Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Smart Start Works To Get Students On Grade

Getting children in grades K-4 on grade level is the goal of the new Smart Start Program, being pushed by Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Rita Roe, principal of Gurdon Elementary School, spoke to the Gurdon Rotary Club about the program and what the district is doing to prepare for it.

The idea, she said, is to meet the needs of all children and help them become the best they can be, but the primary emphasis of Smart Start is on the K-4 group.

In Nov. 1998, more than 2,000 educators from across Arkansas attended a program in Little Rock to learn about Smart Start. They learned the students, under the program, will be expected to be on grade level by the time they get to the fifth grade, otherwise, the district involved can be punished.

Smart Start focuses on math and reading primarily, as these are the two areas most students show to be weakest in on standardized testing.

Schools, Roe said, will be held accountable for the students' progress. Those districts managing to meet the expectations of grade level will be financially rewarded, while the ones not meeting the goals will be penalized for their shortcomings.

"The pressure is on the schools," she told the club members, "teachers and students. We've looked at areas to improve and wrote out our goals."

Elementary teachers are spending part of their summer in workshops to help prepare for the Smart Start Program, while GPS adopted a new math series for the coming academic year.

Students, when they return to class in August, will find more time being spent on reading and math, with their science and social studies being included in the reading program.

Roe spoke with high school teachers about this and learned students coming to high school need to be able to read well to handle the science courses.

The district received enough money from the program to hire one more teacher on the elementary level and further reduce class sizes and give more individual instruction, as needed.

In addition, the school will use a check list of criteria on the program to monitor its progress.

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when standardized tests scores weren't considered important by many. This, though, has changed with more and more emphasis being placed on the standardized test results than any other area of education for students.

The club members were given two sample tests the students muse take. On the kindergarten test, the "students" had to remember a storyline and match items accordingly. The fourth grade test was harder as it focused primarily on reading.

These, Roe said, were only example tests, as the real ones must be signed out by individual teachers and accounted for at the end of the testing period.

The test sample given dealt with what makes a good pet, with students being required to do linear logical thinking and show their work step-by-step.

The math portion given to the club members asked if 29 wheels were counted at a park, and there were only tricycles and wagons there, how many of each were at the park. Again, students have to show their work.

According to Roe, the Arkansas Department of Education has made statements to the effect if something isn't on the tests, it doesn't need to be taught in schools.

For those students having problems getting to grade level, Roe said, the district will develop intervention programs to help tutor them so they can achieve this goal.

In other club business, District Gov. Joe Fish was on hand with some good news and plenty of hardware for the Rotarians.

Gurdon's Rotary Club was recognized as being No. 1 in the district for club service, No. 1 for membership retention and was given a presidential citation from the president of Rotary International for the work it has done.