Jefferson County took a hard hit when the Arkansas Department of Education released letter grades for each of its school districts and charter school systems Nov. 6.
The letter grades were the result of a new accountability formula the department adopted to measure the performance of each district or system under the ACCESS Act of 2025, largely considering student performance on last spring’s Arkansas Teaching, Learning and Assessment System (ATLAS) battery. Act 340 of this year’s Legislature began as a 123-page senate bill designed to strengthen laws for kindergarten- through 12th-grade entities concerning student pathways to higher education and post-secondary careers.
The White Hall School District was graded C, with Hardin Elementary receiving a B, Gandy Elementary a C, and its middle and high schools each an F. The WHSD filed an appeal of letter grades for the secondary schools, Moody Elementary (no grade assigned) and Taylor Elementary (no grade assigned), following a previous release of campus letter grades in September.
“Our district scored a C, and that doesn’t make us happy as a district, either,” said WHSD assistant superintendent Debbie Jones. “We know we can do better. But at our secondary level, we’ve had some challenges we’ve had to work through to understand where new teachers have come in, changes in how we address the curriculum, changes in lesson planning, and we’ve also received a $265,000 grant to provide math tutoring at the secondary schools. That started last week.”
The High-Impact Tutoring grant came from the Education Department’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The Pine Bluff and Watson Chapel school districts each received an F, as did Friendship Aspire Academies of Arkansas, which operates four schools in Pine Bluff (two elementary campuses and middle and high schools located in one campus). Each of the campuses in these systems scored an F, except for the PBSD’s Matthews Elementary and Southwood Elementary (both D), Watson Chapel Junior High (no grade assigned), and Friendship’s Southeast middle school (D) and high school (C).
Since the letter grades were released, the White Hall and Watson Chapel school boards have had regular meetings to address in part how they are helping students grow academically and to celebrate the measures of growth they’ve seen despite the poor letter grades. The Pine Bluff school board will hold its monthly meeting Monday evening.
“Are we happy with our grades? No sir, but always do you embrace growth, and that’s exactly what we’re doing in the White Hall School District,” Jones said.
REVIEWING THE DATA
The ATLAS summative assessment is given to students in grades 3-8 in English language arts, mathematics and science, and for grades 9-10, algebra I, geometry and biology. Students in grades K-2 take the ATLAS for ELA and math.
Less than 40% of Watson Chapel students scored at Level 3 or 4 — achieving proficient or advanced status — in literacy on the ATLAS, according to data presented by Traci Holland, executive director of curriculum and instruction for the WCSD. The percentages of students scoring in Level 1 or 2 — in need of support or achieving basic understanding — in literacy were: for kindergarten, 37% and 36%, respectively; for first grade, 35% and 30%; and for second grade, 32% and 34%. Nine second-graders, or about 10% of the class, reached Level 4.
Across the WCSD, 45% of students scored at Level 1 in ELA; 38% scored at Level 2; 14% scored at Level 3; and 3% scored at Level 4. Students who score at Level 3 or higher meet the state standards for a subject.
For math, a smaller percentage of kindergartners are scoring at Level 1 (32%) than first and second-graders (43% and 45%, respectively) in the WCSD. Among kindergartners and first-graders, 34% reached proficiency or higher, compared to 26% of second-graders.
All three grade levels outperformed the entire district, where 57% scored Level 1 and 15% scored either Level 3 or 4.
“When we first saw the data, our initial reaction was that we are really pleased because this is showing us that we are building the foundation, starting in kindergarten,” Holland told the board. “Part of that is the HQIM (high-quality instructional material) we have in place. Another big piece of that is that our teachers are utilizing that HQIM with integrity.”
Holland pointed to the Tier 1 instruction, or high-quality, evidence-based teaching, in the multi-tiered system of supports when asked about the genesis of the WCSD’s performance woes.
“So, making sure our teachers are teaching the grade-level standards at the rigor that students are going to be tested on within that standard,” she said. “Because our students were scoring below, our teachers were teaching below at times and not always bringing the rigor up to grade level. So, they were trying to intervene, but not always countering that with making sure the grade-level expectation was there as well.”
In White Hall, collaborative meetings at the middle and high schools are held where officials are reviewing what goes into the district report card and in what areas the district needs to grow, Jones added. According to the state’s District Accountability Formula, achievement, growth of all students, growth of the lowest-performing quarter of students, and success-ready graduates are indicators of a district’s performance.
“A new literacy curriculum was adopted for the high school to more frequently assess and find our students who need immediate help,” Jones added. “Our literacy specialist at the secondary level, Mrs. (Wendy) Cantwell, is working with collaborative teams at the middle and high schools, and she has worked with both teams in recognizing the standard and what is missing from our lessons in teaching that standard. So, we’re seeing a lot of growth and collaborative work and conversation around that standard and how to implement it with our highly qualified materials.”
Principals in the district are walking through classes with literacy and math coaches to find teachers who may need help in engaging more students in the curriculum, according to Jones.
THIRD-GRADE READING
The Arkansas LEARNS Act of 2023 requires all school districts to ensure third-grade students, starting with this school year, meet the state grade-level reading standard before being promoted to fourth grade. Good-cause exemptions may allow a student who doesn’t meet the standard to be promoted.
According to data presented by Charity Hart, communications director and testing coordinator for the WHSD, 71 third-grade students in the district are at risk of non-promotion — nine at Hardin, 15 at Gandy, 21 at Moody and 26 at Taylor.
“Probably, we are going to have more students who do not score well on the test, but our teachers have documentation to prove they are performing at grade level,” Hart said, fielding a question from a board member about a sub-category of third-graders most at risk.
Jones added: “There will probably be a strong review of special education students as well. Sometimes, that computer test is just difficult for that student with special needs.”
WHSD kindergartners and first-graders in the 2024-25 school year scored above the state average per class for proficiency in literacy, while second-graders were just below the state average, according to data from Hart.
Third-graders at risk are given a Read-at-Home Plan as required by the LEARNS Act, WHSD curriculum director Dianna Herring told the board. The district, she added, is required to ensure high-quality instructional materials are in place.
“We have that firmly in place at all of our grade levels,” Herring said. “Something else we’re doing for all of our potential students at-risk is that we’re giving them 50 minutes of literacy intervention every day. Sometimes that takes place in small group in their teachers’ classrooms. Sometimes that’s an additional pullout intervention for students who are identified as potential at-risk.”
MEASURABLE SUCCESS
Reviewing academic data from the WHSD, Jones showed bar graphs that illustrated how students who took the Preliminary SAT averaged a score of 1071, higher than the state (925), national (954) and global (956) averages. Eleven of the 50 students qualified to submit applications for candidacy as National Merit Scholars, Jones said.
One may wonder: How did White Hall earn better grades than neighboring districts?
“I think it’s the amount of opportunities we provide students in the district, whether it’s their career in tech, taking the PSAT to allow the 50 students to grow, (or whether) it’s building those special education students to know they have a postsecondary outcome,” Jones said. “Right now I think our goal with the secondary level is accountability for the student, having that day in October where parents sat down with their student and their student provided a success plan to them and what they wanted to do with their goals when they leave school.”
Programs like fine arts are also “giving students a reason they want to be in our school,” Jones said.
“I enjoy my time that I have, collaborative time with (neighboring districts’) curriculum directors, and the work they are doing,” she said. “We are fortunate, but we all have an uphill climb. I think we have to reach students deeper than we have ever before, and you have to compete with lots of distraction and the outside things that happen.”
Better grades in the future are not out of reach for Watson Chapel schools, but it will take some time to see a substantial turnaround in performance with the high-quality instruction, according to Holland.
“There’s probably a lot of different data out there that has different timeframes, but it’s going to take a few years,” she said. “It’s not a quick fix that we can look at this semester — and we can make changes for next semester — but we won’t necessarily see the deep impact of that for maybe a year or two.”
