Arkansas Blog

I think you've hit on something, Max. If we're going to build another Math and Science school, let's bring it to the Delta. During his inaugural address, the Governor promised attention and help to the Delta, and we haven't been seeing much of either (although he did help out the hospital over in Dumas this week).

What about what this will do to ASMSA? In recent years, ASMSA has had a difficult time attracting and keeping students in Hot Springs...if the school is divided among two or more branches, it will be even more difficult to maintain enough students to justify the program!

This come as no surprise to many people that know what the ultimate goal is for No Child Left Behind, school voucher, etc. Look at another school district the Waltons have begun their experiments...the Newark School District in New Jersey. Some may be ignorant to the fact, but the ultimate goal is to privatize the school system. If people don't wake up they will one day have to get a loan just to ensure their kids get a decent education.

Thanks for the heads up on this Max.
I agree with NoZe. We must support the existing school, first, before expanding. Outstanding students from the hills, delta, woods, small towns or city can find a home in Hot Springs. Expansion to LR will undermine the state's ASMSA effort.

Facts please.
How close to full capacity does ASMSA (Hot Springs) achieve? Anyone have numbers?

I love Little Rock, having lived there for several years.

My son attended ASMSA and part of its charm was the location in downtown Hot Springs. The year after he left, kids could drive as long as they had parents' permission and a certain GPA.

But my son and his friends ALL enjoyed being in downtown hot springs. there's so much to do, just walking around there, and its beautiful. They used to walk to a park to play football, of course they went downtown to buy ice cream and coffee, you name it.

And I can assure you that the merchants of hot springs looked out for those kids while my son was there; I doubt they have stopped.

I guess you could make the argument that hot springs is not centrally located. I dont know anything about its numbers these days. I only know from my son's experiences that he and his friends loved being in downtown hot springs.

There were lots of students in his class and the ones ahead of/behind his from fayetteville. They managed to get there.

Hot Springs is part of the fun of the school. I was not aware that they were having trouble attracting students, but I've been there and done that, and I dont see that having the school in little rock would have improved anything.

Many of my son's classmates from NE Ark and LA had never been to hot springs and they were enchanted from the very first day. I love hot springs, we used to go there every summer for a week, so my son already had his favorite spots downtown. I didn't worry about him, honestly.

I can't tell you his name cause I dont remember it but Mark _____ of Laurays Jewelry told me when I was in there on the day we moved my son in that Hot Springs had worked hard to get that school located there and that everyone intended to take good care of those kids. Fleischman? A very nice man and I am sorry I don;t remember his name. Anyway he said that all the downtown merchants could readily identify the ASMS kids and went out of their way to make sure everything was OK for them. I dont know where they'd want to put the school in little rock, but I dont know where you could find that attitude and the downtown charm of hot springs.

Leave it alone, it aint broke, dont go fixing it, either to torment the little rock school system or ASMSA. It's a wonderful school.

I can tell you more about it than some expert that the Walton foundation or whatever dragged into fayetteville to splain to us hillbillies how to do things because I've been through the school as a parent. Naturally none of these "experts" would ever consider asking a parent or a former student. God forbid!

Tina, I believe the article said the proposed school was a day school for 7th graders adding grades to prepare students who might like to go but are too young to attend a boarding school.

The article said the proposed school would be for 7th through 12th. I think it's a bad idea for ASMSA to be involved with charter schools especially one in Little Rock.

This is truly an outlandish, even outrageous suggeston by the University of Arkansas's Science & Math school. Does this require legislative approval?

Why does Max, and why do all the commentators, hate choice so much? I had thought that in America freedom is the name of the game. But clearly in the context of choosing one's children's education, many people think that choice is very, very dangerous. Sad.

It's "outrageous" that we should have more choice! This idea that we should have more options is a "lame justification"! All those kids who want to go to ASMSA ought to be shuttled off to Hot Springs! The current education establishment deserves its hammerlock on kids, and any change is "skimming the cream"! Can y'all even hear yourselves?

Max, instead of using your soapbox to wrest control of educational choice away from the people who are entitled to it -- kids and families -- perhaps you ought to explain why taking options away from kids is such a marvelous idea. Complaining that, dammit, the kids have enough options already is an extremely weak argument. If the kids actually had better options, they'd choose them, right? So what are you really afraid of? What is so terrifying about choice?

ARK. BLOG: There are options and there's needless, ineffecient, expensive duplication. This is the latter.

In Russia not too long ago, the government might have said we provide our citizens choice; potatoes or turnips. It would be outlandish! even outrageous! to offer them more because the number of citizens choosing government sponsored potatoes and government sponsored turnips might select government sponsored radishes instead! What a tragedy for the government sponsored potatoes and turnips. And it is the governments role not to provide sustenance, but to provide potatoes and turnips only.

Tina is right--ASMSA ain't broke, so leave it alone, U of A!
I have one daughter who just graduated and one who will start there next month, and my family is very happy with the school.

I don't believe an LR ASMSA campus with dorms could offer the students the type of safe freedom downtown Hot Springs and its motherly merchants supply. ASMSA students KNOW they'll get reported if they do something stupid during their free time. I lived in LR for a decade, and I know the larger city, by its own nature, can't match Hot Springs with this.

And if an LR ASMSA weren't a residential campus, many good aspects of the ASMSA experience would be missing. Kids at ASMSA have to study a heck of a lot, and being able to sleep in till 7:50 and get to an 8:00 class on time, or having the teacher call the RA to get a kid out of bed and on to class in five minutes, or being able to hop over to the teacher's office with a Calculus problem in the midst of an afternoon dorm room study session, is invaluable to ASMSA students. Also, living with a bunch of other smart kids provides many more opportunities for the type of intellectual discussions among students that mold them into a more reflective, open-minded, and informed members of society. Too, a non-residential LR ASMSA would cut out kids from the rest of the state--not fair to us small-towners.

One more thing, a divided campus would divide the state's resources, something ASMSA doesn't need. The pot may get larger with a second campus, but it is inevitable that ASMSA Hot Springs would suffer. It needs MORE support, not less. How about pouring any extra funds into making the "and the Arts" addition to the school's name more apropos?

As a member of the ASMS class of 1997, I couldn't agree more with the opposition expressed here to an LR campus of my alma mater -- it would weaken the original location and the spirit thereof, and I don't see it adding much to Little Rock, with its already-diverse supply of educational options.

Tina and Anne, you all are right -- a major component of the education I got at ASMS (no arts when I was there) was living cheek-by-jowl with my classmates, who came from many ethnic backgrounds and all parts of the state. This important aspect (maybe the most important one?) of the ASMSA experience would be totally removed for those attending the proposed Little Rock campus.

Maybe the folks behind this move should consider putting their energies into expanding the capacity of the current ASMSA so that more students from around the state could have the same experience.

A better question is, why does LR hate NWA? These comments, as well as Max's diatribe, further convince me that a schism is being created (or furthered) between the Northwest and the rest of the state.

Max, do you honestly think Gary Ridder and his department lay awake in bed at night thinking, "Hmm...how can I hurt the children of Central Arkansas today? I've got a great idea! I'll start a charter school to take funding and smart children away from Hall, Central, McClelland, and other Little Rock schools. It's perfect! Muwhahahahahaha." Give me a freaking break! That conspiracy sounds like something from Michael Moore film (anyone seen Sicko by the way? It's not showing up here).

The way you have spun this issue, as well as the way others are running with it, is ridiculous. This school is not going to serve as ASMS version 2.0. ASMS, in my mind, serves a faithful purpose very well - to take exceptionally gifted students from underachieving schools and putting them in an environment where they can take a more rigorous and expansive course load, with an emphasis on math and science. From the looks of it, this school will be along the lines of Parkview or Mills, which you mentioned previously.

To my knowledge, there is currently no upper education math and science magnet school in Central Arkansas other than the LISA Academy, which seems to have had a plethora of internal problems since it's inception. Parkview, as you mentioned, is more geared towards the arts than the science, which is reflected in their great theater and art programs. Mills is specifically geared towards the AP program. This school would serve a function much like those two, only with emphasis on mathematics and sciences.

As for the school "skimming the cream of local students, " I ask you about Central High with its highly touted GT program. Do you honestly think every one of those GT students legitimately lives within the Central High boundary? Or does Central High "skim the cream" of the local LR high schools and recruit students to that school, knowing parents are enamored with the GT program?

As for why LR instead of NWA or the Delta, the answer is obvious. NWA already has a school much like this, Haas Hall Academy, which is a charter school with a curriculum geared towards technology and science. If you put this school in the Delta, it would have to be a residential school, which would truly take away from the school in Hot Springs. Putting the school in the state's largest metropolitan area just makes sense, as it would only serve Central Arkansas, not the rest of the state, which is already taken care of by ASMSA.

I don't know if Gary RIdder ran over your dog or what, but this constant grasping of straws to get at him is getting ridiculous.

ARK. BLOG: What will this school supply that is not already offered in LR? Upper level science? Get real.

Isn't it interesting that Arkansas School for Math and Sciences was tied to H. Clinton when started and now is being adopted as a success by the Reactionary Enclave of NWA to export to Little Rock.

I wonder if the NWA's still associate Hillary with the formation of Arkansas School for Math and Science?

Look out, they're moving in- making the next in a series of advances to take the "public" out of public education. UA, have the guts to take your plans for new high schools to the Delta. Having grown up there, they REALLY need your help. People of Little Rock- including BUSINESS people- support your public schools. Go to the schools and offer your help and resources to classroom teachers. The teacher across the desk from a child makes the ultimate difference in a child's success...not what you call the school, how you organize it or what you claim to offer in your curriculum.

Having been born, raised and educated in NWA, I can safely say, yes, there is a strong anti-Little Rock bias up there. Central Arkansas is a liberal ghetto filled with crime, the students are gang-bangers, and African-Americans and Hispanics are allowed to openly walk the streets.

That being said, the Little Rock public schools wouldn't be threatened by this if they had their act together. They've had decades to do that, haven't succeeded yet, and I don't see success on the horizon.

If the idea is to give children the best possible education, then what's the downside? I don't see the downside, since I don't see how the current situation could be that much worse, regardless.

ARK. BLOG: The key question is simple. What does this school supply that is not already supplied? And, secondarily, why should the UA commit resources -- and it will be enormous counting facilities -- to create a high school for which there is not a demonstrable need, except to satisfy the UA's owners.

RazorbackDem - You beat me to the punch. You are exactly right about Central "skimming the cream" right here in LR. I've made this point many times before in this blog. Central skims all the good students in the LRSD and leaves the other 3 schools with the remains. When I complained, what was Max's reply? I believe he said, "IT'S CALLED SCHOOL CHOICE."

Come on, Max. You can't have it both ways.

Here is the exact post (4/25/07 "Happy 50th") from Ark. Blog regarding my complaint about Central. Hypocrite?? Here's a fun exercise - take out the word "Central" in his post and substitute it with "Charter School." Does the same argument still hold, Max?

"ARK. BLOG: It's called choice. And it's legal. And it's a function of what parents think is best for their kids. You don't like it. If the rules were being broken, that's one thing. But you seem to simply resent the fact that a number of white parents have decided that Central is their school of choice. (As I told you, mine, for one child, would have been Parkview.) You could bust up the faculty and course offerings at Central so as to discourage these students from going there, I suppose. You could dumb down Central and spread some of the courses and teachers around elsewhere. But I suspect the net effect would be to drive some more people out of the school district. Perhaps that would be fine with you."

ARK. BLOG: Of course it doesn't. You're talking here about spending millions to create a school for which there is no demonstrable need, not making choices among existing schools. Should it be built -- thus stretching state dollars to create a school that already exists in Hot Springs and isn't needed in LR -- it will certainly fall within the same choice option. And it will further deplete the pool of stronger students that will attend existing public schools, often simply because parents will choose locations more acceptable by virtue of neighborhood and demographic of the student body, not academics. It will be legal. But there's no reason for the state Education Department to support creation of an unneeded school simply to serve the Waltons or the well-off folks that are uncomfortable with the diverse mix of students you find in other public schools.

Central's "Specialty Program" is not GT (gifted/talented), nor AP (advanced placement) - it's INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - or at least, that is what they calle their "magnet program." So why don't we need a Math and Science School???

ARK. BLOG: The magnet program has little relevance here. What's relevant is the number of higher order math and science and art courses -- and language and humanities, etc.-- already available in Little Rock-North Little Rock, not your animus toward Central. Where's the gap that requires filling by the UA with a duplicative, expensive high school?

ArkBlog -

Your answer is unacceptable.

ARK. BLOG: Wow. That's incisive.

Mary Jane Rebick should recuse from any decision concerning a school district that her copy machine sells or leases to.

"Get real" is your only response? So you're telling me there's a demonstrative need for an arts magnet but not a math magnet? There's a need for a school which focuses on AP tests (I thought teaching to tests is a bad thing?), but not one with a focus on science?

Using my experience at Conway High School as an example, most of our upper level science classes were jokes. Except for chemistry and calculus, our science and math classes did not well prepare those that took them for college. In addition, the only upper level math and sciences offered at most high schools are calculus, statistics, physics, biology, and chemistry, and I'd wager a large sum of money that in a majority of Arkansas high schools, 60% of those classes are lackluster.

Your "no basic need argument" fails for a few reasons. As you said yourself, this new school would be attractive in to families with high-achievieving students. What would result, then, is that all schools would make themselves more attractive - through new facilities, after school programs, better teachers, more specialized programs (vocational, professional, artistic, or other), and so on. Through school competing for more students (a process which already happens through a process you endorse known as SCHOOL CHOICE), then all schools get better in the process. Does Wendy's not open on the same street as McDonald's because McDonald's already serves the same things Wendy's would serve? NO! Wendy's opens because they believe they can serve you the same things - only better.

But what am I talking about - Arkansas has no need at all for schools with an emphasis on math and science. That's been proven countless times by our consistently stellar performances by our schools on the national standardized exams, thus leading to Arkansas's schools being revered around the nation.

Wait...

"Complaining that, dammit, the kids have enough options already is an extremely weak argument. If the kids actually had better options, they'd choose them, right? So what are you really afraid of? What is so terrifying about choice?"

Well said LoverOfLiberty. The saddest characteristic of the anti-choice crowd is that they don't believe traditional public schools are attractive enough to keep their students if another choice is available.

They also would leave other options only to those who can afford them. Or, maybe as OAZ's post suggests, they would take those options away from everyone.

ARK. BLOG: But how many options are enough? 10. 15. 100? High schools are expensive, particularly those with advanced courses. And what is the option? It's not more courses. It's a whiter setting? In a better part of town? Or what?

Perhaps it is time for LRSD, NLRSD, and PCSSD to take a look at some of the most successful districts in academic success and not be stifled by race, gender, national origin. Forget the drugs in High Schools (we have those), forget the student frustration (we already have that), forget hiring entry level teachers so that teacher expense is less (alternative certification doesn't a teacher make). It is time for the School Boards to set standards ABOVE the state requirements, hire the teachers that can teach to those standards (spend the $$$ for the experience)
and beyond. We wouldn't need charter schools or private schools IF public schools will quit making excuses for student failure. Kids fail for a variety of reasons. School, parents, community, single-parent, poor, lazy, disinterested, mandated boring curriculum being taught, willingness to settle for "less than". If a kid fails, so be it. No lawsuit needed. It's a pretty good life lesson. No work, No pay.

This is a classic issue where reality and theory are very different. Let's talk reality for a moment.

I have children in public schools. My spouse and I have done the full range of assorted volunteering and parental leadership roles.

Let's get something straight. It's not always fun cleaning out the nature trail or setting up the Halloween Carnival, or cleaning out classrooms, but it is what involved parents do.

It chaps me that it always seems to be the same involved families in all the big events.

So here is the question Max.

What is wrong if a Charter School allows the involved parents to come together? Why is that such a bad thing? Why should my spouse and I always carry our load and others carry none.

I don't buy that our kids are easier to educate. We just expect more from them and push them more. That's how your kids got into Yale and Brown.

The other things that bugs me. If public schools don't like charter schools....your beloved Katherine Mitchell should build schools that can compete better.

That is what a free market is all about, right?

This isn't a NWA issue. This is an issue that involved parents in the LRSD are sick and tired of what they see happening in the district.

Remember the story I suggested for the fall. Go chart the enrollments at Christ the King and Holy Souls and all those places over a ten year run. I hope you are still not clinging to the notion that pushing the Supt. out would not affect enrollment.

ST,
You would have been better off suggesting PA where there is no secular influence, kinds sorta.

The new guilded age; this is what you get when you build a ruling class.

The poor have endured such times before. It seems every other generation forgets the lessons of democracy. I hope we don't pay too high a price.

So is the ASMS a charter school?

ARK. BLOG: No.

StrangeTimes wrote:

"Go chart the enrollments at Christ the King and Holy Souls and all those places over a ten year run. I hope you are still not clinging to the notion that pushing the Supt. out would not affect enrollment."

You're inferring causality from THAT? What a joke...

You've got a bright future ahead of you on Jay Greene's research team.

Max,

Your attempts to inject race into this discussion at every opportunity are pathetic. How many charter school applications have come from predominantly African-American groups? These are groups that recognize that the current system only allows options for those who can afford them.

You called LISA academy a "white flight" charter school, and then later whined that it would "skim" the best African-American students from LRSD and contribute to the achievement gap. This isn't about race, it is about choice for everyone--not just the wealthy or the Whites drawn by magnet schools.

A charter school can attract "white flight" enrollment while at the same time attracting the best African-American students. Those white people fleeing the public schools aren't trying to get away from the high-achieving black kids; it's all the other ones they're worried about.

What remains at the public schools? The rest of the kids -- white and black -- who were not at the academic top.

To quote Max - "It's school choice."

It's easy to see how LR parents of all races might want this option, and for reasons that have nothing to do with avoiding another race.

Like Max, though, I find it much harder to see why the State and its university should be, or would want to be, the entity providing this option -- to the detriment of particular school districts in a way that is much different from the current residential program that draws students from across the state.

As Mr. Kurrus points out in the article, race issues aside, the LRSD loses funding every time it loses a student. Why should the State of Arkansas come here to siphon away mental and monetary resources?

What if the proposed school impedes desegregation plans in the PCSSD and NLRSD, which have not yet obtained unitary status? Is the State buying a seat at the defense table in any future litigation concerning these districts, and to what end?

Maybe the UA folks just think the state has a dearth of scientists and engineers and this will aid the HS campus in combatting that. I don't know.

But I think you can accept the non-racial motives of parents who'd welcome the school, while at the same time questioning the motives of the UA folks who have to know the plan is bad for the LRSD.

slydog,

I know what you meant, but I'll have to object for the record and on behalf of all Hall High parents, to your statement that LRCHS takes "all" the good students and leaves the other schools "the remains."

There are others, of various colors, who are in the mold of Roshundalyn Scribner and are in the pipeline at Hall.

I'll bet some parents at the others schools feel the same way.

"Q: Why does UA hate LR?
A: Because the Waltons instruct them to do so."

My goodness! What a preposterous, absolutely absurd assertion.