Is Huck Serious About Education? (Moritz Commentary)

Gov. Mike Huckabee has taken his “Next Step” education reform stump speech on the road. In a recent stop at Foreman, he declared himself to be “deadly serious about implementing standards, measuring student performances and rewarding those who meet the goals.”

But is he serious, or is he still making happy talk? You decide.

According to the Hope Star, the governor quieted fears of consolidation in the 494-student Spring Hill School District (Hempstead County) by dismissing that idea as part of the “Little Rock mentality” coming from people who have “never been out of Pulaski County.” He said consolidating the state’s 310 school districts to 125 would only save $17 million — he didn’t even say “per year” — and then dismissed that amount as “a sneeze.”

The taxpayers shelling out that $17 million every year might not agree with that characterization. And they might like to know where the governor got that figure, since the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators and the Arkansas School Boards Association successfully killed a 2001 bill that would have studied the potential cost-savings from consolidation.

According to the governor’s office, that number came from a 1999 study by — you guessed it — the administrators’ association. (Search our archives at www.arkansasbusiness.com for a more objective estimate of the savings.)

He made a stop at the 412-student Waldo School District in Columbia County. According to the Magnolia Banner-News, the governor talked about the need for moral character as well as academic achievement, and he talked about how Waldo students should be able to compete with students from “any of the expensive prep schools on the East Coast.”

He lavished praise for improvements made in the Waldo schools. “It is proof positive that any school that will, can. Waldo is a great example of this. You in the Waldo community should be very proud of yourself,” Huckabee gushed.

Unfortunately, the Banner-News report doesn’t say exactly what the governor thought Waldo had done so well, and the governor’s office hasn’t answered that question. Surely it wasn’t Waldo’s Benchmark test results, which showed that only 6 percent of its fourth-graders (that probably means three, since the district has fewer than 50 fourth-graders) were proficient in literacy last year, and only 3 percent were proficient in math. And that was down from 12 and 9 percent respectively the year before. Three-quarters of the Waldo graduates who go to state colleges need remedial classes.

Waldo certainly is “proof positive” of something.

In Foreman, he bragged on the 496-student district’s improved math and literacy scores, which he told the audience were “near the top in the state and region.” (That’s not the region of the United States, mind you, but the region of Arkansas.) He may be right, but it’s nothing to brag about: I’m happy to report that most of Foreman’s fourth-graders achieved proficient levels in literacy (66 percent) and math (59 percent) last year, but in the eighth grade, only 27 percent were proficient at literacy and only 9 percent were proficient in math.

Foreman’s scores generally were better in 2000-2001 than the previous year, which must be why the governor told the Foreman community that it should be “extremely proud.” If he ever told them they should be “extremely concerned” about their eight-graders’ ability to compete in an expensive East Coast prep school, the Little River News didn’t report it.

He did assure his audience in Foreman that improvement in education isn’t all about money, which seems to be a theme. In the weekly column that the governor distributes for use in newspapers across the state, he pointed out that the states with the highest average SAT scores — North Dakota, Iowa and South Dakota — rank in the 40s when it comes to per-pupil spending.

What the governor presumably knows, but neglected to mention, is that only 5 percent of the high school graduates in those three states even take the SAT — and those are the kids headed for the Ivy League or National Merit semifinalists who have to take the SAT to advance to finalist status.

Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. E-mail her at [email protected]