Arkansas

Standards-based reform creates an inherent system of winners and losers by raising the bar and assessing who makes the cut. Supports-based reforms provide and strategically align the needed resources so each student has the opportunity to reach that bar—and surpass it.

The National Center for Education Policy (NEPC), an OTL ally, has a new, must-read book about the change our nation needs to make from thinking about the achievement gap to trying to fix the opportunity gap that underlies it.

Great news coming out of Arkansas on the school discipline front! A soon-to-be-signed bill is heading to the governor's desk that will make big changes in how the state gathers, examines and acts on school discipline data. Under the new law, the state Department of Education will submit a report each year to the State Board of Education containing district-level data on suspensions, expulsions and referrals to law enforcement. The Department will provide districts with strategies and resources for implementing positive discipline reforms.

A report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds that "a sea change is underway in our nation's approach to dealing with young people who get in trouble with the law." Though the US still leads the industrialized world in youth incarceration rates, that rate has dropped more than 40 percent over a 15-year period. However, five states – Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota and West Virginia – bucked the norm and saw an increase in youth confinement.

Over 200 members of the Arkansas OTL Campaign made their way to Little Rock this week for an Education Advocacy Day! Their goal: show their support for education reforms that provide every student with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn and highlight the progress the state has made in the past decade by implementing sound, research-based policies.

On February 27th, the Opportunity to Learn Campaign will be hosting a webinar on racial justice with the Applied Research Center, an OTL ally. The webinar will provide advocates and organizers with valuable tools for framing and combating racial disparities in our nation's education system. Sign up here!

The Arkansas Opportunity to Learn Campaign and other education groups in the state held a press conference this week to voice their opposition to several bills introduced in the state legislature that would expand the state's charter school network and undermine the principles of equity and adequacy that have guided the state's progress in public education over the past decade.