The Delta Issue #114

Why Arkansas Should Be on Every State Education Leader’s Radar

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Hi y’all, Jessica here. 

By now, you’ve probably heard about the “Southern Surge”—the impressive academic gains we’ve seen in several Southern states over the past decade. The New York Times even called it “the biggest education story of the last few years.”

Mississippi and Louisiana have become the poster children for this progress, with Alabama and Tennessee getting plenty of attention, too. And while those states absolutely deserve the attention they’re getting, I think it’s time we added another name to the conversation: Arkansas.

In 2023, Arkansas passed the LEARNS Act, a sweeping education law covering everything from literacy and teacher pay to career readiness and school choice. It was a big swing, and as we all know, passing an ambitious law is one thing. Changing what students experience in classrooms is another.

A few years in, Arkansas is starting to see some promising results. On the state’s latest ATLAS assessments, student performance improved in every grade and subject, building on gains from the previous year.

This week, I sat down with my friend Jacob Oliva, Secretary of Education at the Arkansas Department of Education, to get underneath those results and understand what the state has been doing differently to support schools and improve student learning.

Arkansas is still early in its journey, and Jacob would be the first to tell you that. But I think the progress they’re making deserves more attention, and there’s a lot other state leaders can take from how they’re going about it.

Read or watch our conversation below.

Want to keep watching? Check out the full conversation here, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The transcript below has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Jessica Baghian

Welcome to The Delta. I’m Jessica Baghian, President of Watershed Advisors.

Over the last several years, there’s been a lot of attention on education results in the South, particularly in Mississippi and Louisiana. You know I’m always happy for Louisiana to get its due, but today I want to talk about another state that should be on everyone’s radar: Arkansas.

In 2023, Arkansas passed the LEARNS Act, a sweeping education law covering everything from literacy and teacher pay to career readiness and school choice. Since then, the state has been focused on implementation at scale.

And now, we’re starting to see results. On the latest state assessment, ATLAS, every grade and every subject improved, building on gains from the year before.

Leading that work is my guest today, Arkansas Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva. Jacob has led the department since 2023 and brings more than two decades of experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and state education leader in Florida.

Today, I want to dig into what’s happening in Arkansas, what it takes to lead a state through major implementation work, and how Jacob thinks about the role of the state.

Jacob, so glad to have you.

Jacob Oliva

Thank you, Jessica. I’m honored to be here.

Good Teachers Need Good Systems

Jessica

A few weeks ago on The Delta, we talked about Mississippi and the years of work behind its reading gains. Arkansas hasn’t broken through in quite the same way yet, but your results suggest something is happening.

I know we’re both excited for the next NAEP results. In the meantime, what are the two or three things Arkansas has done over the past few years that you think are contributing most to these outcomes?

Jacob

When you look at Mississippi, its initiatives were explicit, targeted, grounded in research, and sustained over time. I’m optimistic we’ll see similar trends in Arkansas.

The simplest way I can describe what we did with LEARNS is that we provided clarity and alignment.

When we looked at what we were asking teachers, leaders, and school boards to do, the system was confusing and misaligned.

I always say bad systems beat good people every time.

We had great teachers and leaders doing everything they could for students, but our standards weren’t clear. Our assessments weren’t aligned with those standards. Our accountability system included metrics that distracted from the fundamental question: Are kids learning?

We also needed to look at whether teachers had high-quality instructional materials aligned with the standards and professional development that supported their classroom practice.

When we stepped back, we saw these pieces weren’t working together. We wanted to fix that.

Jessica

You sometimes use the analogy of building a house, and I think that’s right. Arkansas has done work on standards, assessments, reporting, accountability, and curriculum.

In education reform, there can be an attraction to the shiny objects rather than the meat and potatoes of what’s happening in classrooms.

But what happens between the teacher and the student is where all of this comes to life. You can sign whatever bill you want, but if a third-grade classroom doesn’t look different, it doesn’t really matter.

When people talk about LEARNS, they often focus on education savings accounts or teacher pay raises. Both are notable, but I think it’s telling that you’ve focused so much on the core academic work that matters for every teacher and student.

Jacob

That goes back to the spirit of LEARNS. We believe a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t meet the needs of every student and family.

We need different pathways, interventions, and opportunities for acceleration. But it starts with the classroom. The biggest influence on student outcomes is the teacher in front of students every day, followed by the principal leading the school.

I used to say, even as a superintendent, get good teachers and get out of their way. Where states struggle is that they try to improve outcomes by writing laws and rules that micromanage inputs. Everything becomes a checklist: every school must do this, every teacher must do that.

We’ve flipped that model. We give schools autonomy and flexibility on the front end, but hold them accountable for student performance on the back end.

If schools are making the gains we expect, we’ll keep supporting them. But if they’re struggling, our agency will be more involved.

We want to understand whether interventions are being implemented well, whether they’re working, and whether we need a different strategy.

Too often, state agencies are seen as the compliance police. As a superintendent, the Department of Education was the last place I wanted to call when we needed help because it felt like turning yourself in.

We’ve worked hard to change that. Governance and oversight are still our responsibilities, but we also want to be a thought partner that helps create the conditions for students to succeed.

Local Control Doesn’t Mean Looking the Other Way

Jessica

I want to dig into that local control piece.

You and your senior team have been visiting D- and F-rated schools, and last year you held state board meetings in struggling districts.

How do you decide when the state should lean in and when it should step back?

Jacob

I always say I don’t have opinions about schools or districts. I have their data. We lean in when we see systemic failures and students aren’t getting what they need. And it’s never a surprise. Districts have opportunities to work with us and put better practices in place before we become more hands-on.

Last year, we required every F-rated district to present an improvement plan to the state board. Both the superintendent and school board chair had to present because local control means those leaders need to work together.

When districts struggle, you often find the school board pursuing one set of priorities and the administration pursuing another.

We also held joint workshops with local school boards and community forums to share the data and discuss what needed to change.

Every time we did this, school board members told us some version of the same thing: “We knew it was bad, but we didn’t know it was this bad. Nobody had ever shared this data with us.”

That’s why these honest conversations with communities matter.

Jessica

I couldn’t agree more. I think what you’re describing is deeply logical, but it’s not the default.

Too often, we’re afraid of hurting adults’ feelings. Meanwhile, a child is only in third grade once, and they can’t read.

It doesn’t have to be an indictment of the adults to say something isn’t working and we have to do better. But it does require transparency and honesty.

That brings me to school boards. You and I talked recently about how little sustained attention we give to preparing elected school board members for their roles.

If we want boards to hold systems accountable for student outcomes, what needs to change about how we prepare and support them?

Jacob

That’s one reason we implemented district grades in Arkansas.

We’d graded individual schools for years, but that made it easy to explain away differences in performance. People could point to an A school in one part of town and an F school in another and attribute the difference to poverty or other circumstances.

A district grade holds the district office, administration, and school board accountable for how the whole system is performing.

We’re being more intentional about training school board members on the questions they should ask superintendents and the information district leaders should proactively share.

When governance and administration are aligned, those tend to be our highest-performing districts.

We also want to support struggling districts directly. Our team works with educational cooperatives and district leaders, visits classrooms, and asks questions.

We might ask: How are you monitoring instruction? How do teachers receive feedback? Are instructional materials being used as intended? What happens after you review student data?

We’re not walking in and immediately trying to fix everything. We’re helping leaders understand what’s happening and what they can do differently.

Last year, three F-rated districts improved to C ratings. Our role as a state isn’t to run schools or districts. It’s to hold the people responsible for running them accountable while making sure they have the support to succeed.

Across Arkansas, we’ve seen gains in every grade and subject on ATLAS, while the percentage of students in the lowest performance level has declined.

We didn’t hire 35,000 new teachers or 1,000 new principals. We invested in the people we already had and gave them better tools and a clearer system.

The Best State Leaders Get Into Classrooms

Jessica

One thing I really appreciate is how often you, your senior team, and the governor are actually in schools.

You’re not going in to mandate fixes in real time, but those visits give you a much better understanding of what’s happening in classrooms, and I imagine that informs your decisions about what the state should do next.

Jacob

Absolutely. Schools are where the magic happens. We’re fortunate to have strong support from the governor and legislature for improving education, and we’ve taken that responsibility seriously.

When we passed LEARNS in 2023, it was nearly 150 pages and required our agency to write 96 rules. We also rewrote our English language arts and math standards and developed a new assessment.

It was a massive amount of work, but we didn’t do it alone. We invited teachers, principals, professors, school board members, and other experts to help us build the system.

More than 3,000 Arkansas teachers have participated in some part of developing what we’re implementing.

That’s important for buy-in, but it’s also important for getting the work right. Teachers are the ones who can tell us whether something makes sense and whether it will work for students.

Jessica

I have more questions, but I’ll end with one I like to ask everyone.

Beyond the academic gains we’ve discussed, what’s giving you optimism about Arkansas right now?

Jacob

There are several indicators I’m excited about.

We’ve been paying closer attention to kindergarten readiness, third-grade reading, graduation rates, access to accelerated math, and what students are doing during their senior year.

For example, we looked at how many high school seniors had full schedules and were taking rigorous courses. We also challenged ourselves to increase the number of students graduating with both a high school diploma and an associate degree.

In spring 2023, just 117 Arkansas students earned both credentials. This past year, that number was nearly 800.

We’re also seeing strong kindergarten readiness results and more opportunities for students to pursue different educational pathways.

Arkansas has been near the bottom nationally in education for decades. We’re working to change that, and I’m optimistic about where we’re headed.

Jessica

I love it. Jacob, thank you so much for your time, your leadership, and your friendship.

For those watching on LinkedIn, you can also listen to this conversation on your favorite podcast platform by searching for The Delta.

Thanks again for joining us.

Jacob

Anytime. Thanks, Jessica.

Let’s Get Muddy

• Want to dive deeper into Arkansas’s ATLAS results? Click here.
• For more on the Southern Surge, check out our previous Delta: What’s behind the Southern Surge?