An Ashdown High School graduate returned to his alma mater Thursday to ask students for input on the state's education accountability plan.
Anthony Bennett, now a freshman at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., is on the Arkansas Department of Education's Every Student Succeeds Act steering committee, which is comprised of of 12 members. As the group's student representative, Bennett told the ADE he wanted to get the thoughts of students at his high school.
ESSA, signed by President Barack Obama in December 2015, replaces the No Child Left Behind Act, and allows states to set their accountability standards. The Community Listening Forum that Bennett led is one of several being held across the state to get stakeholders' input on what those standards should be.
Bennett led the discussion with the 10 student leaders and told them the steering committee's goals, mission and value statement.
"To increase the leadership support and service from the Arkansas Department of Education to schools because sometimes there's a lack of communication and a lack of help and assistance," he said.
Bennett told of a meeting he'd attended the day before where personalized learning was discussed in relation to student success.
"In personalized learning, the presenter talked about students' strengths, needs and interests," Bennett said. "It enables a student to voice what needs to be done for their education, so it betters them instead of the school itself, which is the main focus of school in the first place."
Sophomore Kaylee Silva said she thought the personalization of learning would help many students.
"If you find out their likes and the best way that they learn different people learn different ways," she said. "If you try and determine from the beginning, even in kindergarten, how we learn, it would help in the future."
Kaylee is on the Little River Chamber of Commerce's Junior Leadership Committee, along with Chance Redfearn, who also spoke about students' personal learning styles.
"There's some kids that do really well on tests, and there's others who do really well in the classroom and just really can't take a test very well," he said. "In some classes, tests are 80 percent of the grade. For the kids who have to really struggle to take a test, right there, that drops their grade down. They really know the information, but their grade goes down. That makes no sense to me."
The students also discussed the need for an elective life skills class in high school, to teach students things like balancing a checkbook and how mortgages work.
Community meetings are part of ADE's Phase 1 in the process to gather information. A public comment period will begin April 1, and a plan will be submitted at the federal level on July 17, 2017.
AHS Principal Kay York said the students had a lot of information to share, and the forum gave them a voice with which to do so.
"I like that Anthony, just coming from high school here, knows that there's some things that he could see that could improve as far as communication and also getting students ready for college and career opportunities that we need to offer here in Ashdown to have every child successful," she said. "We're doing some of those now, but we're always open to new ideas. And these young people have them."
For more information on ESSA and the Community Listening Forums, go to
arkansased.gov.