Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Huckabee Unveils Plans For State's Educational System

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has an ambitious agenda for the 82nd General Assembly.

One of the major areas Huckabee plans to address during the session is education.

Under his education proposal, Huckabee is touting the Smart Start program.

This program, he said, requires little new legislation, some existing laws need to be repealed so the proper agencies can redirect their efforts and funds to Smart Start.

Huckabee said school districts need to have the means and authority to redirect funds to the most effective areas of use.

Under the Smart Start program, he said, the idea is to identify those students who perform below their grade level and make sure they get the help they need.

He wants to allow districts to redirect their summer school funds to be used during the academic year to aid these students. This will require repealing several existing laws.

Along with repealing laws to clear the way for the Smart Start program, Huckabee said other statutes are obsolete and need to be repealed as well.

Several statutes are on the books concerning the Minimum Performance Test (MPT), but this series of tests was discontinued in 1993.

He also wants to see some laws concerning school finance repealed or amended. This, he said, can save districts hours of needless staff time in the required reporting of administrative costs, athletic expenditures and non-athletic extra-curricular activities.

All this can be handled through the implementing of electronic reporting in all districts.

With the repeal of laws hindering the Smart Start program, he said, the state can amend statutes stipulating departments as to which tests must be used for student assessment.

This, he said, will give the Arkansas Department of Education the flexibility and authority to develop a comprehensive and coordinated assessment and accountability system. It also, he continued, will free the ADE to devise a more effective, efficient assessment system and provide teachers more hours to teach.

More needs to be done to encourage teachers to excel in their fields as well, Huckabee said. To meet this end, an incentive program will be created for teachers to achieve national board certification.

Act 1225 of 1997 allows the ADE to pay half of the $2,000 tuition for teachers going through this certification process. The applicants must pay the other half of the fee.

However, he said, there are no monetary rewards or incentives planned, at this time, for teachers achieving national certification. This is something he would like to see changed.

Plans are in the works to recommend a system of rewards and sanctions based on school performances, instead of overall district averages. This, he said, will give legislators and parents a better understanding of how individual schools are doing, while holding districts accountable for the performance of its students.

In order to "fairly hold schools accountable for their performance," he said, "we must also equip administrators with the authority to terminate teachers who are not doing their jobs. To accomplish this, we must amend the Teacher Fair Dismissal Law."

Currently, the law requires a district to strictly comply with all provisions of a complicated procedure to fire a teacher. Otherwise the dismissal can be voided in court if challenged.

Huckabee wants to change the wording somewhat, deleting "strictly complies" and adding "substantially complies". This, he said, will continue to protect teachers from unfair dismissal, but allow administrators to go forward with the process of firing an instructor without the concern of having the decision reversed in court because of a technicality.

In addition, he said, he wants to limit the number of days before a written hearing request must be made. Under his plan, once a teacher is notified of termination, they will have 15 days to file the written request instead of the current 30 days.

He also wants the hearing process to be changed. At this time, such hearings are held by local school boards, no less than five days nor more than 10 days from the time the hearing is requested by a certified employee. This rule doesn't apply to non-certified staff. Huckabee suggests having the same deadline apply to all educational personnel.

To make schools safer, Huckabee wants to change the current laws on having weapons on school campuses. He wants to amend the law to prohibit all firearms on school campuses. Currently, the law only prohibits handguns.

One of Huckabees biggest plans in education comes in the form of charter schools.

The idea, he said, is simple a school is given a charter requiring it to meet certain standards of performance. It is then left alone to accomplish these goals, with no one telling this district how it "must" be done.

Charter schools, he said, will be free to develop and design their own curriculum, format and hours. These schools can pick and choose what it does from any school(s) in the nation or world, so long as the charter goals are met.

Charter schools can come in one of two forms converting an existing school to a charter program and creating a entirely new school.

These schools, he said, give parents the choice of picking where they send their children as far as education, creativity and well being.

They give the schools the autonomy from regulations public schools must operate under, cutting the paperwork and making it easier to focus on education and attaining the chartered goals.

These schools will be judged on whether they meet their goals or not, along with how they manage their fiscal responsibilities. Failure to meet the specified goals will result in the school being closed, or merged into an existing district.

But, he said, charter schools will provide the chance for communities to create the greatest range of educational choices to serve the needs of the students, while providing professional freedom for teachers.

The charter schools, according to Huckabee, will create the opportunity and incentive to think outside the box in designing curriculum and administration. Teachers, he said, create programs to target at-risk or special education students, or develop the school around specific concentrations, such as the arts or technology.

Such schools, Huckabee said, will then exert pressure for the rest of the school systems to work harder to be more efficient and effective to meet the needs of their students.

In an effort to help create more jobs and attract more industry to Arkansas, Huckabee said more must be done to keep the brightest citizens in the state. One of the best ways to do this is encourage more students to attend and graduate from Arkansas' colleges and universities.

To reach this goal, Huckabee proposes an incent