It's time for a resolution

For 2014, I resolve to do a better job with this blog.

There. I said it. Now I just have to follow through.

Truly, I think I will because I've made it easier on myself. I'm embarrassed to say, but I jumped into  writing this blog two years ago without any proper planning. That's exactly what we at First Class Communication advise our clients NOT to do. It  causes us to shudder when they do -- strong, convulsing shudders, in fact.

So, if your New Year's resolutions include communicating better with your constituents, here are a few tips on creating, starting and -- hardest of all -- maintaining a blog.

After all, blogs -- when used correctly and consistently -- are great information and marketing tools. Superintendents, principals, teachers, business owners, company executives -- heck, anyone really -- can use them to accomplish any number of important goals:

• Distributing information
• Promoting organizational values
• Inspiring action 
• Selling products or ideas
• Creating an online community

If you're thinking about a blog for your school district, your school or your class, think specifically about what you hope to accomplish with it. (For First Class Communication, it's being recognized as a trusted communication/public relations firm with expertise in education issues, specifically as they relate to Arkansas, i.e., we want you to know us as the firm "where education and communication conspire".)

After your overarching goals are defined, it's easy to drill down to appropriate themes, specific topics and then story ideas to fill each post. Once those are listed, you'll want to create an editorial calendar -- this will help you organize entries in such a way that you don't keep writing on the same topic ad nauseam. Nobody wants that, trust us.

You'll want to mix in announcements and news with some information about yourself and what you provide (but keep the all-about-me-news to about 10 percent of your content, please!) Businesses specifically don't want to come across as if they are trying to sell something every time they put up a new blog entry. And if you can keep entries somewhere between 300 - 700 words, you'll keep readers engaged and get noticed by search engines, too. Woo hoo!

Blogs should be thought of as sometimes helpful, sometimes entertaining and always worth reading.

Some people post daily, but we advise our clients to try for at least one post a week, three max, and to utilize other social media channels for more frequent engagement.

I've got my calendar filled out for the first of 2014, so look for the next Extra Credit post to appear on Jan. 15. You'll have to come back to find out what it's about, though.

Respected Teacher Speaks out on CCSS

We think Kathy Powers is one of the most dynamic teachers in the state.

We first met her when she won the title of Arkansas Teacher of the Year,  and we were immediately impressed by two things -- her relationships with her students and her passion for improving learning for ALL students.

During her tenure as Teacher of the Year, she and her husband produced research identifying environmental factors associated with improving learning for lower socio-economic students. Those are the ones, after all, who often have the most ground to make up to reach their potentials. Her hope is that school districts and communities would work together to provide the best environment possible for student learning.

Today we stumbled on her blog about teaching the Common Core State Standards.  She recognizes the value of the standards, is honest about the challenges faced in transitioning, and confronts some of the myths spread by anti-CCSS folks.

In short, it's worth reading for any educator transitioning to the new standards.

What if we said ALL need college?

I cringe every time I hear someone say, “Not everyone needs to go to college.”

For too long, too many of us have assumed our children don’t need more education than we had. That’s when you hear, “I didn’t go to college, and I’m doing just fine.” Or, even worse, that line turns into an easy out for giving up on hard-to-teach or unmotivated kids.

Study after study tells us that most of the jobs of the future will require some level of education after high school. We also know that, if we want our youth to remain in Arkansas as adults, we have to be able to both build and attract the jobs that provide for a decent quality of life. Those jobs require more than a high school education.

No matter what set of statistics you look, Arkansas ranks poorly in education rankings: 

• According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Arkansas's four-year college completion rate of 19.7 percent pales to Deleware's 54.8 percent, Missouri's 35 percent and even Mississippi's 26 percent.
• In terms of two-year graduation rates, we rank closer to the middle, but with only 12.4 percent graduating on time.
• If you rank states by the percent of 25-44 year-olds holding bachelor's degrees or higher, Arkansas sits at 46th.

Among the poorest fourth of Americans, fewer than one in 10 graduated from college, according to a recent Brookings Institution study. How many of those live in Arkansas, I wonder.

So maybe it's true that not every high school graduate needs to go to college, in Arkansas, a lot more of them do.

Ugghh...not voucher talk again!

In our opinion.

Curtis Coleman addressed Little Rock’s Political Animal’s Club early this morning. Mostly he talked about cutting taxes (though, as you'd expect, not about the elimination of services those cuts would cause).

He did, finally, touch on education.

He said he was for school choice. Lest you be confused like I was, he wasn’t espousing legally expanding school choice between school districts. Nope, he meant the school-voucher-kind of school choice.  Not that he used the V word until questioned specifically about his meaning, but, yeah, he was talking about vouchers.

The V word was then followed by that tired ol’ platitude that the free market system is all we need to fix our schools.

Funny how the free-market system in education always entails public funds following students to private schools.  That’s government-subsidized business, isn’t it? Free market folks always want government to stay out of the way, yet they also want government money.

Really…this makes sense?

But let's say you follow Coleman’s so-called free-market process and let public funds follow kids to private schools, here’s what you’ll get: More and more folks will come out of the woodwork to open “private” schools. 

This is what happened with charter schools. Some – many, even – were well-meaning individuals with their hearts in the right place. They wanted to serve challenging student populations. But, often, they either underestimated the resources it would take to run a school or they knew too little about educating kids.

One of the most heart-breaking days I experienced while at the Arkansas Department of Education was hearing testimony about how students in a failed charter school (privately run) were several academic years behind their counterparts when the charter school closed and they returned to their local public schools.

We not only let these entrepreneurial educators experiment with our kids, we let them cause harm.

Granted, in Coleman’s world, there will be some high-achieving private schools. And, I’d bet, these will be located in the more affluent areas of the state because that’s where they can recruit and attract the faculty that will help them be successful. They will also very likely cater (simply by where they place their facility) to the higher-achieving students who will also make them look more successful. 


This will only exacerbates the problem this state has been working so hard to rectify: a situation in which kids from better off families and in more affluent areas of the state are more likely to have an exceptional education while poorer kids and kids in poorer parts of the state have fewer opportunities to sit in well-equipped classrooms taught by bright, talented teachers in up-to-date school buildings managed by progressive educational leaders.

So, instead of producing a better system, vouchers would make it worse.

AAAAGGHHH!!! Anti-Common Core Group Invades Arkansas

We just heard about next week's two-day hearing in front of the House and Senate Education committee apparently starring a new outfit called Arkansas Against Common Core.

But we hadn't heard of a group called Arkansas Against Common Core. So we did a little digging, and, while they may have rounded up a few Arkies to speak, we don't think the organization is Arkansan at all.

For starters, for a just-on-the-scene, grassroots-sounding group, they have quite a sophisticated website, but it appears full of stock photos -- no Arkansans on there that we can see.

The bigger tip-off is the list of folks they have on board to testify at the State Capitol -- via "call-in," for goodness' sake -- who are not Arkies:  Joy Pullman of School Reform News in Chicago; Dr. Neal McClusky with the CATO Institute in D.C. and Dr. James Milgram of Stanford University.

Then there's the other "State's Name Here Stop Common Core" groups around the country.

The main beef these folks have  is supposed "national" control of local schools. Besides that being a bunch of baloney, it makes us wonder who all's really funding this effort and what their motives are.

Another scary yet spurious charge tossed in is that the Common Core lowers learning standards, particularly by ill-preparing high school kids for math in college.

We were at the Arkansas Department of Education when Arkansas superintendents gave a standing ovation to the announcement of Arkansas's participation in the Common Core. We were there when the Common Core was adopted by our State Board of Education (who actually are Arkansans, by the way).

National control? No. For years before the Common Core existed, the Arkansas State Board of Education has approved the learning expectations for Arkansas students. It makes sure kids in Marianna are exposed to the same curriculum as kids in Mena. A good thing, indeed. How that curriculum is taught is up to individual teachers and schools.

What surprised - and still surprises - so many people, is that over the past decades, Arkansas had ratcheted up our standards to where we were considered national leaders. Yep, Arkansas's standards were mentioned in the same breath as Massachusetts' and Maryland's.

At the time I left the Arkansas Department of Education, curriculum leaders from around the state were meeting to map the Common Core learning standards to Arkansas's. Quite a bit of learning, such as mastering beginning algebra concepts, was being pushed to lower grades. Even in Arkansas, with our already high standards, teachers were having to teach new and harder things earlier. It's a challenge most we've heard from have accepted gladly, knowing they'd be better preparing students for life in the 21st century.

But the beauty of the Common Core is that it really focuses on mastery of important, fundamental concepts rather than quickly covering a  wide array of facts. That extreme breadth in subject matter was an oft-heard complaint from educators about Arkansas's student learning expectation. Teachers found it difficult to touch on so much material in nine months time.

Common Core allows more time on important concepts. It calls for deeper learning, and, in a sense, learning how to learn. That is what will prepare students for the demands of life beyond high school.

At First Class Communication, we hope these folks from out of state don't undo the good things that are happening for our students. We owe our children an education that allows them to compete with students nationally and, indeed, globally.

Common Core helps us accomplish that very important task. That's why these Arkansans are very much for it.

Putting the relations in media relations

Last week First Class Communication was in Eureka Springs for another great Arkansas Rural Education Association Summer Conference.  Bill Abernathy does a fantastic job running the event, and it's always great to be around people -- both school personnel and many of the vendors -- who are working to improve education for Arkansas children.

While there, we presented two sessions to the group, one being, "Dealing with the Media in Good Times and Bad." (This links to our Prezi presentation; you'll need to give it a few seconds to load.) 

The key element we shared is to develop good working relationships with the reporters, editors and even bloggers in your community. Instead of treating them like the enemy, a pest or just another outside influence you have to deal with, understand their personalities, working situations and the kinds of stories that spark their interest.

Doing so will give you a stronger ability to share good news about your school district as well as ease those times of crisis when you must answer difficult questions under stress.

We also shared tips for preparing for the interview, sticking to your main message and appearing your best while being interviewed for television news.

But, as we said, the most important thing you can do is build those relationships.

Surprises in store at AREA

There'll be golf...great presentations...fellowship with colleagues ... and the Arkansas Association of Rural Educators will name the Superintendents of the Year during its Summer Conference in Eureka Springs July 8-10. 

What's more, the organization will honor two scholarship recipients -- Austin Eskola from Magnet Cove and Tyler Blasdel from Yellville -- as well as retiring superintendents.

First Class Communication is looking forward to all the fun!