Adequate and Equitable Education
|
table of contents |
By Darrell Smith, Superintendent, Wynne School District
The Arkansas Supreme court has ordered the state to provide an equitable and adequate education to all students. To comply with this order some consolidation appears necessary. When one considers the required changes in pupil/teacher ratios, increased course offerings and the increased salaries to attract top teachers to rural areas, it becomes obvious that the state simply cannot afford to bring all 308 districts up to the required level of adequacy.
The state of Arkansas will not be able to come up with the money to support the large number of districts we have now. Though we have a population of 3.5 million, roughly 700,000 are children and are not in the work force. Another 500,000 are no longer in the workforce leaving roughly 2.5 million working. With such a low tax base, consolidation appears to be a financial necessity.
Though many districts will have to merge, there are other possible solutions for those districts that fall short of the legal mandates. One of the key problems in providing an adequate education is the serious lack of top level teachers in certain specialty areas such as high level math, physics or foreign languages. Though a school might be able to keep a Spanish teacher busy all day, even a moderate size school might not be able to keep a physics or calculus teacher busy full time.
One solution to this problem could be for districts to share instructors. A teacher could teach a physics class in one school first period, then travel to a nearby district to teach another class an hour later, then hit the road again for another course at another school in the afternoon. Since the districts would be sharing the teacher, the instructor's salary would need to be high enough to interest top level teachers. (continued below)
Attracting skilled instructors to a community to teach is a problem for any school, but it becomes monumental in low economic areas or small towns with little to offer a gifted teacher who is in great demand.
Some states have incentive programs to attract needed instructors to areas which may not be competitive against large districts in many ways. These incentives include down payment on a home with the stipulation that the teacher will stay in the community for at least three years or return the down payment, low interest loans, and higher salaries.
Other possible solutions to the adequacy problem in border line districts could be "long distance learning" and learning online. In these cases the students have two way communication with top level instructors and the curriculum is virtually unlimited. The expense of these programs would certainly be less than building a new school.
Action must be taken soon so that we can give the children of Arkansas the resources they need to rise to their maximum potential. As the situation now stands, too many students may not be receiving the education they deserve simply because of where they live.
Many seem to feel consolidation should be driven by performance standards alone-no numbers. Under this theory, information is readily available which could reveal to anyone which schools would be eliminated first.
This should be given much thought. If this becomes the chosen route, think who will be giving up their schools first, , who will be bused and all the related issues. Can our state and the citizens stand up to the potential results this could yield??? Answers to the issues before us are very complex.