Last month, Arkansas unveiled a new school accountability system, one that aims to more accurately reflect student growth and preparedness for life beyond high school. Under the new model, the Arkansas Department of Education noted Fayetteville Public Schools’ achievement by a letter grade: nine A’s, six B’s, and a single C.
To learn more, Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis sat down with Superintendent John Mulford. He says the scores are encouraging, and they’re actually the first they’ve received under his leadership, as scores were not issued during his first year.
John Mulford: You know, it’s interesting because when I came to Arkansas, the old model had basically been done away with. So I’d never really experienced that model. But it was primarily based on student performance. When we say performance, we’re talking about when we take the standardized test, the number of students that score proficient or higher. Then there would be other things that would be considered, like attendance and a variety of other metrics for schools.
So this new model shifts to place the bulk of the emphasis on student growth. Performance is still a part of it, and then many of those other things have been taken out. When you talk about students in kindergarten through eighth grade, it’s a very simplistic formula. It’s broken up into thirds. Two-thirds of the score is based on student growth, one-third is based on that performance metric I talked about earlier—proficiency and above. Nothing for attendance, nothing for any of those other things.
They’re all equal parts. They’re worth 300 points apiece for a total of 900 points within each of those categories. Oh, let me back up. I said that growth was two-thirds, so there are two buckets of growth. You have growth of all students, which is 300 points, and then you have growth of the lowest quartile, which is another 300 points. Within each one of those three buckets, it’s divided into math, English language arts, and science, and you get 100 points for each one of those.
So you start with proficiency and the percentage of students scoring proficient or above—whatever that is, you get that many points. So if we’re 50% proficient, we get 50 points in math. Same thing for 60% proficient in English language arts—we get 60 points. Same for science.
Then we move to growth. When we talk about growth, we’re talking about where that student was at the beginning of the year and where they finished. The goal there is that a student, no matter where they’re at, grows at least a full year.
That’s something we in education have been saying for a long time. A big problem with the traditional methods of measuring schools is that we can’t often control how kids come to us. But once they get to us, we can control a lot of what we do with the student to grow them. So now the goal is to grow every student a full year, every year, regardless of where they were at the prior year.
So that’s a third—that’s all students. Then our state has really made an emphasis on focusing on the lowest-performing students and how well we’re growing them, because sometimes we grow higher-performing students well—students that have supports and a better base—and maybe we don’t provide the supports we should for those lower kids. The state’s really trying to emphasize that, so they’ve made it its own category.
This past year we took the Atlas test. We have a report that shows us the students that performed in our lowest quartile. As we look ahead to this current year, we’ll be held accountable for that bottom 25%, how well we grew them as well as all kids.
So when you look at the model, 67% of it is based on growth. The other third is based on student performance. From my lens, I’m very excited about that. It’s been a simplified model, and the message to our teachers is simply this: student performance will take care of itself when we meet the needs of our kids. What we want to focus on is growing every kid a full year, every year. If we do that, we’re going to perform well, our kids are going to get what they need, and we’ll be recognized by doing that at the state level.
Jack Travis: Let’s talk about how y’all did. These scores came out, and y’all did– by all metrics– pretty well, right? Can you talk about some of these assessment scores that you got back from your schools and what they say to you?
John Mulford: Yeah. You know, we were very proud of how our district performed, how our buildings performed. The last time we had official letter grades was two years ago. Since that time, we had seven of our 16 schools improve at least one letter grade. We had one school, Elk Creek Elementary, that improved two letter grades. They went from a C to an A, and that A score was because of how well they grew kids.
This model is now recognizing that from our teachers and the hard work they’re doing. Overall, of our 16 campuses that received letter grades, nine received an A, six received a B, and we had one that received a C. The one that received a C is our newest campus, John L. Colbert Middle School. It’s actually the first letter grade they’ve ever received.
The interesting thing there is they were just two-tenths of a point from being a B school—that’s how close they were. So we’re very hopeful and optimistic that they’ll get that B next year. And two of the six B schools were within just a few points of being an A school. Our high school made a big jump from a C to a B, and they were only about 15 points from being an A school.
So we have a lot of schools that are right there on the cusp, but we still feel very proud of the work our team has done. We’re going to continue to focus on growing kids, which is what we should be focused on, and we think we’re going to see continued improvement.
Jack Travis: As you’re moving forward, what are some practical things in the classroom that y’all are doing to focus on student growth?
John Mulford: Yeah. Number one, we use an assessment tool at the beginning of the year and midyear to let us know what the progress of the student is. It lets us know what they know coming in, what the gaps are, and then what we need to work on as we go throughout the year.
Jack Travis: For every individual student?
John Mulford: That’s right. It’s individualized. We get a breakdown assessment through that tool that lets us know where they’re low, where they need supports, and then we work within our schools to provide that extra support. This is primarily at the elementary, middle, and junior high levels.
Once you get to high school, it’s an end-of-course type assessment, so it’s a little different model. At the high school level, they add graduation rate and postsecondary readiness, and they get 100 points for each of those categories. That makes high schools just a little bit unique.
But really, just trying to identify what each student needs and provide supports along the way. That can be small-group instruction within the classroom or extra supports during advisory time, where students have targeted support from teachers trying to fill those gaps.
The 2023–24 year was the year where we got no letter grade, right?They were designing the new model. They issued what’s called simulated grades last year for the 2023–24 school year based on this new model, but due to state legislation, schools didn’t actually get a grade last year.
This year, schools were issued a grade under the new model. The law had what’s called a “hold harmless” provision, which means if a school went down in letter grade, they could keep their letter grade from the 2022–23 year.
Next year, the year we’re in now, we’ll get a grade next fall for the current year. So this year is the first official year where every school will take the grade they earn. Fayetteville did not go backward in any of our buildings. Like I said, we had seven go forward, and all the others maintained.
So this is year three, and this is actually my first year of getting a letter grade.
Jack Travis: So you came in during this period of flux, right? This period of transition in how we’re assessing the performance of our schools—this growth model. Did that change how you did your job as superintendent?
John Mulford: You know, not really. I’ve always believed that the most important thing is that we’re growing kids. I feel like the model around standardized testing, proficiency as the primary driver, is a flawed model. It’s been around a long time in the United States, and I don’t think anyone can sit there and say it’s been effective.
Growth is where it’s at. I’ve always taken the approach with our team and staff that the most important thing is giving kids the skills they need to be successful. If we do that, letter grades will take care of themselves. But let’s not put too much pressure on the score of a test, because that’s a one-instant-in-time measurement. Our students and our staff are much more than that.
We see the kids every day. We know what they’re capable of, and we just need to feel confident that we’re growing them.
One thing I’m very excited about in this model is our teachers who are really working hard to grow kids—but maybe the kids they have came to them behind and they’re just not hitting that proficiency mark. Those old models can be very discouraging. I think what our teachers saw this time around is encouragement from the fact that this model recognizes the work they’re doing and the gains they are making with kids. I saw lots of smiles and happiness in the buildings once those grades were released. I think we’re headed in the right direction as a state.
Jack Travis: So this change came out of LEARNS, am I correct?
John Mulford: Yeah, that’s correct. LEARNS directed the state department to redo the model.
Jack Travis: Are you seeing any other effect from LEARNS—like the voucher program and whatnot? Are you seeing that affect any assessment scores or how growth is manifesting?
John Mulford: You know, the LEARNS Act is so large that there are a lot of tentacles. There are things in the act that are really good and positive, and then there are other things that are a little more concerning.
At this point in time, I can’t say that Fayetteville has really seen a negative impact that we can put our thumb on. Our enrollment has remained pretty steady. We’re not seeing a big loss of students going to private schools or homeschooling—what we’ve seen has been comparable to prior years.
But I know other districts have experienced quite a number of kids leaving due to vouchers. Probably our biggest concern around the educational savings accounts—what people often call vouchers—is the money to sustain it.
To put that in perspective, our state has an adequacy target in the funding formula of roughly $8,000. The educational savings accounts, if a parent takes advantage of that, are 90% of the state adequacy target—so roughly $7,000.
The logic when it was passed at the state level was that it wouldn’t cost more money because instead of giving the money to the school, we’d give it to the family. The problem is, that’s flawed logic. Even though the adequacy target is $8,000, most school districts don’t receive the full $8,000.
The way the formula works, it takes into account your local wealth. Your local wealth on your 25 required mills plus whatever you get from the state equals the adequacy target.
I’ll use Fayetteville as an example. Of that $8,000, we only get about $1,100 from the state because of all the growth we’ve seen in our local wealth. We’re mostly locally funded through property tax. So if a student leaves Fayetteville to take advantage of an educational savings account, the state just went from paying $1,100 for that student—because that’s what they pay us—to paying $7,000 for that student.
Most districts in Arkansas don’t receive the full amount from the state—it’s a prorated amount. Multiply that by all of the people who are taking advantage of the ESAs, and it’s a cost increase at the state level.
Now they’re starting to feel that pinch. So as school districts across the state, we’re a little worried about what that means for funding public schools or even other programs. You’ve heard talks about cutting funding for early childhood care. The state has to be able to keep it within budget, and if that continues to balloon and cost additionally, other things have to give somewhere. So that’s probably my biggest worry.
Jack Travis: Let’s continue to talk about the future. As you continue to think about these assessment models, that’s not what’s driving you for student growth, right? You want what’s best for your students. Not to put words in your mouth, but what are your focus areas? And I’m just curious—how is the no-phones thing going? Are you seeing any effect that affects these assessment scores or how students are performing?
John Mulford: I’ll start with the no phones. Here in Fayetteville, we took a step in that direction last year before it became law, and we made the decision that grades K through 6 would have zero access to phones at all. So this year is no different than what we did last year. Grades 7 through 12—we restricted access during class time, so students were able to have it between classes and at lunch, but “Bell to Bell, No Cell.”
Now, students in grades 7 through 12 have limited access all day long. What we’re hearing from teachers is generally pretty positive feedback around that. They’re saying kids are more focused, more socially engaged, talking more—which leads to social skill development, confidence, those kinds of things.
We’re still early—this is just week eight of the school year—but lots of positive feedback from teachers so far.
As far as Fayetteville and our approach to education, I kind of alluded to this earlier, but we believe our students are more than just a test score, and we believe our teachers are more than just scores on a sheet of paper. When a student leaves us, there are other skill sets they need to have—often called employability skills or durable skills or soft skills.
At the end of the day, our students need to be able to apply what they’re learning. In Fayetteville, we’re having a pretty hard push in that direction. We’re working toward all of our campuses, K through 6, being themed schools within the next five years.
People often get caught up in the term “themed school” and how we’re going to determine that theme, but really what we’re after is problem-based learning, project-based learning, or experiential learning—where kids are taking the math, science, and English they’re learning and applying it.
Through that, we’re introducing them to resources within our community so they can understand how that knowledge is applied and how it correlates with careers and other things within the broader community of Northwest Arkansas. It’s all about creating relevance.
That’s a big push right now—we don’t want our kids just to regurgitate information and score well on a test. We want them to know why they’re learning it, find meaning through application, and hopefully through that, a little self-discovery about what they want to do as they get older and ultimately leave us.
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