Three charter schools opened in July in
the former Arkansas Gazette building at Third and Louisiana to
challenge traditional public schools to produce better results,
supporters say. To stimulate the competitive urge, be an example, show
the way.

But the schools have an advantage at the starting line.

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Students transferring to the three
e-Stem Public Charter Schools from public schools — more than half of
whom came from the Little Rock School District — scored significantly
higher on benchmark tests last year than their classmates as a whole.
(Data was available for 406 students entering grades four through
nine.)

So if these e-Stem students outperform
students in traditional public schools this year, it would be a
continuation of past performance and not necessarily a reflection of
superior teaching or course offerings.

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For example, only 46.6 percent of last
year’s fourth grade students in the Little Rock School District, 54
percent in the North Little Rock District and 59 percent in the Pulaski
County School District scored proficient or advanced in literacy last
year. But 77 percent of e-Stem’s incoming students from those schools
scored advanced or proficient. For every grade tested, e-Stem students
outscored their classes, with the exception of third grade math in the
county district.

LRSD, NLRSD and the PCSSD supplied 81.9
percent of e-STEM’s student body, said Joe Mittiga, chief operating
officer of the non-profit organization that manages the schools.

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What the figures suggest is that e-Stem
— which has 859 students in three schools — drew some of the best
students in the county away from the public schools. Critics have long
feared “cream-skimming” by charter schools such as e-Stem. Whatever
else, those kinds of students should give e-Stem charters a competitive
advantage in achieving the national No Child Left Behind directive to
reach 100 percent proficient or advanced on benchmark scores by 2013-14.

Benchmark figures for e-Stem students
who came from home, private or other charter schools don’t exist, but
John Bacon, executive director of schools, characterized the student
body as “pretty diverse in terms of ability and motivation.” He said
e-Stem’s administration “will hold ourselves and our teachers
accountable” to make sure every e-Stem student improves academically at
a rate higher than the average growth for students who tested at the
same level.

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“If our students are not growing
academically every year, we will not be getting the job done and will
refocus our efforts,” he said. If they do, teachers and staff “will
receive a handsome financial reward” in merit pay supplements of up to
$10,000 a year.

E-Stem touted its location, in
downtown, as offering the best charter combination — an innovative,
advanced curriculum in a location easily accessible to low-income (and
underperforming) students — for improving education. But for the first
year, the charters attracted a student body markedly different from the
Little Rock School District in which it sits and different in ways that
tend to predict better education results.

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E-Stem, for example, did not attract
the same percentage of poor kids as the Little Rock School District.
E-Stem students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches — a common
measure of a school’s low-income population — amount to about a third
of the enrollment, executive Bacon estimates. (He did not have firm
figures last week.) In contrast, about 62 percent of the students in
the LRSD qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches. 

The number could be blamed on
transportation issues, Bacon said. There is no free busing to the
school; children may get city bus passes for $18 a month from Central
Arkansas Transit. Bacon made a rough guess that 100 students now ride
the bus. He believes the number will grow.

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The economic differences are important
in evaluating results. Kids from better economic backgrounds tend to do
better on standardized tests.

The schools’ name, e-Stem, stands for
the economics of science, technology, engineering and math — subjects
the schools’ charters say are to be emphasized in their curricula. 

Bacon said the schools’ push in the
sciences and math may have dissuaded some students, and said the
administration will work to get the message out that the school is not
teaching those subjects “at the expense of the arts and languages.”

Each of the e-Stem schools was created
as a district to take advantage of state charter aid to districts.
Classes are kindergarten through ninth grade; the high school will add
a higher grade in each of the next three years. All are majority black,
but well below the percentage of black students in the Little Rock
School District: 52.7 percent of the elementary school’s 360 students,
59.3 percent of the middle school’s 396 students and 60 percent of the
high school’s 83 students. (By comparison, the Little Rock School
District is 68 percent black.)

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Mittiga said 53 percent of the students
transferred from the Little Rock School District, 17 percent from
Pulaski County public schools, 6 percent from North Little Rock public
schools, 1.6 percent from public schools outside Pulaski County and 4.3
percent came from another charter school.

Private schools account for 13.9
percent of e-Stem’s students; 2.1 percent were home schooled.
Information wasn’t provided by 2.1 percent.

Two of the three e-Stem schools have a
higher percentage of Asian students than the LRSD. LRSD’s overall Asian
enrollment is 1.2 percent; e-Stem elementary is 4 percent, e-Stem
middle is 1.1 percent and e-Stem high school is 2.7 percent. The
schools’ Hispanic population is slightly lower as a percentage than the
LRSD’s — 2.9 percent in the elementary, 3.6 in middle school and 5.3 in
the high school, compared with 6.1 percent in the LRSD.

This year, the special courses the
charter application said would be required are, at the ninth grade
level, not being taught as full-year courses. Rather, they are being
taught for one semester by core course teachers — rhetoric by the
English teacher, pre-engineering by the algebra teacher, economics by
the civics teacher, and scientific research by the biology teacher.
Bacon said e-Stem decided to offer Spanish in high school as well as
Mandarin Chinese since so many incoming students had studied Spanish.
The charters originally intended to offer Latin in elementary, Spanish
in middle school and Chinese in high school. 

The school opened with a waiting list
for all grades but ninth, Mittiga said. The children of teachers,
administrators and members of the schools’ boards were given admission
preference, but the rest of the students were chosen by a random
lottery as required by state law. Siblings of students selected in the
lottery were also admitted.

Bacon, the former principal of Hall
High School, said he’s enjoying working with a much smaller group of
students. “It’s heaven,” he said. The size is allowing him to adapt
more quickly to their needs, he said — for instance, he and two other
faculty members started team-teaching a special remedial algebra class
for half a dozen ninth-graders who were clearly struggling to keep up
with their classmates.

Bacon also touted the 30-minute
advisory program in the middle and high schools that offers students
help in organization, study skills, social skills and other areas that
will help them succeed academically, a program that has no counterpart
in the county’s traditional schools.

Bacon said early testing at e-Stem is
establishing a baseline against which it can chart improvement. There
will be quarterly computerized tests in math, language, language usage
and reading “so our teachers will be able to compare apples to apples.”

Students at the schools will still take the state’s benchmark and end of course exams as well.

Results from those assessments will be
used in the schools’ merit pay system for teachers as well. Teachers
can earn up to $10,000 more per year based on three performance
measures: Student growth on the quarterly assessment (50 percent),
student growth on the benchmark and end of course exams (25 percent)
and a performance appraisal (25 percent).

Teachers’ baseline pay is competitive
with the Little Rock School District for entry-level teachers, Bacon
said, but becomes less so for more experienced educators. Salaries for
full-time teachers range from $39,129 (in biology) to $65,000
(counselor) in the high school; $28,000 (PE) to $54,376 (8th grade) in
the middle school, and $32,486 (first and second grades) to $50,876
(specialist) in the elementary school. Bacon, who is principal of the
high school as well as executive director, is paid $110,000.

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