No More Dragging Up the Rear

By Ellie McGrath

Arkansas bows to pressures to put schools to the test

Public education in Arkansas has long been the Dogpatch of the nation's school systems. Many poorly financed districts in the state have tiny, rundown schoolhouses staffed by some of the lowest-paid teachers in the country. Consider, for example, the Thornton school district (total enrollment: 300), located in the timber country of southern Arkansas. The last time its tenth-graders took the basic skills test they placed in the bottom 12% of national scores. The average teacher's salary is only $11,663, and not one teacher is certified to teach physics, foreign languages or art. Says Kai Erickson, executive secretary of the Arkansas Education Association (A.E.A.): "Education has never been a high priority in Arkansas."

Until now, that is. Last month Democratic Governor Bill Clinton, 37, pushed through legislative reforms that will upgrade academic requirements, lengthen the school day and, to the consternation of some educators, force all of the state's 24,000 teachers to pass basic competency tests or lose their jobs. To pay for this, legislators raised the sales tax to 4% from 3%, the largest such increase in the state's history, providing an additional $150 million. The reforms follow the patterns set by Florida and California earlier this year. Even Mississippi, which once shared the nation's academic spending basement, passed a reform program last December to upgrade its schools. Governor Clinton told legislators that Arkansas had no choice but to follow suit.

A key motivation for trying to do something about Arkansas' schools is the hope that the state will be able to attract new industry by producing graduates with necessary skills. Declared Clinton in September: "Do you believe that God meant for us to drag up the rear of the nation's economy forever?" Although the state has some excellent schools, others fare poorly on national achievement tests. A primary reason is lack of funding: for years Arkansas has remained at or near the bottom of the 50 states on expenditures for each of its 432,000 students. Last year Arkansas spent only $2,035 for each student, compared with a national average of $2,952, placing it just above South Carolina, Utah, Mississippi and Alabama. Arkansas' teachers earn an average of only $15,029, compared with the national average of $21,671. Admits State Education Director Don Roberts: "We deserve a bad image for those two factors alone."

Only 38% of last fall's high school graduates entered college, compared with a national average of 53%. Of the state's 370 districts, 170 do not offer a foreign language, 91 have no chemistry classes, and 184 lack physics. Says Erickson: "This is one of the worst places in the U.S. for the teaching profession."

The reform program is a victory for Clinton, himself a product of Arkansas public schools. A 1968 graduate of Georgetown University, he is a Rhodes scholar, earned a law degree at Yale and became the nation's youngest Governor in 1978. The legislature appointed an education-standards committee in May, headed by the Governor's wife, Lawyer Hillary Rodham Clinton, which held public meetings across the state and published its preliminary recommendations in September. The Clintons went on the stump together to build up grass-roots support, and the state was saturated with brochures that explained the reforms and urged: "No more excuses. Let's put our kids in first place."

Some of the reforms: increasing the length of the school day from five to 5 1/2 hours, and advancing the age at which students can quit school from 15 to 16. Beginning next year, third-and sixth-graders will be required to take basic skills tests, and after 1987, eighth-graders will have to pass tests in subjects such as reading and math to enter high school. Some educators predict that the state will have to build as many as 2,500 classrooms and hire some 3,500 teachers over the next three years because of proposed changes.

Of all the reforms, the teacher-testing program has produced the most anguish. All teachers will have to pass tests in reading, writing, mathematics and in their specified subject areas. Those who fail will be required to take more training, and if they cannot pass the tests by 1987, they will lose their jobs. The A.E.A., a 17,000-member affiliate of the powerful National Education Association, has called the testing "offensive to a large majority of teachers."

Arkansas officials are considering using the National Teacher Examinations (N.T.E.) devised by the Educational Testing Service (E.T.S.) for beginning teachers. Opponents of the testing plan have found a surprising ally in E.T.S. President Gregory Anrig, who has said that he will not allow the N.T.E. to be used for testing veteran teachers. Says Anrig: "Tests should not be used for practicing teachers because better information on their performance is available, based on observing what they actually do in the classroom with students." Clinton, however, maintains that "if we are going to re-establish the teaching profession as a profession worthy of respect, there have to be some standards of individual accountability."

Many parents and educators do support the reforms. Says Elaine Dumas, a librarian at Little Rock's Central High School: "If I can't pass the test, I don't deserve to be working with young people." A poll taken by a Little Rock television station found that 65% of those questioned favored the sales-tax increase and 61% approved of teacher testing. The support has surprised even Clinton, who has a three-year-old daughter. Last month in Fort Smith he was approached by a shabbily dressed woman in her 20s who told him that she was the only one of her family who could read well enough to hold down a job. She said, the Governor recalls, "We didn't learn what we needed to learn, and we didn't know what we would need to know. It may be too late for us, but it's not too late for the people who come behind us."

-- By Ellie McGrath. Reported by David S. Jackson/Little Rock

With reporting by David S. Jackson This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.