Education Update - March 6

We Support:

• We expect 5 bills to be filed in the next 2 days that will: increase transparency about how effectively existing funds for closing the achievement gap are spent; strengthen the state’s Commission on Closing the Achievement Gap; expand parent’s access to information from school districts; and improve interventions for under-performing schools.
• HB1646 (Rainey) will make sure that everyone can vote in school board elections.  Currently in rural districts that cross more than one county line, the election commission can choose to only open one polling place in the county where the school district is physically located.  That can mean a drive for as much as 60 miles to vote.  HB1646 will require at least one polling place per city of over 500 residents in multi-county school districts.
• SB799 (Elliott) is another of our priority issues: The Dream Act.  This bill makes the dream of college more of a reality by ensuring that every Arkansas student who graduates from an Arkansas school has the opportunity to pay in-state tuition at an Arkansas College or University.  Current rules require colleges to check the immigration status of all students and charge students without proper documentation out-of-state tuition rates no matter where they went to high school or how long they’ve lived in Arkansas.  This effectively cuts thousands of students off from access to college and ensures a permanent economic and educational underclass in Arkansas.  The bill does not provide scholarships or other special favors.  SB799 simply allows students from Arkansas high schools to attend Arkansas colleges for in-state tuition rates.

We are Monitoring:

• Lottery negotiations are continuing to decide how to allocate the millions of dollars in new student scholarships that will be created by Arkansas’ new lottery.  We have two primary concerns that we are asking people to contact their legislators about:
  
  Our first concern is that the vast majority of lottery scholarships should be for need-based students to help low and middle income students afford college.  Some proposals have targeted high percentages of the new money for merit based scholarships – but because of the education achievement gap merit based scholarships will disproportionately help higher income students who need the help the least.
  
  Our second concern is that proposals to punish schools for grade inflation actually punish students who attend schools with grade inflation, through no fault of their own.  These schools appear to be disproportionately low income and minority.  Grade inflation is a serious problem in some Arkansas schools, but the schools should be help accountable for solving the problem and students who play by the rules given to them should not be punished or excluded from scholarship programs because their school leaders failed them.

• HB1389 (Reep) would require eye examinations for young children entering school.  It’s hard to learn if you can’t see the blackboard.
• SB49 (Key) allows tax payers to divert their tax refunds into tax-deferred tuition savings accounts to make college more affordable.
• HB1272 (Blount) seeks to improve supports for parental involvement in school.
• HB1764 (D. Hutchinson) provides more data on college remediation rates and needs.
• SB430 (Crumbly) targets incentives to get better teachers into high-poverty schools.
• SB452 (Salmon) creates a task force on Arkansas history education.