Strong Start Arkansas: Early Progress. Learning from the Reform

This report documents the results to date of reforms underway from Strong Start Arkansas, one of the six systems that make up the first phase of the Strong Start to Finish initiative, an initiative of Education Commission of the States. Building on previous initiatives, Strong Start Arkansas (SSARK) was created as a partnership between the Arkansas Department of Higher Education (ADHE) and Arkansas Community Colleges (ACC), which together include all 22 public 2-year and 10 public 4-year institutions in the state. As part of the project, Strong Start Arkansas is partnering with math and English faculty with the goal of scaling corequisite instruction that can support more students deemed as underprepared. To that end, Strong Start Arkansas project activities are focusing primarily on professional development and training for faculty that are tailored to the particular needs of each campus, supplemented by convenings for institutional academic leadership and other campus personnel involved in implementing the Strong Start Arkansas reforms. Overall, Strong Start Arkansas has a goal of increasing corequisite courses to reach 50,000 students per year by 2021. This report describes the context of reform within the state, the current status of project activities, and some early insights coming out of the work.