Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Arkansas newspapers:
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nov. 16, 2015
The enthusiasm school
At first glance, and second and third glances, there seems to be nothing special about Terry Elementary in west Little Rock. It looks like any other elementary school in these parts. One-story layout, a couple of parking lots, kids in the playground area doing what kids do: getting dirty, swinging on swing sets, climbing on things.
But Terry Elementary has been making the papers a lot lately. Much ink has been dedicated to this school - and its A grade on the benchmark test. It’s just one of four schools in the Little Rock school district to get the top score, and only one of 140 in the whole state to hit that mark. And it’s getting top marks with a diverse group of kids. (The education types call poor children Economically Disadvantaged, and 82 percent of the kids at Terry are so, compared to 63 percent across the district.)
There are also a lot of kids at Terry Elementary who don’t speak English at home, and the school has the normal amount of special-needs kids.
So what’s the secret sauce for success in this otherwise nondescript public school? Is there a recipe? And how can the district bottle it and distribute it around to other campuses?
We visited Terry Elementary last week. And we’re happy and satisfied to answer the question of how the teachers there do it: We don’t know.
There might not even be a way to know. Sandra Register - the principal/top cheerleader/guiding light at the school - doesn’t seem to have one answer. There’s no magic formula, she says. Just a lot of work.
And great teaching.
When a visitor meets with Principal Register, she shows off. That is, she shows off her teachers and their classrooms. The principal seems to know that administrators can only do so much. The classroom is where stuff - learning - happens.
On this particular day, Veterans Day, Hannah Rosson’s class learns to say “Thank you for your service” to veterans. But not veterinarians. You see, there’s a difference.
Sarah Relano, the math specialist at the school, sets up math games. The assistant principal, Patricia Boykin, talks about the parent who needed a bit of help with uniforms, and the local church that came through.
Jane Roddy’s class pairs off to read. The kids seem used to the exercise, and read to each other one-on-one without any of the hair-pulling and teasing you might expect. In fact, even in the cafeteria there’s not a lot of grabbiness, even among the youngest kids.
So is the secret … threats and switches? Or maybe bribes such as direct cash payments to the kids at the end of the day?
Nope.
Mrs. Relano says there is no secret. But, she says, the teachers teach from bell to bell, and don’t give students a lot of down time to get into trouble. Idle hands and all that. The classroom is no place for recess, and there aren’t any all-day Friday movie sessions at Terry Elementary, either.
Teachers there talk about high expectations, thorough planning, technology in the classrooms, and something called the Pace of Teaching. Which seems to mean that teachers move from lesson to lesson ASAP to keep things interesting.
But when a visitor talks to the teachers and admin types at Terry, one thing does seem obvious: There’s an enthusiasm there. A joy, of sorts. Understandably, that’s easy to have when your school is getting As, the kids are behaved, and the press is fawning. Or did the enthusiasm come first, then the good grades and accolades?
When second-grade teacher Aimee Freeman was asked how her school has succeeded with children who may not have all the same economic and social advantages of other children, she said: “We teach ’em.”
If the district could only bottle that.
When we left Terry Elementary on Veterans Day last week, it occurred - again - that there really is only one secret to success when it comes to public education in this country: Good teachers and good principals make good schools. It really is as easy as that.
And as difficult.
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Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nov. 15, 2015
The Twilight Zoning
The city of Fayetteville has a reputation for a love-hate relationship with developers. Some developers would say it’s more of a tolerate-hate relationship. They don’t feel the love.
Advocates of strong, community-driven development rules will say the perception is predictable fallout from a city that’s not content to let land owners or project developers dictate the kind of city Fayetteville will be in the long term. After all, someone needs to keep the big picture in mind, ensuring individual development projects fit the city’s vision for 20, 30 or 50 years into the future.
Some developers and property owners, however, will say they’re not afraid of meeting a city’s high standards, but view Fayetteville as a difficult city in which to build because what could be a collaborative relationship is too often treated as an adversarial one.
And that’s in part how we’ve ended up with the 2015 Clash of Van Asche.
Less than two months ago, Mayor Lioneld Jordan cut the ribbon to open the Van AscheDrive extension, hailing the new east-west connection in north Fayetteville between the shopping district around the Northwest Arkansas Mall and U.S. 412 near Sam’s Club and the 112 Drive-In theater. The four-lane connection is central to Jordan’s plan for a “box” of streets around Fayetteville that would ease movement around the city. City and chamber of commerce leaders have praised its potential for commercial development, which translates into growing sales tax for the city, growing hotel-motel-restaurant taxes for the Advertising and Promotion Commission, and growing property tax revenue for local schools.
So, naturally, Fayetteville Planning Commission last week unanimously denied a proposal to rezone 200 acres of mostly farm land north and south of the Van Asche extension for commercial development.
City leaders for a decade have viewed the Van Asche Drive extension as an economic booster shot for the city. City officials, with the help of U.S. Sen. John Boozman, got changes in federal law that allowed the Van Asche Drive project to be eligible for federal funding as part of the Fayetteville Expressway Economic Development Corridor. That’s the same project that built the “flyover” bridge off College Avenue to the Fulbright Expressway to ease access to the mall/Walmart/Target area. Around $2 million in federal funding helped build the Van Asche extension.
The push for the economic development corridor arose as retail properties in Rogers and Bentonville, such as Pinnacle Hills Promenade, increased the level of competition for north Fayetteville, once the powerhouse retail area for all of Northwest Arkansas. Strong retail development in Fayetteville, however, isn’t a given anymore.
To make the Van Asche extension a reality took tremendous time and effort involving two cities, Fayetteville and Johnson. Originally, much of the land north of the Van Asche extension was in the city of Johnson. It made no sense for Fayetteville to build a costly road extension that would primarily benefit Johnson. Fayetteville worked with a landowner, WG Land Co. Limited Partnership, which sued Johnson so its land could be annexed into Fayetteville. The mayor, at the time Dan Coody, and City Council, driven by a desire to open up the commercial development possibilities for the area, approved an agreement with WG Land Co. outlining the future intention to let its owners rezone the property as commercial. At the time, commercial zoning were designated C1, C2 and C3.
What happened last week at the Planning Commission, given the project’s history, looked like a bait-and-switch. City planners recommended denial of the rezoning because two years after the city’s 2008 agreement with WG Land Co., the City Council adopted new zoning designed to promote the “urban” style of development — focused more on pedestrians and less on cars. That often translates into buildings constructed right up against the streets and sidewalks, with parking behind buildings, and residential units mixed in with commercial. The approach has been pushed for the downtown area for years.
What city planners don’t want is development that looks like the Northwest Arkansas Mall/Walmart/Target area. The planners say city residents don’t want that kind of development anymore. The way to enforce Fayetteville’s new vision is for the land around Van Asche to develop under the new zoning laws rather than the older ones, they say.
Tom Terminella, who spoke for the development project last week, said what the city wants now would diminish the land owners’ “memorialized” rights to develop. Terminella said he’s all for the city’s goals and is ready to work with the city, but “we are not for bargaining our rights away and vesting those in the municipality and their planning staff.”
If there’s a problem with the C1, C2 and C3 zonings, Terminella asked, why does the city of Fayetteville still maintain them as options under its development code?
Here’s the problem: Now that the land owners have fulfilled their commitment to help the city build the Van Asche extension, including dedication of right of way for the road, the Planning Commission’s decision looks like agreements with Fayetteville aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
And if that ends up being the case, it appears the millions of dollars spent to open up land for desired commercial development may have the long-term impact of discouraging development. What developer would ever again agree to work with the city toward its purposes if, when it’s time for the developer to redeem the benefit of providing help, the city suddenly forgets its agreement?
City Attorney Kit Williams told the Planning Commission the agreement was not ambiguous, that the city pledged the commercial zonings as they existed in 2008. The commissioners, eager for a rare opportunity to “greatly effect the fabric of the city” by applying new limitations to the project, voted against the project.
Now it’s going to be up to the City Council, some members of which are highly unlikely to support the older zoning classifications no matter what a preceding City Council agreed to. But that is dangerous territory indeed. The city got the street it wanted but some now appear ready to renege on the deal that was necessary to make that road a reality.
In denying the agreement, the City Council could very well cement Fayetteville’s reputation as an anti-development community. But it might not matter, because when a city government cannot be trusted to fulfill its agreements, it may not have many developers knocking on its door.
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Texarkana Gazette, Nov. 17, 2015
Business of education
No doubt you’ve seen the ads on TV or in print.
Smiling students, professional instructors, promises of better jobs, better earnings, better lives.
For-profit colleges. Education as a business.
Maybe you’ve even taken the bait and enrolled. Perhaps you’ve taken out a loan or used government grants or military education benefits.
We hope you had a great experience. We hope you got what you were looking for.
Unfortunately, too many don’t.
On Monday, Education Management Corp.- the second largest operator of for-profit colleges in the U.S. - settled charges the company had illegally paid recruiters based on the number of students they enrolled. The company will have to fork over $95.5 million to federal and state authorities.
It’s not against the law to recruit students. But paying recruiters based on numbers of students recruited is illegal if the school accepts federal student aid. That’s because in such cases recruiters could put their own compensation ahead of the needs of the students.
EDMC operates schools such as the Art Institutes, Brown-Mackie College, Argosy University and South University, with more than 100 campuses across the country. The company says it has always put students first and will continue to do so.
This isn’t the first legal problem that for-profit colleges have faced. We doubt it will be the last. For-profit education is a big business. And it’s driven by student loans and federal aid. There is a lot of education money out there, and these companies get a nice piece of the action. The schools often target older students or former service members.
But according to a 2013 study by three Harvard professors, graduates of for-profit colleges are more likely to earn less or be unemployed than graduates of community colleges, which usually cost far less. Also, for-profit grads are likely to be saddled with more debt_an average of more than $40,000. Another study claimed for-profit graduates are three times more likely to default on student loans. Additionally a 2010 government probe found that 15 such colleges made deceptive claims about employment and salary prospects_and four of the colleges actually encouraged students to commit fraud in obtaining federal aid.
In the Twin Cities we have Texarkana College, Texas A&M University-Texarkana and a branch of the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope. Several other colleges are within driving distance. And frankly we think they all offer a better deal all-around than the for-profit schools.
It’s your choice where to pursue an education. We suggest you think long and hard about your options - and start by looking closer to home
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