K-4 community school could be right idea for Arkansas

Let us read it for you. Listen now. Your browser does not support the audio element.

Jonesboro was Capital City for the Day on Tuesday. It’s a neat deal, where the governor brings her entire cabinet to town for various events like groundbreakings and announcements.

There’s also a meet and greet over lunch to remind everyone that state government isn’t just faceless departments and agencies.

During her remarks at a popular local restaurant, Gov. Sarah Sanders said something about education that immediately struck me for its stark philosophical simplicity.

“We’re not funding systems,” she said, “we’re funding students.”

For any institution serving the broad citizenry, there’s an inherent tension between standardization and individualization. In education, that translates to a public school bureaucracy looking at the population as a whole, and parents looking at the learning experience of their child or children.

Oftentimes, the interests of both systems and students align. But what about when they don’t? The mission, the object of the sacred duty of education, must be the student.

The system is the means of administering it. Good governance should hold the mission immutable, while regularly challenging and changing the means as times and technologies change.

Governor Sanders’ statement implies an alteration in inherited system-based assumptions. None of the basic school conventions–seven-period school days, classroom sizes, 180-day school years, grade configurations, districts, et al.–are 21st century innovations.

It’s a rudimentary idea, not a radical one, to instead start with today’s child–and today’s world–and work backward to reimagine education.

Let’s turn one specific analysis around: Instead of looking at the system cost of small schools, look at the student benefits of small schools. Let’s also lean on the career expertise of lifelong teachers who know what young children need most in an elementary school.

Suppose, for a minute, that we acknowledge the K-4 grades as indispensably integral in establishing a child’s learning experience path. What if we allowed any incorporated Arkansas municipality to organize its own K-4 primary school?

Imagine a pilot “Arkansas Primary Community School” program specifically for young parents in small rural communities with 50-70 elementary age kids living there.

Ironically, this idea is almost as old as the republic. Thomas Jefferson proposed a free elementary school ward every five square miles in 1813.

Those first five grades are critically formative for children in terms of confidence, character and learning. Kids who can’t read adequately by fourth grade are destined for chronic disadvantage in years to come. If there’s ever a time to disproportionately invest in a child’s education, it’s during those extremely consequential grades.

Kids easily slip through cracks in large elementary schools. In classes of 8-12 (maybe even some combined classes, which evidence strongly supports as highly effective), every child is known and noticed.

Practically and logistically, the old economies-of-scale arguments never fall flatter than when applied to kindergartners through 10-year-olds. K-4 schools don’t need all the costly amenities that high schools do.

Small K-4 schools can perform well in repurposed spaces. Many successful private schools started out that way, in old strip malls or office centers. Lots of communities have empty school buildings they could tidy up.

Are there burnt-out or retired teachers who might get excited again about teaching in such a small environment where they know every family? Undoubtedly. Would a lot of K-4 teachers believe they could accomplish more with a class of 10 children instead of 25? Probably.

This idea is a natural extension of existing legislation. Arkansas law already allows isolated districts to re-establish schools with minimum enrollment exemptions, and LEARNS already lets state education funding follow students.

Intuitively, small elementary schools closer to home make sense. The program would quickly deliver valuable qualitative data as well. Test it with the same state assessments. Measure attendance, reading proficiency, teacher retention, discipline, parent satisfaction, etc. Factor in per-pupil cost for real return-on-investment calculations.

Consider all the winners if the Arkansas Primary Community School program proved successful:

students, who benefit from high-attention instruction and learning performance gains;

teachers, who return to circumstances where instruction is once again the biggest part of their job;

parents, whose universal questions about a “good school” are all answered in the affirmative;

small communities, because elementary schools greatly strengthen the social fabric as a gathering destination that brings young parents together.

Here’s another opportunity: The National Education Association saw enough potential in Arkansas to inject nearly $1 million in a political effort.

What if the next million dollars from the NEA was dedicated wholly to trying something educational, to help fund the research and design to model this Arkansas K-4 community elementary school program idea?

The concept checks so many boxes, maybe the state matches NEA’s $1 million. Maybe some education foundations do, too.

The idea of reshaping and prioritizing elementary education to give young children in small communities the best opportunity to thrive educationally is more than a reform idea. It’s a full-scale reimagination.

Raising our state’s national profile isn’t the goal, but if a Primary Community School K-4 program works here, that’ll be a byproduct–especially for other states with rural populations and communities.…Read more by Dana Kelley