different mechanisms in place for how they measure it. But Arkansas’ is 80%.

Representative Julie Mayberry So going beyond that, let’s just say other states do have 80 percent or something like that, or do you know what other states have set as their goal, and has any state met that? I mean, we’re down here in the 30s, and our goal is 80 percent. Yes, we want it that high, but has any State achieved that? 

Adrienne Beck I’ll let Elizabeth take a look at that or answer that. I know we could definitely look at other states. I don’t know offhand, but I’ll see if Elizabeth has any more information on that. 

Elizabeth Bynum I haven’t looked specifically at other states’ ESSA plans, but I’d be happy to look into that for you. 

Representative Julie Mayberry Thank you. Just curious how we compare. I know we’re way down there, but I want to be realistic. Thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks And I would say I think it’d be helpful to have a comparison on the state by state, maybe at a future meeting, Representative Mayberry. When you look at things like NAEP scores, there’s a lot of consistency in terms of lack of progress, even the last 40 years, and most states are relatively low, frankly. 

And so I think would be interesting to see. Every state obviously has their own testing mechanisms individually, so I would think it would be interesting to compare, perhaps, how states have progressed with their own testing mechanisms versus maybe what NAEP scores look like, which could be instructive for us moving forward. Representative Painter, you’re recognized.

Representative Stetson Painter Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just kind of want to follow down the line of questions. My good friend from Camden was going down, on the English language proficiency. I get it. We had the pandemic. What year did we test? I don’t think we tested in 21. 

Elizabeth Bynum We did not test in 2020. We did test in 2021. 

Representative Stetson Painter Okay, so would it be, with that almost 10% decline, safe to say that that’s a reflection on that year before, correct? 

Adrienne Beck For this particular measure, this is not referencing a specific test. These are students who are meeting those eligibility criteria to be considered on track. So this is a not a tie to a specific assessment. It has components that are connected to it, but this chart right here is not tied specifically to the test. But that may still be time-wise, that still might be part of it in terms of the COVID response. 

Representative Stetson Painter Okay, thank you for explaining that. I just wanted to make sure. I wasn’t aware. Thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks Thank you, members. You can continue with the presentation. 

Elizabeth Bynum I will note first, Adrian is going to get into some NAEP scores later in the presentation, so we’ll see some of those later. Our next ESSA category is school support and improvement activities. The ESSA requirement is that states must have a method for identifying districts that are in need of support and providing that support. The Arkansas ESSA plan has three categories of school support. We’ll see those in a couple of slides. The exit criteria requires the school to demonstrate continued progress by an upward trend on the ESSA school index for two plus years and meet or exceed their initial ESSA School Index score. 

So the ESSA school index, we’ll see on the next slide. And so that’s the manner that the ESSA plan states that districts will be identified for support. Here you can see the calculation for the ESSA school index. This is in the ESSAA plan. It’s the method for meaningfully differentiating schools as required under ESSA. You can see that it includes weighted achievement, growth, progress to English language proficiency, the four and five year graduation rates, all of which Adrienne just discussed, and the school quality and success indicator. The school quality and success indicator is calculated on a per student basis. 

So you’ll see obviously some of those ACT scores, high school GPA are only applying to high schools. But for any student who’s not in a high school, those categories would not be included in their scores. So it’s possible for every school to have a score for the school quality in success indicator. Now looking at those three categories of support. These come from the Arkansas ESSA Plan. 

Under the ESSA plan, these are calculated using those ESSA School Index scores and districts and schools are removed based on their progress on the ESSA School Index. The ESSA School Index has currently not been calculated for 24 and 25. According to the department, the last identification for schools occurred in 2022. And those schools will be exiting support this year. And I’ll turn it back to Adrienne. 

Teacher accessibility

Adrienne Beck Thank you. So our next category within ESSA regards equitable access to educators. So as it requires states to describe how they will ensure low income and minority students are not taught disproportionately by ineffective out of field or inexperienced educators. 

To meet that requirement, Arkansas’s ESSA plan requires the department to identify schools who received Title One funding. These are schools that have at least 40% or more of students eligible for free or reduced price lunches. So they’re going to look at those schools and then how many of those have disproportionate rates of these educators. And then Arkansas’ plan goes on to state that any districts with disproportionate rights would be required to attend equity labs and develop other plans to better target support. 

To achieve those access goals laid out in Arkansas’ ESSA plan, DESE is used to identify these Title I schools using the following measures. So we have the high poverty, high minority report. This was developed by the division and reports progress towards ensuring that low income and minority children in Title I Schools are not disproportionately served by these teachers. That was last reviewed or last produced for the 23 school year, so we aren’t going to review that here. 

And then we also have the workforce stability index. This refers to a DESE created measure of workforce quality used to identify districts and schools with potential access gaps to target resources to help close those gaps. No data is available for this index for the 24 and 25 school years, so they’re not going to be included here as well. As previously noted, DESE also uses equity labs for this purpose, as noted in the ESSA plan. 

These were recommended to begin in the spring of 2018, with at least 15 per school year beginning in the 2019 school year. Though we don’t have any evidence to show that those have occurred since then. And then lastly, we have the school report card. This refers to a comprehensive report of state and federal accountability and reporting measures from DESE, including measures to help determine these disproportionate rates of teachers. And so we do have some data from that for the 25 school year that we’ll go over next. 

Quick terminology before we get into that, so we’re going to refer to high poverty and low poverty schools within that, and this refers to the highest and lowest quartile of schools based on their concentration of students who are eligible for free or reduced price lunches. So before I get into this data, I do want to note that the report card doesn’t differentiate by Title I status, but strictly by high poverty and low poverty schools. So the charts are going to show us the percentage of effective teachers as determined by TESS, which is the Teacher Excellence and Support System. 

This is the statewide system used to evaluate teachers across the state. So the chart here is going to show how these rates of teachers vary by different economic levels of schools. So for 22 through 24, so you’ll see here the overall percentage across all schools, the overall percentage of effective teachers under TESS. That decreased from 92% in 23, and then up to 97% in 2024, which is the most recently available data we have for that. And then you’ll see on the other side of that, for 22 and 24, students in the lower poverty schools had a higher rate of effective teachers than those in the high poverty schools. 

Our second measure from the school report card shows the rate of inexperienced teachers, and that is defined as teachers within their first three years of teaching. So the overall percentage of inexperienced teachers decreased across all schools, from 25% in 2022 to 19% in 2024. That rate also decreased similarly across high and low poverty schools, though the percentage remained higher in high poverty schools. 

And then we don’t have any data regarding the percentage of teachers teaching out of field, so we’re not going to include that here from the report card. But using other data available from the division, we have some additional analysis on Title I schools. So we’ll have a quick round of terminology again before we get into that. So emergency and provisional credentials, these refer to temporary teaching licenses allowing someone to teach in the state of Arkansas meeting certain criteria.

 And then again, Title 1 schools, these are schools with more than 40% of students eligible for free or reduced price lunches. And for context, of the just over 1,000 schools in the state in 2025, 79% were considered Title 1. 

So as noted in ESSA, we looked at Title I schools by the rate of free or reduced-price lunch eligible students, and then minority students using three measures: teachers with emergency or provisional credentials, percentage of teachers considered completely certified, and then the average year of teaching experience. 

So this chart shows that percentage of teachers with the emergency or provisional credentials was twice as high in Title I schools with the highest level of free or reduced price lunch eligible students than those with the lowest levels. And then the percentage of completely certified teachers was higher in schools in the lowest level of free or reduced price lunch eligible students, as was the average year of teaching experience. 

And then looking at Title I schools by level of minority students, so we see that the percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials was three times as high in Title I schools with the highest level of minority students than those with the lowest level. And then the percentage of completely certified teachers was higher in schools with lowest level of minority students, as was the average year of teaching experience. So that concludes the equitable access portion. I’m going to hand it back to Elizabeth for the remainder of the ESSA section. 

Elizabeth Bynum Now we move to some slides looking at the state standing under ESSA. We’ll go briefly through public reporting as it does have requirements for public reporting. You can see that there’s a number of requirements in ESSA. For the Arkansas plan, those requirements are met with the state report cards, which the department is issuing. 

As I noted before, the ESSA School index is specifically mentioned as part of that reporting in the state as a plan, and that is no longer being calculated as of 2024. Looking at the state standing, as we saw with the academic standards, the state does have academic standards and assessments for all required subjects and for levels of achievement. In the ESSA plan, those are still currently based on the ACT Aspire rather than the current assessment, which is the ATLAS. The statewide accountability system, we do have a statewide accountability system, which we’ll discuss in just a minute. 

Representative Keith Brooks Let me interrupt just one moment. Representative Garner [actually, Ennett], did you have a question on the previous section? I apologize. I’m thinking one thing, looking the other way. Do you have a question on the previous section? Okay, you’re recognized.

Representative Denise Ennett Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question about the previous presenter, what you said about the ESSA requirements, equitable access to educators, you mentioned on slide, was that 58, about the equity labs. You said that, so we’re not doing that, or can you elaborate more on that? 

Adrienne Beck  As far as I know, I haven’t seen those happening. But the division may have more details on that than I do. But as far as I know, I haven’t seen any reporting or anything from those if they are happening. 

Representative Denise Ennett Is it mandated to have these? 

Adrienne Beck It’s noted in the ESSA plan, but that’s the only place that comes up, as far as I know. 

Representative Denise Ennett Thank you. And is anybody from the Department of Ed here? 

Representative Keith Brooks We can request that information. 

Representative Denise Ennett Thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Springer? Okay, perfect. All right, you can continue to be recognized, thanks. 

Adrienne Beck Looking at academic achievement, as we saw from Adrienne’s data, looking at ATLAS scores, no student group met the ESSA plan goal of 80 percent in 2005. Looking at English language proficiency, the most recent checkpoint there in 2024, 41 percent of all English language students were on track, and that checkpoint was 43 percent. 

Looking at graduation rates, the most recent checkpoint for graduation rates was in 2022, and for both four-year and five-year graduation rates, the state was just below the checkpoint level. Looking at school support, that school support is based on the end of school ESSA school index scores that are no longer being calculated.

 Again, according to the vision, those were last identified in 2022. And the public reporting, the ESSA school is again not available for 24 or 25. DESE does continue to issue the report cards, and as we’ll discuss in a later section of the report, there is a new school rating system that DESE has implemented as of 2025.

 And finally, looking at access to educators, as Adrienne discussed, much of this information is not currently available and the equity labs do not appear to be occurring currently. And I’ll turn it back to Adrienne. 

Adrienne Beck Thank you. So now we’re going to get into the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act, but for ease, we’re just going to refer to that as the state accountability act going forward. So in this law, the General Assembly found that the state is responsible for providing the necessary statutory framework so that all public school students have a substantially equal opportunity to achieve and demonstrate academic readiness, individual academic growth, competencies through the application and knowledge and skills in core subjects that are also consistent with state academic standards. 

Arkansas’ accountability system that was created in that accountability law closely mirrors Arkansas’ ESSA plan. So that includes challenging academic standards that are periodically reviewed and revised, maintain a statewide student assessment system that includes a variety of assessment measures, establishing levels of support for public districts, and maintaining information systems composed of performance indicators to identify levels of district support. And then we will review available data regarding statewide student assessment system, access to educators and district levels of support required in the Accountability Act. 

Representative Keith Brooks I’m going to recognize Representative Painter for a question.

Representative Stetson Painter Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I apologize. I was trying to press my button real quick. Back on slide 71, it says information on the 2024 report cards did not provide separate data for Title I schools as required. Do we know why? 

Adrienne Beck What was that last question part again? 

Representative Stetson Painter It was on slide 71. Bullet point says, “Information on 2024 report cards did not provide separate data for Title 1 schools as required.” 

Adrienne Beck Not sure. That was DESE-provided information. And that wasn’t available on their website either. So I would have to defer to them on the why behind that one.

Representative Stetson Painter Is that requirement in statute? 

Adrienne Beck I think that’s just in the ESSA plan. I’m not aware of that being in statute. 

Representative Stetson Painter Okay, thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Duke. 

Who can change the plan?

Representative Hope Duke Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to follow up with that. So, because on a couple of these different things on the report are not being issued and those different items. Because obviously we are here because we are required to do all of this assessment and evaluation during this. 

Are these pieces of the puzzles that we should be making sure are being done? Or do we have the flexibility to say, no– or the department have the flexibility to say, We don’t have to issue these report cards or we don’t have to have this data up or whatever these things are. Can you enlighten me on how that falls, as far as us being in compliance with what we’re supposed to be doing? 

Adrienne Beck The only thing I know for sure that, I know because of a transition between plans, I know that it has accounted for some of the lack of information. But I don’t know for sure the details of that. Other than that– Elizabeth, I don’t if you wanted to add any more on the compliance piece of it. 

Elizabeth Bynum This is all information that’s required under the ESSA plan. As I understand, it’d be up to the federal government to enforce that. I don’t know what that enforcement mechanism would look like. 

Representative Hope Duke So this is separate from what we are required to do under our adequacy in those pieces? Or do we fold this in to meet some of our adequacy requirements? 

Adrienne Beck I see our administrator Jasmine Ray coming down, so I’m going to let her. 

Representative Keith Brooks Jasmine, if you would please, introduce yourself and you’re recognized. 

Jasmine Ray Jasmine Ray, Bureau of Legislative Research. So as we went over yesterday, part of the Continuing Adequacy Evaluation Act, which is the entire adequacy, what we’re here for, it stipulates that part of the duties of the legislature is to review Arkansas’ standing under ESSA. 

And so the way we go about that is we look at everything Arkansas has stated they’re going to do in that as a plan, and then we report what information is available to show what our standing is. And so, for example, with the equity labs, it says in the ESSA plan that that’s what’s going to be done is equity labs. But we can’t find any evidence that equity labs have happened. Does that make sense? 

Representative Hope Duke It does make sense. So do we have the ability to change as the legislature what our ESSA plan is? 

Jasmine Ray That’s a good question. I really do not know. 

Representative Hope Duke Because I mean, I would assume, I mean like everything, things change. You get more knowledge, information, or just perspective, so you would think there would be flexibility in it. But if we have said that this is what we’re going to do, it is our job as the body– I mean, you’re telling us what we are doing and what we aren’t doing, right? 

And it’s our job as a body to go, okay, well we’re supposed to be doing these things. So we need to either make sure they’re being done– anyway, we’re not going to get into all that. But as far as the adequacy study is concerned, we’re supposed to be reviewing this to make sure we are in compliance and doing and making changes to make sure we’re providing a good education to Arkansas kids. 

And you’re giving us this information. And what you’re saying with this information right now are these are some pieces of the puzzle that we’re not saying that we’re doing that we had said we were going to do in relation to the plan. 

Adrienne Beck That’s correct. 

Representative Hope Duke And so I guess, where do we find the answer to whether we can change the plan or not? 

Representative Keith Brooks So I don’t believe anybody from the department is here still. I can’t see behind the column, but I’ll make a request that staff requests that information relative to the equity labs, relative to the 2024 report cards, from the apartment. And we’ll see what the response is. And I think that can help us make decisions moving forward. 

Jasmine Ray I would like to add that this report, this entire report was sent to DESE for their review. So they reviewed the report and provided feedback. So they were aware that we would be saying we do not find evidence of equity labs happening.

Representative Hope Duke And, of course, one of my questions was going to be, what is an equity lab? That raises a different question that I have for that as well, just trying to understand some of this terminology and stuff as well. Mr. Chair, did you say that you were going to ask them, too, about our ability to change our ESSA plan? 

Representative Keith Brooks Yeah, we can inquire about that, for sure. 

Representative Hope Duke Yeah, I think that would be helpful to know that if we need to update these we can update these according to– maybe we don’t need to do things exactly. I mean, I like the report cards. I want us to continue to do report cards. Thank you. Appreciate that. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Barnett, you’re recognized. 

Representative Lincoln Barnett I had a quick question as it relates to graduation rates. I see that ESSA is collecting data on four-year and five-year graduation rates. But is there any provision, I guess, within ESSA or any goals within ESSA on reducing dropout rates? And do we have any data in that regard? And when we are looking at the graduation rates, are we only looking at students that are still presently enrolled? Or is there any account given to students that have dropped out? 

Elizabeth Bynum I’m not aware of any– I don’t believe the ESSA plan has anything related specifically to dropout rates, but we’d be happy to pull any data that we can find on that. The graduation rates do adjust based on the number of students. So if a student, say, moves away from a district, the graduation rate is adjusted. But I don’t have anything specific in that ESSA plan to do with dropout rates. 

Representative Lincoln Barnett So you’re stating that you’re not sure that, when we’re looking at graduation rates, we’re not giving any account to students that may have just dropped out. But they’re only making adjustments for students that may have transferred or moved? So I’m just trying to understand the type of data we’re tracking because that really kind of changes things if we’re looking at the whole picture. 

Adrienne Beck There definitely is data collected on dropout rates. Like Elizabeth said, we can definitely provide that. There are no specific long-term goals related to that in the ESSA plan. And I’m not aware of any– that’s obviously a component of the graduation rate in terms of who’s graduating. But it’s not a specific measure that I’m aware of that is tracked within the ESSA plan, but we could certainly get you data outside of that to look at. 

Representative Lincoln Barnett Okay, I’ll be interested in that. I’m just trying to understand whether or not when we’re tracking graduation rates, are we just basing it off of students that are currently and were enrolled at the time of graduation versus any students that may have dropped prior to graduation. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Beck, you’re recognized. 

Representative Rick Beck Thank you Mr. Chair. I’m going to shift gears just a little bit here. I recently read a book and had some information concerning education. And in the book they actually identify as a major, a major component of a child’s education is the parents, emphasizing the importance there on education. 

That was probably the number one factor as far as a success rate. And we looked at a lot of data here and it’s great data. I love this data. You know I like data. But do we ever try to track– I don’t even know how you would do it, but students along the lines where we have parents that are not engaged versus parents that are engaged and across these other attributes that we’re looking at, right, english language learners and all that stuff to see how much of that is actually the result of less involvement by the parents, for whatever reason? Maybe the English language learners, the parents are a bit overwhelmed or something like that. But do you guys ever track any data to deal with that? 

Adrienne Beck I’m not aware off the top of my head of a lot of measures that look at that, just because I’m not sure if that’s been determined the best way to actually capture that information. But we would certainly be happy to look into that to see what data is available about parent engagement and get that to you. 

Representative Rick Beck And just a quick comment that they made, they actually listed probably that private school’s number one thing that excels them is the fact that they have parental engagement, I guess you’d say, in education. And it just seems like we look at a lot of data, but we don’t look at that. And possibly how we could help parents to better understand that, hey, your engagement here is really key to your child’s success, or at least one of the major factors of your child’s success. So I’d be very interested in that data. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Painter. 

Representative Stetson Painter It’s more a question to the chairs. I know we said we might have staff reach out to the department, but maybe I hope the chairs maybe would consider a meeting to have the department answer some questions. 

I just think it’s kind of hard to swallow, if we’re going to require certain individuals or schools to do certain things and then our own department is just going to willy nilly not do certain things, I think they should be able to come to the committee and answer those questions. So I know our staff does a good job reaching out department getting good questions, but I think it would be, maybe behoove us as a committee to be able to have members ask those kind of questions. 

Representative Keith Brooks Agreed. And happy to have the staff put that on the agenda for the first part of the meeting next month. No additional questions, you can continue. 

Adrienne Beck We are back to the– this is the Arkansas Accountability Act, the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability system. So as I said, it closely mirrors components of Arkansas’ ESSA plan. And to look at that, we’re going to look at data from the statewide student assessment system ATLAS. 

We’re going look at additional data regarding access to educators, and then we’re going to look at data regarding district level of support. So we’ll get started with data from the student assessment system. So as required under the State Accountability Act, DESE is required to implement a statewide student assessment for public schools and that is accomplished with the ATLAS system that replaced ACT ASPIRE in 2024, as you heard from Elizabeth. 

Students that are enrolled in public schools are required to take statewide assessment unless they meet specific requirements for alternate assessments that we will discuss more shortly. And I’ll make a note here that, as mentioned, ATLAS refers to the statewide accountability using the statewide assessment. It can also refer to the statewide assessment system, so sometimes it can incorporate all of the tests, the ATLAS, the ACT, but it also refers strictly to the test that we’ll spend some time looking at here shortly as well. 

So with this statewide student assessment system, the Accountability Act requires Arkansas to have developmentally appropriate measures for assessing students in kindergarten through second grade, as well as high quality evidence-based literacy screeners for students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. 

And that is accomplished with the ATLAS K-2 Interim and Summative Assessments in Literacy and Math, and then K through 3rd-grade screeners in Math and Literacy as well. And as of today, the results from the 2024 and 2025 K2 assessments and K3 screeners have not been released yet. So as a reminder, as Leah talked about earlier, the working definition of educational adequacy is to have all or all but the most severely disabled students perform at or above proficiency on these tests. 

So in regards to that, the Accountability Act requires state assessments to measure English language arts, math, and science as identified by the State Board of Education. This is accomplished with the ATLAS assessments that include summative assessments for students in grades three through 10, as well as end-of-course assessments for students in 9th and 10th grades for algebra, geometry, and biology, as well the dynamic learning maps known as the DLM. This is the alternate assessment used for students with disabilities that have the most significant cognitive disabilities. 

Test results

So here we have proficiency levels for ELA, writing and reading for 3rd through 10th grade for the 25 school year. So between 31 and 39% of Arkansas students score proficient or above in ELA as well as reading. And then between 13 and 18% were proficient or above in writing. Then we have proficiency levels for math. So we have through 3rd through 8th grade and then we have algebra results and then for 9th grade and geometry results for 10th grade. 

And that’s just due to the number of kids testing in those grades for reporting purposes. But between 32 and 43% of 3rd through 8th graders were proficient or above in math. 20% of students in 9th grade were proficient or above in algebra. And 13% were proficient or above in 10th grade geometry. 

And then science performance by grade. So between 31 and 39% of 3rd through 8th graders were proficient or above in science. And in 10th grade, 31% were proficient or above in biology. So results from the dynamic learning maps, this is the alternate assessment and for students with disabilities. So we have results here by grade level and by year for 24 and 25. So in 25 between 10 and 39% scored proficient or above an ELA. This is a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year. 

For the math portion of that alternate assessment, between 7% and 19% scored proficient or above in 2025, also a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year. And then for the science portion of that assessment, between 7 and 19% scored proficient or above in 2025, though these were all decreases from the previous school year, excluding 9th grade in which there was no test given. 

So the next requirement from the State Accountability Act includes assessments of English proficiency of all English learners. So this is different from that percentage of students who are on track to English language proficiency. This is going to be results from a very specific assessment, the ELPA21 and the ALT ELPA that we’ll go over here next. So the ELPA21, this is the English language proficiency assessment for the 21st century. It’s the assessment used in Arkansas and a group of other states to measure proficiency in English learners towards English language. 

And then the ALT ELPA, this is the alternate assessment of English language proficiency. So this is given to students who are eligible to take the dynamic learning maps assessment. So results from the ELPA for 24 and 25 by grade level, so this shows for 2025 between 6% and 24% of English learners scored proficient on the ELPA21, which is a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year. 

And then results from the ALT ELPA– that’s incorrect. That should be the ALT ELPA, I apologize. But that’s showing between 1% and 23% scoring proficient in 2025. Again, also a mix of increases and decreases from the previous school year. 

So the next set of requirements from the State Accountability Act requires assessments to measure college and career readiness in 10th through 12th grades, including a career readiness assessment that leads to a nationally recognized work readiness certificate. And it also includes optional additional assessments, including but not limited to civics, government and additional sciences. 

To meet that, the state assessment system includes the ACT WorkKeys, the PSAT, and the– it’s a long acronym– the NMSQT. This is the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, as well as the Arkansas Civics Exam. So currently, the 24 and 25 results in the WorkKeys, the PSAT, The National Merit test, as well as the civics exam have not been released. But we do have results from the ACT that we’ll go over next. So this chart shows the average composite scores of Arkansas high school seniors, along with the percentage of high school seniors tested. 

So for reference, ACT composite scores range from 1 being the lowest to 36 being the highest. Arkansas’s average composite score dropped from 19 in 2020 to 18.5 in 2024, which is the most recently available data. And the percentage of students tested also decreased in this time period from 100% to 95%. So for a national comparison, we’re going to use that percentage of seniors tested again. 

So according to ACT, the best practice is to examine a cohort of states with similar percentages of tested graduates. So that’s what we’ve done here. So these states in 2024 tested between 90 and 100% of high school graduates for the 24 school year. So we’re going to look at Arkansas in comparison to these states. So for the composite score, the average ranged from 17.2 in Nevada to 19.5 in Montana with the average of 18.4, which is where Arkansas was just above that. 

And then a couple of other measures from the ACT is the percentage of seniors meeting readiness benchmarks for English, math, reading, and science. So these benchmarks refer to ACT scores that represent the level of achievement required for students to have a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher, and about 70 to 85% chance of obtaining C or higher in corresponding credit bearing courses. 

So for English benchmarks, the average percentage of high school graduates meeting those range from 37% in Nevada to 53% in Montana, with the average being 46. For math, that ranged from 15% also in Nevada and Oklahoma to 31% in Montana with the average at 22%. And then for reading, it ranged from 25% to 41% in Nevada and Montana again, respectively. 

And finally, in science, that percentage ranged from 17% in Mississippi and Oklahoma to 32% in Wisconsin, with the average at 24%. And you’ll see that Arkansas was at or close to that average for all four of those benchmarks. 

And then finally, the Accountability Act requires participation in the National Assessment of Educational Progress Examinations, this refers to the NAEP. So this is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what students in public and private schools in the United States know and are able to do in various subjects. 

So Arkansas meets that requirement by regular participation in NAEP, which assesses students on a range of subjects in grades 4, 8, and 12. And we’re going to look at results from 4th and 8th grade. This is the most regular assessment given with the most recent administration in 2024. So we’ll start with those results from the reading and math assessments. In 2024, between 20% and 31% of 4th grade students in Arkansas scored proficient or above in math and reading, lower than the national average, which ranged from 27% to 39% in 2024. 

So, looking at these scores, have they varied since 2017? For 4th grade math, Arkansas percentage mirrored a similar pattern to the national average, but remained below that for the last four administrations of that test. So for 4th grade reading, Arkansas mirrored the same pattern for the last four assessments as a national average, though that gap between them did decrease in the last few administrations of that test. 

Then we have 8th grade math. Similarly, Arkansas mirrored that national average between 2017 and 2014 in that trajectory while remaining below that national average 7 percentage points in 2024. And then finally for 8th grade reading, Arkansas’s percentage of 8th graders scoring proficient or above remained below the national average in 2024, though did not fully mirror that national trend of decreasing each year. 

So in 2019, the percentage of students scoring proficient or above increased from 29 to 30%, whereas the national averaged decreased 3 percentage points. So for additional national comparison, with means other states surrounding Arkansas, we looked the SREB states. So this refers to the Southern Regional Education Board. This is a nonpartisan, non-profit interstate compact serving 16 states on public education policy. Those states are shown here. 

So we’re going to look at the average percentage of students scoring proficient or above in each of these four assessments that we just reviewed, starting with 4th grade math. So the percent scoring proficient or above ranged from 31% in Arkansas, Oklahoma and West Virginia to 45% in Florida, with the average at 38%. 

And then 4th grade reading, the percentage scoring proficient or above ranged from 23% in Oklahoma to 34% in Maryland, with an average at 30%. And across these two tests, Arkansas’s average is set just lower than the average of these SREB states. And then results for the 8th grade assessments for these states. In 8th grade math, the percentage scoring proficient or above ranged from 17% in Oklahoma to 29% in Virginia, with the average at 23%. 

And then in 8th grade reading, the percentage ranged from 21% in Alabama and West Virginia to 33% in Maryland, with the average at 26. And across these two tests, Arkansas’ percentage sat lower than the average of these SREB states as well. So the next portion takes us to the access to educators section. 

Representative Keith Brooks Just one second. Representative Duke, you’re recognized. 

Representative Hope Duke Thank you again, Mr. Chair. Thank you, again, for the presentation. A couple of questions. The first one, and I don’t know if you can– I assume you’ve already answered this. I’d like to know how many assessments or screeners our students are taking in the different grade levels, because I know it varies from grade levels in the year. 

And if you don’t have that right at hand, if you could get that to us. And the second question I have is, similar to what we had before, can we have the highs and lows? On these different reports that you’ve had on this one, but also on the NAEP, I know you’re just doing that Southern group. Can you get us the high and the low in the country of those scores too? 

Adrienne Beck Absolutely. I can get that to you pretty quickly. 

Representative Hope Duke Because I think, I mean, we are competing in a nation– worldwide– for our workforce and stuff. And so for us to be able to see how we’re competing with across the country, I think is important for us as well. And I’m assuming we can’t compare that very well globally, but it would be nice if we could. Just to kind of keep perspective on that because we always need to be able to measure what we’re doing. So that’s all. Thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Garner, you’re recognized. 

Representative Denise Garner Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ve got a question and this may be for the department, but you guys may know. On slide 84 where we’re talking about the science by grade level, we dropped significantly in 25, half as much. Is that a difference in testing or a difference in assessment? 

Adrienne Beck There was no change in assessment, as far as I’m aware of. So I would have to yield to the department for further explanation. 

Representative Denise Garner Okay, great, thank you. But I’m reading that right, right? In 25? 

Adrienne Beck That’s correct. 

Representative Denise Garner Half? Okay, great. Thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks No other questions, you’re recognized to continue. 

Adrienne Beck So that takes us to the access to educators portion of the State Accountability Act. So within that, statutory requirements, there are a couple here. And these are similar to the ones apart from the ESSA requirements. So first, the General Assembly says that all public school students should be taught by qualified and effective educators, as well as low-income and minority students shouldn’t be served at disproportionate rates of ineffective out-of-field, inexperienced teachers as well. It also requires DESE to assess if students have access to excellent teachers via the state accountability system. 

For this portion, there’s no specific requirements on how to measure that, so we’re going to review a few available measures regarding teacher quality. So that includes the average percentage of teachers with a bachelor’s degree, with a master’s degree, again, the average percent of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials, average years of teaching experience, and then geographic shortage areas that comes from DESE. So first we pull some teacher data from DESE and analyze them by Title I status. 

So this is a little different from the earlier Title I analysis, because we’re looking strictly at measures in Title I schools compared to non-Title I schools, whereas previously we looked at concentration of student groups in those Title I school. So you’ll see here that Title I schools had more teachers with a bachelor’s degree and fewer teachers with a master’s degree than Title I Schools. 

And then Title I School also had double the percentage of teachers working with emergency or provisional credentials and a teacher with lower number of teaching experience. So we’re going to break those measures out geographically, give you a sense of how that ranges across the state, starting with the percentage of teachers with a bachelor’s degree. So this ranged from 25% to 82% across traditional school districts. So open enrollment public charters aren’t included on the maps because they don’t have geographic boundaries. 

But for reference, the average percentage of teachers with a bachelors degree ranged from 33 to 100%. And then we have the percentage of teachers with a master’s degree ranging from 18% to 75% across traditional school districts. And then for those charters, that ranges from 0% to 67%. Then the average percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials, that ranged from 0 to 20% across the state with traditional school districts. 

Again, for charters that ranged from 0% up to 33%. Then finally the distribution of districts by average year of teaching experience which range from five to 20 years across traditional school districts. And then for charters, that ranged from 1 to 17 years. And then our final map for this section, this comes from the division. They put together an annual geographic list of geographic shortage districts. 

So these are the ones for the 25 school year. And they determine need based on three-year averages that include teacher supply and demand. So districts in red have the highest need. And you can see those concentrated in the southeast part of the state there. And with that, I will hand it back to Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth Bynum Next we move into levels of support for public school districts. 

Representative Keith Brooks Let me grab a couple questions real quick. Representative Ennett, you’re recognized. 

Representative Denise Ennett Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a quick question. Can you explain what provisional credentials are? 

Adrienne Beck I can. Just a second. I have the definition here, I think, in front of me. So provisional credentials, this is a three year license issued to an experienced professional for the purpose of teaching on a part time or full time basis as a teacher of record in Arkansas school. So it’s a three-year license given to somebody. There’s some specific requirements they have to meet. I don’t have those with me, but to meet to get to that license, so it is not just anybody that can get that license. That’s what that is. 

Representative Keith Brooks I promise I’m trying. 

Representative Denise Ennett Thank you. Is that what alternative teaching certificate, is that in lines of that? Or is that something totally different? 

Adrienne Beck It might be part of it, but I believe there’s some other ones that would be included in that. There’s some different routes. I think that may be more referring to the pathways of getting to that, but this is more of just different types of licensure that might be issued at the state level. I think they’re connected, but I don’t think they are the same thing exclusively. 

Representative Stetson Painter Thank you, Mr. Chair. How many Title I and non-Title I schools do we have in the state? And if you don’t have that, you can get that to me. 

Adrienne Beck 1,063. I’ll have to do some quick math. We have 1,064 schools. 79% are Title I. So I don’t have a calculator here in front of me. 

Representative Stetson Painter That’s fine, I can do that. Thank you. 

Adrienne Beck It’s a lot. 

Representative Stetson Painter All right, thanks. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Duke.

Representative Hope Duke Thank you, Mr. Chair. You can see I’m rubbing off on Representative Painter here with all the questions. Careful who you sit by. So my question is, on the geographic shortage districts, do we have any data that shows if, since the LEARNS and the passage of the higher teacher salaries, if there’s any movement in that the people are staying or going to some of these? I mean, I get the needs are still there. But are we seeing any improvement because the salaries have gone up? Is there any data that shows that? 

Adrienne Beck I know there’s definitely data that looks at that. I haven’t looked at it specifically. That might be a part of, a bigger part of our teacher report. That’ll be later this summer. But we can certainly get some information to you in the interim if you want to look at that. 

Representative Hope Duke I think that would be really helpful. And also if it’s incorporated in that report too, but it’s nice to see. I mean, I’m hopeful. I know at least I’ve heard in a few around that still show higher need in my area. I do know there’s been a little bit more retention of some of their teachers. But what you see on the ground is not necessarily what’s showing up in the paper and it may not be completely accurate. So if we could have that data, I think would be great. Thank you so much. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Barnes. 

Representative Glenn Barnes Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for so much information. This is a lot of info here. But I’m wondering, the stats are kind of leading us in certain directions. And with the difference in the needs in certain areas, are we using these stats to generate ideas of putting more money or something, resources in these areas to bring them up? I mean, we’re seeing that there’s a great distance between the teachers who have the qualifications and those who don’t in the South. Are we using this data maybe early? Are we using this data to maybe fund, give more funding to these areas, to bring the them up? 

Adrienne Beck I know there are programs that provide support to different areas like geographic shortage areas. I think there’s some different benefits to there. But to the broader question, that’s more of a question for the department and the legislature to what decisions need to be made or should be made regarding the data. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative McGruder, you’re recognized.

Representative Jessie McGruder Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you for this wonderful presentation. You had said that there are some programs to help in these geographical needed areas. What are some of those programs? 

Adrienne Beck What was that last part of the question? I want to make sure I heard it. 

Representative Jessie McGruder You said there’s some programs to help in some areas where there’s a shortage. 

Adrienne Beck I’m referring to some kind of teacher recruitment, retention. I’m thinking of those, which I know we’ll get more into in the teacher report. I think May or June is when we have that presentation. I can’t think of them more in detail off the top of my head, but there are some programs that are designed to support schools that maybe have different issues, like the geographic shortage area. So different areas that may not be performing as well or in more isolated areas or along those lines, but we’ll certainly get that information more in the report. But if you want anything in the meantime, we’d be happy to provide that. 

Representative Jessie McGruder You said we’ll get to that today? 

Adrienne Beck Not today. That’ll be in our teacher report. I believe that’s scheduled for June as of right now. If you need anything in the meantime, we’d be happy to get you some more information. 

Representative Jessie McGruder That would be great. 

Adrienne Beck Absolutely. 

District distress and measures

Elizabeth Bynum Now we move into levels of support for public school districts. So under our accountability, Arkansas accountability system, the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education is required to assign each district a level of support from one to five. Level one is the lowest level of support, where districts have access to guidance, tools, and DESE contacts. 

Level five is the highest level of the support, where a district can potentially be put into state authority, meaning that DESE, that the state board, removes either the superintendent and or the board of directors. DESE has discretion in determining the district levels of support. You can see under the classification criteria that there are two instances where districts have a mandated level of support based on summative reading scores. I do want to note there that ‘in need of support’ is a Designation based on the ACT Aspire. 

So districts with certain reading scores are mandated to be in level three or level four based on students scoring in need support, but that’s based on that ACT Aspire and not the ATLAS assessment. Level five does require the approval of the State Board of Education. So DESE identifies districts as being in need of level five and then the state board must vote to actually classify those districts in level five. 

Once the district is classified into level five, the commissioner of the department and the state board have a number of actions available to them under statute to take corrective action in those districts, including removing the superintendent and the school board. Currently five districts in the state are in level five. 

All of those districts are also under state authority. Being in level of five does not automatically place a district into state authority. So you can see that the Marvell-Eliane district was classified as being in Level 5 in November of 2022. It was not placed under state authority until July of 2023. 

Districts can also be placed in state authority for violations of the standards of accreditation or for fiscal distress, which we’ll discuss in the last section of this report. If you’ll notice, Lee County actually has two designations, two dates that they were placed in State Authority. That first date in March 2019 was for violations of the Standards for Accreditation. That second date is for level five. 

State board approval is also required for a district to exit level five. The school district that meets the exit criteria set by the board must be returned to full local control as soon as the state board determines that the school district has met the exit criteria, but in no case longer than five years after the assumption of authority of the school districts. 

A little bit of history on this. Since the passage of the accountability system in 2017, three other districts have been in level five: Dollarway, Pine Bluff, and Little Rock. Pine Bluff and Little Rock have both been removed from level five. The Dollarway School District was annexed to the Pine Bluff School District effective in July 2021. And then finally, looking at some of the data that Adrienne showed you broken down for the five school districts in level five currently. 

You can see at the top of that chart, the percentage of all school districts where the percentage is students scoring a level three or four on each of the subjects, each of these assessment subjects. And then you can see the percentages for these districts. And you can see that all of the districts in state authority have a smaller percentage of students scoring a level three or level four on ATLAS than the statewide average for all three of those subjects. 

Moving to school and district rating systems. As we discussed, the adequacy statute requires that we review the Accountability Act, Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act. The school and district ratings are actually not part of that act. They are in a separate section of the Arkansas code. However, since they are an embedded part of the statewide reporting on school performance, we are reviewing them as part of this report. We’ll start with school ratings. As I mentioned earlier, DESE has adopted a new system for calculating school letter grades. You can see that formula on the screen. 

These are the indicators used to calculate the letter grades for 2025. I want to note, from 2017 to 2023, DESE used the ESSA school index to calculate letter grades. And under Act 474 of 2025, DESE did not publish letter grades for 2024. Looking at some statistics on the school letter grades, here you can see the number of schools with each letter grade, the percentage of total schools with each letter grade and the number of students enrolled in schools of each letter grade across the state. 

And now we’ll look at a little bit of Adrienne’s data that she previously shared, but broken down by letter grade. Here you can see some of the subgroups. You can see on this screen the percentage of special education students, English learners, and students eligible for free and reduced price lunch, compared with the percentage of all students across the state. And you can see that the special education and English learner percentages for each letter grade are similar to the statewide percentage. 

The percentage of students eligible for free and reduced price lunch is lowest in A schools and continues to rise through each letter grade until you get to D. Here we see letter grades broken down by race and ethnicity. For the percentage of American Indian, Hawaiian Pacific Islander, or students of two or more races, those are all similar across all letter grades to the statewide average. 

For Asian students, the percentage is slightly higher in the A schools, but otherwise similar to the statewide average. For Hispanic Latino students, the average percentage is similar to the statewide average, except in F schools where it is slightly lower. For African American students, the average percentage is lowest in the A schools and gets higher with each letter grade. And for white students, the percentage is highest in A schools and gets lower with each later grade. Looking now at ATLAS scores, broken down–

Representative Keith Brooks Let me catch a question real quick. Representative Duke, surprisingly, you are up for a question. 

Representative Hope Duke Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m sorry. I got distracted on looking through this information as y’all were giving it. On the letter grade on, I guess 116, on their performance systems or their school rating systems, when it talks about the achievement and the proficient, so you have proficient and then advanced. And is that going to catch everybody? The proficient and advanced on this letter grade? 

Elizabeth Bynum Yes, so that’s including their four levels. And so the proficient includes any students scoring proficient or advanced.

Representative Hope Duke Okay, we are still in the letter grade recognizing achievement, not just growth? It’s both. 

Elizabeth Bynum Yes. 

Representative Hope Duke Okay. Thank you 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Barnett, you’re recognized. 

Representative Lincoln Barnett Thank you. On slide 117, I see that there were 18 schools that were exempt from receiving letter grades. And I wanted to know what, under what circumstances are schools exempt from receiving a letter grade? 

Elizabeth Bynum I’m going to have to– I will have to get back with you on the full list. And I believe some of them is to do with the grade level served or the number of students served. Some very small schools are exempt due to privacy considerations. But I can get back to you with the full list.

Representative Lincoln Barnett Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative McGruder.

Representative Jessie McGruder Thank you, Mr. Chair. Picking back up Representative Barnett’s question. Do you know, can we get the information on which schools were exempt? 

Elizabeth Bynum Absolutely. 

Representative Jessie McGruder Also on slide 113, I noticed that these schools that are in state takeover are scoring a lot lower than the other schools. And my real concern is we have the school that’s been in state takeover for the longest period of time, which is the Earle School District. And it’s scoring lower than all of the other schools. Do we have information to explain why they’re doing worse that they’re in state takeover? 

Elizabeth Bynum I think that would be a question for the department about what they’re doing in that district and why that is or is not working in that school district. Okay, looking at ATLAS achievement levels broken down by letter grade, and you can see the pattern here that the achievement level, the number of students scoring three or four on the ATLAS is highest in the A schools and declines with each letter grade through the F schools. 

Then looking at that same information for the dynamic learning maps, you can see here there’s not as much of a pattern. The percentages are highest for ELA and math in the A schools, but actually highest for science in the B schools. And the F schools actually have higher percentages in all subjects than the D schools. 

Now looking at Adrienne’s access to educators information broken down by letter grade. So the average percentage of teachers with a master’s degree is highest in the A schools and declines with each letter grade. Conversely, the percentage of teacher with just a bachelor’s degree is lowest in the A schools and then rises with each later grade. And the percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials is lowest in the A schools and then rises with the letter grade. 

And then last data point on the school letter grades, you can see the average years of teacher experience, which is highest in the B schools. Now we’re going to look at district level ratings. So the Arkansas Access Act of 2025 required the division to create a formula for district letter grades. So these 2025 district letter grades are the first. You can see the number of districts, the percentage of all districts and the total enrollment in those districts. DESE calculates these in the same manner as the school letter grades, with each district treated as one K through 12 school. 

Looking at this geographically, you can see that the F and D letter grades are more concentrated in the south, central, and northeast parts of the state, while the A letter grades are more concentrated in north and northwest. Again, this map is showing the traditional districts because charter systems do not have an attendance zone. 

Those charter systems are most concentrated in the northwest and central areas of the State, so most of the letter grades are correspondingly in those areas for charter schools. Now looking at district grades by subgroups, English language learners, free and reduced price lunch eligible and special education. As with the school letter grades, the percentage of special education and English language-learners are similar to the statewide percentage. 

And for free and reduce price lunch-eligible, that percentage is again lowest in the A schools and rises through to the D schools and then falls when you look at F districts. Looking at district letter grades broken down by race and ethnicity, again, this is similar to the breakdown for the school letter grades. Looking here at ATLAS performance by district letter grades, the average percentage of students scoring a three or four. 

And you can see, again, like with the school letter grades that this is highest in the A districts and lowest in the F districts. And then looking at this data for the dynamic learning maps, the percentages are highest in the A schools, lowest in the F schools, but actually higher in the C schools than in the B schools. 

Looking at access to educators by district grades, you can see, again, these patterns are similar to the school letter grades. The highest percentage of teachers with a master’s degree is in the A schools and the highest percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials is in F districts. And then looking at the average years of teacher experience by district grade, almost the same in A and B schools and then declines with each subsequent letter grade. And I’ll stop for questions there before our last section. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Garner, you’re recognized. 

Representative Denise Garner Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a quick question on 123, the new rating system for the schools. Do you have a comparison– I know it’s a new test. But I would like to know how many schools, what percentage were each one of these grades on the prior test, on the prior assessment. 

Elizabeth Bynum I can get that for you. 

Representative Denise Garner I think that would be helpful, even though it’s a different assessment. I’d like to why the difference and how the difference. That’d be great. Thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative Duke’s seatmate, Representative Painter, you’re recognized. 

Representative Stetson Painter  Since we’re requesting information, can I get a request of the information for the list of the schools and the districts and their letter grade. I love reading a map. But when I look at it, some of that color blends in together. And so if we can do that, I greatly appreciate it. 

Elizabeth Bynum I’ve got that. 

Representative Keith Brooks You’re recognized to finish.

Elizabeth Bynum Our last section, additional accountability for public schools looking at fiscal distress and facilities distress. As Leah mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, both of these programs are required to be reviewed under the adequacy statute. We’ll start with fiscal distress. Fiscal distress is the program intended to help districts that are struggling. The Division of Elementary and Secondary Education identifies those districts. And then as with level five, the state board actually has to vote to classify those districts in fiscal distress. 

Once the district is classified, then the commissioner and the state board have authority to take corrective actions, including removing the superintendent or removing this district school board. Currently no districts are in fiscal distrust. Looking at early intervention, early intervention is part of the fiscal distress statute. This is intended to help districts avoid fiscal distress. DESE identifies districts that are in early intervention. 

Once DESE makes that designation, the district cannot incur additional debt without the written approval of the division and that district must comply with all requirements established by the state board in rules. Districts are able to move in and out of early intervention at any time, and currently there are four districts in early intervention. Another part of the fiscal distress statute is monitoring. 

DESE is required to provide monitoring for three years after a district is removed from fiscal distress. So currently Earle, Pine Bluff, and Lee County are all in this monitoring. They are all due to be released from monitoring later this year or in 2027. And finally, facilities distress. The purpose of facilities distress is to ensure adequate facilities and ensure that districts and schools are complying with facilities rules. This is either a school or a district classification. 

Only one district has ever been placed in facilities distress, it was removed back in 2009. No schools have ever been placed in facilities distress. Facilities distress is run through the division of public school academic facilities and transportation. That division maintains a facilities distress indicator tracker. And you can see here the numbers from that tracker for 2024 and 2025, the number of districts, the number violations and the number remediated in the same school year, remediated meaning resolved. 

In both years, several of those violations related to failure to notify the division as required prior to performing construction or maintenance or having unsecured exterior doors. And with that, we are done with our presentation and we’ll take any additional questions. 

Representative Keith Brooks Members, do we have additional questions? Representative Ennett, you’re recognized. 

Representative Denise Ennett Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the presentation. It was very insightful. I do have a question about, we talk about special needs in this report, and forgive me if I’m not framing this correctly, and I’m just trying to think of a coherent question to ask regarding special ed. Is there any way to take this information and just put it all, like, special ed information, like take it out of this information? So I could, I don’t know. I’m sorry. 

Adrienne Beck I think I understand the question. We certainly could pull the data and show strictly special education. I’ll also add, they’re not included here because they’re not related to any of the requirements of ESSA or the State Accountability Act. But there are some federal accountability measures for special education that I can also provide that will maybe get to that question as well. 

Representative Keith Brooks Representative, if you want to get maybe some more specific questions to me, I’ll send them out to staff so we can disseminate. I think it’s good information. Additional questions? Okay, committee. Thank you so much for your time, ladies. Thank y’all for your work and your information. It’s very helpful as always 

Committee, real quick, everybody has binders. The binders will remain here. They’ll be in the hallway between Mac A and B. My recommendation, request of the committee would be, don’t let this be something you pick up once a month when you take a look and come in for the meetings. Take some time to study through the presentations. These folks have worked extremely hard to give us this information. 

And I don’t want this to be something we just look at once a month and then forget about. Because I think that helps us get to a better place at the end of the adequacy study. So I’d encourage you to do that, also encourage you, don’t take it home. Because then you’ll leave it there and you’ll wonder where it is and we’ll have to print off more stuff. Representative McGruder, you got a question? 

Representative Jessie McGruder Yes sir, you’re saying we can take these binders with us? 

Representative Keith Brooks No, sir. Let’s leave the binders here. So they stay here because they have a tendency to just walk away and never come back. But I would encourage you when you are here, please take some time to filter through it so we continue to be educated on this. 

Representative Jessie McGruder Thank you, sir. 

Representative Keith Brooks I’m not going to tell you what you have to do with your binder. I mean, you’re a big boy, so you can beat me up. Representative Mayberry, you’re recognized. 

Representative Julie Mayberry Yes, so just another question along these lines. Bookkeeping, I guess we could say. So these that have been handed to us, they have the nice holes. Are they supposed to be put into this binder? Or do we just take these home and this is additional stuff? Just help me know what I’m supposed to do. 

Representative Keith Brooks Staff will place those into the binder, I believe. 

Representative Julie Mayberry So leave them on our desk and you will put them into the binder where they go? Because that was going to be my next question. I don’t know what category it goes under. 

Representative Keith Brooks There’s a tab in the binder. Staff will take care of putting all that in there, so it’ll be ready for us to review any time you want to. 

Representative Julie Mayberry Okay, thank you. 

Representative Keith Brooks And it’s also all available online, of course. Additional questions? Clarifications? We’re all good? Awesome. Thank you, everyone. With that, Joint Education is adjourned.