Joint Education Committee
Posted on October 28th, 2009
Date & Time: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 2:30 PM
Location: Room 171, State Capitol
Committee Information: House Members on Committee Senate Members on Committee
Agenda: http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/2009/Lists/Meetings/Attachments/12286/I7866.pdf
Attachments: none
This committee reviews matters pertaining to public kindergarten, elementary, secondary, and adult education, vocational education, vocational-technical schools, vocational rehabilitation, higher education, private educational institutions, similar legislation, and resolutions germane to the subject matter of the committee.(House Rules 62.1)
2:34 pm – Sen. Jimmy Jeffress called the meeting to order. Minutes were approved.
2:37 pm – Dr. Tom Kimbrell, the new Commissioner of the Arkansas Dept. of Education presented a discussion about the ADE contracts referred to the Committees by the Review Subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council. He is specifically talking about the Scholastic Audit Contracts.
2:41 pm – The concept of the Scholastic Audits was adopted from a Kentucky model under Dr. Ken James. Dr. Kimbrell is defending the usefulness and importance of this activity. He said that ACTAP law probably requires that these audits be performed. Rep. Rainey also passed a law last session that requires a scholastic audit.
2:46 pm – Sen. Jimmy Jeffress pointed out the specific contracts that brought these question up. He is asking if there is a correlation between the audits and if test scores are shown to be improved subsequently. Dr. Kimbrelll said that he doesn’t know, but it will be in the future. He said that they are going to also be monitoring that the audit plans are actually being implemented.
2:50 pm – Sen. Jeffress asked where the money comes from to fund these audits. That is about $600,000 in funds. Apparently it is in the ADE budget.
2:52 pm – Sen. Jeffress is making the point that we were told during a committee meeting that if we did not approved some last minute contracts that we would be breaking the law. This rightly rankled the legislators. Today we find out that it was not true that we would be breaking the law if we refused to approve the contract immediately. Apparently this was a “miscommunication.” How often do you think these situations are really miscommunications?
2:58 pm – Rep . Cheatham is asking about those doing the audits come from schools in academic distress. Rep. Tyler is asking if there could not be full time personnel that are high quality that we do not have to train people over and over.
3:04 pm – Sen. J. Jeffress is asking how these positions are filled. What are the qualifications for the audit positions. Where are the positions advertised. He knows of one person who was highly qualified and was rejected. He wants to know if there was some sort of “good-old-boy” thing going on.
3:06 pm – Rep. Hutchinson is asking if the audits concentrate on the schools on academic distress. They do, but there are schools that are not on academic distress that pay for these audits on academic distress.
3:08 pm – Rep. Saunders is asking about the preformance audits who are in the first years of distress. Apparently this is part of developing the school improvement plans.
3:12 pm – Rep. Rainey is discussing some history of the scholastic audit program and is making the point that the Kentucky programs, from which these audits are modeled, had a form of accountablity. He seems to be saying that we may have not implemented the full measure of accountablity that we should have. I think legislation he passed last session somewhat address this situation.
3:17 pm – Sen. Bryles is asking about what happens once an audit is performed and a report is created. Ms. Estelle Matthis, Director of the Education Renewal Zones/Scholastic Audit at the ADE, is not being responsive, instead is talking about what is involved in performing the audit rather than answer the question that Sen. Bryles asked. Sen. Bryles is politely asking follow-up questions trying to get answers to his question. He finally gave up.
3:24 pm – Sen. Salmon asked if the Kentucky model used retired teachers. The answer is “yes.” She is asking specifically for qualifications for auditors. There are certain published guidelines that were referenced.
3:29 pm – Rep. Abernathy is making the point that we need to establish some accountability so that we know if the audits are effective. He said that we need to be able to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of particular audit teams. The ADE Representative, Estelle Matthis, very much has an adversarial attitude toward the legislators asking her questions. This seems to fuel the legislators to asking even more probing and directed questions.
3:33 pm – Rep. Hutchinson is asking how we can know how effective the plan was and how well the audit team performed if there is no way to follow up on performance. Dr. Diana Julian, Deputy Commissioner of the Arkansas Dept. of Education, took over the microphone to answer these questions. She makes the point that they cannot constantly monitor the school. The school must be responsible to implement the plans.
3:40 pm – Rep. Clemmer noted that “no individual teacher is named” (according to Ms. Matthis) in the scholastic audit but then the point is made that the teachers “know what the need to do” (according to Dr. Julian). Dr. Julian is making point that overall strategies indicate that needs to be done according to patterns. Rep. Clemmer is asking follow-up questions and finds if problematic that the audit indentifies a problem (for instance an individual teacher) but that the problem is applied to the whole school. Dr. Julian makes the point that Arkansas has an evaluation law and that audit teams are prohibited from making teacher evaluations.
3:48 pm – I appears that we need to make changes to some of our teacher evaluation laws. If an independent audit identifies a problem teacher, this would enable the Superintendent to work to remedy the problem. It would also shelter a teacher who with whom the superintendent has a personal issue against. The independent audit would not support the superintendent in that instance.
3:51 pm – Sen. J. Jeffress is making closing comments and praising the committee for a staying through this long and tough discussion.
3:52 pm – Committee adjourned.
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