This story ran on the Talk Business & Politics website on April 13, 2026 and is the culmination of several local articles I wrote for Arkansas newspapers owned by Newsroom Ventures LLC.
Third graders at Centerpoint Elementary School in Amity, Ark., like other students in the state, will be required to demonstrate a basic reading proficiency to advance to the fourth grade as part of the LEARNS Act. Photo: Michael Hibblen
Three years into the implementation of the LEARNS Act, Arkansas educators are bracing for a new reading proficiency requirement that takes effect this year and will determine which third graders can be promoted to the fourth grade.
Standardized tests will be administered in the coming weeks at all public school districts and open-enrollment charter schools to provide a high-stakes assessment that will inevitably involve some students having to repeat third grade.
Watson Chapel Superintendent Keith McGee says it’s the culmination of a hectic school year that has involved teachers and administrators assessing students’ abilities and providing interventions to those who aren’t reading as proficiently as they need to be.
“We’re just making sure that what we call the core instruction is at grade level and monitoring their progress, monitoring that daily instruction, and by making sure that we track kids’ daily work and their progress,” McGee said.
Through that data, he says the district, which covers parts of Jefferson County in southeast Arkansas, knows “a high percentage” of its third graders will pass the reading portion of the Arkansas Teaching & Learning Assessment System (ATLAS) test, while some will not. For those who are struggling, teachers have been reaching out to parents, while also working to convey the importance of passing the test to third graders.
“Our kids know that there’s a sense of urgency of their score, their grade level,” McGee said, “not where it’s an anxiety, but just an awareness that we’re going to get through this together, so that kids know that we’ve got to take this test seriously.”
Requiring a basic reading ability is vital at this stage for students, Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said in an interview with Talk Business & Politics Editor-in-Chief Roby Brock.
“If students aren’t able to be proficient readers by fourth grade and you start getting deeper into content and explicit instruction on how to read isn’t as prevalent, then school’s not fun. We don’t want kids to just go to school and not have fun because you’re struggling to read,” Oliva said.
While it can be difficult socially for students to be held back as their peers advance to a higher grade, the state Department of Education identifies third grade reading proficiency as a “pivotal predictor of future academic success,” including whether they will graduate from high school.
Oliva says the LEARNS Act now provides strategies for teachers and parents to implement an Individual Reading Plan (IRP) to try and avoid having to repeat third grade.
“If we see a student is not making grade level, well, what we’re able to do this year is maybe they need some short-term high impact tutoring, maybe they need to be in a summer program,” Oliva said. “So now we come together with a plan. You’re not automatically retained. What you’re required to do is have a plan on how we’re going to fill those gaps — and retention may be part of that plan — but it’s not the absolute.”
If the new reading requirement had been in place last year, test results show only 36% of Arkansas students would have been promoted to the fourth grade. But educators hope the new assessments and interventions will ensure that won’t be the result this year.
At Centerpoint Elementary School in Amity, which serves students from parts of Pike, Garland, Clark and Hot Spring counties in southwest Arkansas, Principal Erica Doster says reading is still being taught the same way as before the LEARNS Act was enacted. But she says new processes during this school year allowed teachers to do a better job of tracking which students were at risk of falling behind and provided time to offer extra tutoring when needed.
“What we did change is the way that we document those interventions and keep up with the monitoring of their progress throughout the year,” Doster said. “I feel pretty confident that we will not have very many kids — if any — that we have to retain.”
Doster says the school has been sending letters to parents notifying them if their children are at risk of being held back and what steps teachers are taking to try and prevent that. Strategies are also given to parents on how they can support reading at home.
“We have been keeping a close eye on a lot of kids, making sure that we’re providing the interventions that they need in order to be successful,” Doster said. “We have an idea of who is at risk, but of course we don’t know for sure until they take that end of the year summative test,” she said.
The state allows districts to administer the ATLAS test any time between Monday (April 13) and May 22. Students will need to score at Level 2 or higher in reading to advance to fourth grade unless they qualify for a “good cause exemption.” That includes students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, those with less than three years of formal English instruction, students who have previously been retained and those who have experienced an isolated traumatic event that directly impacted their assessment.
Doster has mixed feelings about the prospect of having to retain some third graders.
“It could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing,” she said. “I think what the LEARNS Act is requiring of schools, just to make sure there’s some accountability on providing those interventions and that extra help along the way to prevent that is what I feel like the purpose is. And so I do feel like that’s a good thing.”
Hazen School Superintendent Andy Barrett says he recently met with the staff of the elementary school in his district and was told no third graders appear to be on track to be retained because of the new reading requirement. Despite some hesitation from educators and parents about the potential for students to be held back, he says the change is needed.
“There’s been a lot of criticism of this requirement, but nobody can argue that reading isn’t a foundational skill we have to have across the board in education,” Barrett said. “And I think that obviously from where we stand in our state right now, we’re not doing a very good job.”
Arkansas consistently ranks near the bottom in national education studies. Barrett said he’s confident the process and options put in place by the state will be beneficial for school districts.
“If you have done all of the things that the state asks you to do, especially with the remediation and interventions throughout the year, and then some sort of growth,” Barrett said, there will be an improved outcome. “We’ve got to figure it out. It’s going to be a learning curve for most of the schools, including us, trying to figure out when and how to do things to get [students] to that level.”
Reforming education was a priority for Gov. Sarah Sanders when she came into office three years ago. The most controversial component of the LEARNS Act has been using public funds to create Education Freedom Accounts (EFA), which can be used to pay for private, parochial or home schools.
The Arkansas Legislature approved the plan in 2023 and will need to increase funding for the EFA program during a fiscal session that began on April 8. Sanders’ budget proposal would set aside up to $379 million for the program.
I wrote this story for The Glenwood Herald, which ran in the March 20 edition. The newspaper is one of six purchased recently by Newsroom Ventures LLC, which is owned by Roby Brock.
The Glenwood Revitalization Group is trying to find a tenant for the first floor of the historic Alford building. Photo: Michael Hibblen
Walking through the Alford building, Kayla Hartsfield, president of the Glenwood Downtown Network, imagines the possibilities while acknowledging what’s at stake. She hopes to find an ideal business that will move into the 4,000-square-foot first floor of the historic building, becoming an anchor in the revitalization of the city’s two-block downtown area.
Respondents to a survey conducted last fall overwhelmingly said a restaurant is the kind of business most needed to fill a void in dining options for the many visitors who come to the city for its outdoor recreation, she said.
”We need a tenant and would love to have dining. We have a shortage of a variety of dining.”
Maybe it could be a steakhouse, perhaps a restaurant that features live music — there are many possibilities, she said. Second in the survey was a business that provides family entertainment, while tied for third was having an event space or a fitness/wellness center.
Kayla and her husband Ki Hartsfield, an executive vice president at Southern Bancorp, are among six couples in their 30s and 40s who are part of the Glenwood Revitalization Group. All were raised here, then after most had attended college, came back and opened businesses or took over family businesses. They’re wanting to improve the community by rejuvenating the downtown, which she says in recent decades had become a “ghost town” and an “eyesore.”
The Alford, which is the largest building downtown, was constructed around 1915 at the corner of Broadway and 2nd Street. The bottom floor was originally a general store while the second floor was a hotel.
Until work began a couple of years ago, the brick structure had a weathered whitewashed look with the second-floor windows boarded over while an awning hid the original arched front entrance. Now the exterior has been restored with walls that are painted dark green while the architectural features are tan. A mural painted on the side says “Welcome to Historic Downtown Glenwood Arkansas.” Inside the first floor, the brick walls are now exposed and the original ornate tin ceiling tiles are bright and clean.
The Alford building as it appeared on Nov. 12, 2011 can be seen across the street at the corner of Broadway and 2nd streets in Glenwood, Ark. Photo: Chris Litherland/Creative Commons
Kayla Hartsfield inside the Alford building, with construction waiting to be completed when a tenant is selected for the first floor. In the back is an entrance that leads up to the second floor. Photo: Michael Hibblen
For two years the group has been actively seeking a tenant for the first floor, while the plan for the second floor is to again house visitors to the city.
“We would love to eventually — longterm — be able to have nightly rentals up there to help feed our downtown district,“ she said. “The boarding rooms are still intact on the top floor. We still have some of the original doors intact. It’s a really cool place.”
For the business on the first floor, rent will be decided based on several factors, Hartsfield said. Most important will be the cost to complete the renovation.
“We’re building out to suit our tenant’s needs, so we haven’t completed the inside or the outside yet because we’ve been still trying to find that perfect tenant.”
Hartsfield said the goal isn’t about profitability, but finding a tenant who will be successful and a good fit for the downtown. About 10 entities have inquired with some sending business proposals, but she says none have worked out.
Since November 2024, several businesses have opened or relocated to downtown. Hartsfield said they include Mercantile on Broadway, which she manages selling gifts, baked goods and seasonal produce, while a cafe in the back is run by a third-party vendor.
Caddo River Realty and Jackson Title Company moved a few weeks ago to a building on a corner. Legacy Boutique sells women’s clothing, while the Beauty Haven salon offers high quality facials and other skin treatments. Next door to Hartsfield’s shop, Fillabulous Aesthetics has begun moving in. When it opens soon it will provide weight loss management, IV therapy and lip filler treatments.
“So, just a variety,” Hartsfield said. “Its been great because we’re all different types of businesses, so we’ve been able to really feed each other. They send people to us, we send people to them.”
While speaking about the overall downtown project earlier this month at Henderson State University, Ki Hartsfield estimated that at least $1.6 million has been invested in the area by the Glenwood Revitalization Group.
It’s hoped that finally landing a tenant for the Alford building will help achieve the group’s goals for the downtown.
“We’re ultimately wanting to do something that the community can be proud of again. So just community pride and then economic development,” Kayla Hartsfield said. “We have all of these tourists come and they’re driving to Hot Springs. They’re driving to other towns for shopping and dining and entertainment and things to do, so [we’re] trying to change that and get them to stay here and then spend their money here.”
Michael Hibblen at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York as snow was coming down on Dec. 5, 2002.
I’ve been grappling with the reality that CBS News Radio will be shutting down in May. Even though I haven’t worked for the network in decades, the announcement Friday — nonchalantly noting it was part of a 6% reduction in the news division’s workforce — was heartbreaking. I spent 10 years reporting for CBS, first from radio affiliates when local stories were big enough to warrant national coverage, then about four years of reporting directly for the network while based in Miami.
It was a time before corporate radio companies had dismantled local station newsrooms and the broadcast schedules of most stations still had local talk shows and news blocks.
I learned so much while reporting for CBS and experienced a level of professionalism like nothing I had experienced before. Looking at social media posts this past weekend from former colleagues has been difficult, to say the least.
The 99-year legacy included Edward R. Murrow during World War II essentially creating modern broadcast journalism as it still exists today through the way he and the reporters he hired provided first-hand storytelling with the sound and voices of the events they covered. Before then, radio news was primarily summaries of news headlines.
While working in the 1990s for CBS radio affiliates KARN in Little Rock and WRVA Richmond, Virginia, I reported for the network every chance I got. There were tornadoes, the Whitewater-related convictions of former associates of President Clinton — including the forced resignation of Gov. Jim Guy Tucker — and many executions which I reported from inside Cummins Prison. The first time one of my reports was the lead story on a CBS newscast was May 14, 1994 with Correspondent Dav Raviv anchoring.
AUDIO: My first report to lead a CBS News Radio newscast, May 14, 1994, on Arkansas executing two inmates on the same night.
AUDIO: A June 8, 1995 report on the sentencing of Webster Hubbell as part of Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr’s investigation.
The editors in New York who would record my reports didn’t hesitate to sometimes rip apart my scripts and help me reword them in the most succinct and impactful way possible. That’s what a young reporter needs to get better.
In Miami, I worked for WIOD — which was an ABC affiliate — but continued filing for CBS because I felt a sense of loyalty and appreciation for CBS, which at that time didn’t have a radio affiliate station in the market. I kept expecting my bosses at the Clear Channel station would tell me I should be reporting for ABC, but I guess they didn’t give it much thought. CBS also paid better than ABC because in addition to taking a report, they would pay for several additional soundbites.
AUDIO: My report for CBS on the trial of a company charged in connection with the 1996 Valujet crash that killed 110 people.
I would be rewarded for maintaining that relationship when an international custody fight over six-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was brewing in 2000 and CBS News Radio Executive Producer Charlie Kaye essentially assured me I could get enough freelance work to more than cover what I was making at WIOD. I ended up tripling my salary that year, thanks to the Elian saga stretching out for six months, then the 2000 presidential election being decided by Florida after five weeks of recounts in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
When news would break elsewhere in the region, I would get calls at all hours telling me flight arrangements were being made, get my stuff together and head to the airport. Correspondent Peter King in Orlando was the other person CBS News Radio had in the state. He told me the importance of always having a to-go packed and ready with a few days worth of clothes and supplies. If I got these calls during regular hours, desk assistants would often hand the call over to Kaye who would be so amazingly calm amid major breaking news as he instructed me what to plan on doing.
Among the stories I covered was a plane crash on Abaco Island in the Bahamas that killed R&B singer and actress Aaliyah, a shark attack in Pensacola that killed an eight-year-old boy, an anthrax attack that killed a photo editor at a tabloid publisher based in Boca Raton and South Florida’s connections to the men who carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
AUDIO: A montage of my reports for CBS on the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida.
AUDIO: Reporting from Abaco Island in the Bahamas on the August 2001 plane crash that killed R&B singer Aaliyah for CBS News Radio and the Westwood One program America in the Morning.
I know it’s advised that people put up boundaries between their professional and personal lives, but that wasn’t for me. I considered being a reporter a lifestyle, maybe to a fault.
To celebrate our first anniversary in 2001, my wife Susan and I decided to spend the weekend at a beachfront hotel in Fort Lauderdale. We had checked in, were having dinner and on our second round of drinks when my phone rang and it was CBS. I answered and was told NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt had just died at Daytona International Speedway and could I start heading that way. I explained it was our anniversary and the desk assistant apologized for interrupting us. I knew nothing about racing, but knew who Earnhardt was and that this was a huge story. After having this bouncing around in my head for a few minutes and talking with my wife, she reluctantly agreed I could leave to drive up to cover the story, where I arrived around midnight and immediately started reporting for the hourly newscasts. She spent the rest of the weekend in the hotel by herself. Needless to say that was not good on my part.
About three times a year I would take a train up to New York and spend a few days at the CBS Broadcast Center alongside people I otherwise only knew by phone, emails and messages. It was fascinating to see how the radio network operated and to meet the legendary anchors I only knew as voices, most of whom had been on the air there for decades. People like Christopher Glenn, Nick Young, Bill Whitney and Steve Kathan, among others. Working remotely, the desk assistants were often my first line of contact, and it was also great getting to know them.
One was Joshua Cook, who by chance married a woman from Arkansas and today lives in Little Rock. We got together for lunch about a month ago and spent much of that visit sharing memories and discussing the evolution in recent years of CBS News Radio. There’s no longer a radio affiliate in Little Rock, so lately I’ve been listening to the top-of-the-hour newscasts on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel. And when driving at night in Arkansas, I still tune in to the amazing AM signal of WBBM in Chicago.
It has been clearly apparent that the CBS radio operation has been much more lean in recent years and isn’t getting as much from its affiliates. Or maybe it doesn’t have the same kind of money to pay for reports.
It is telling that the three commercial radio news stations I worked for while reporting for CBS no longer have active newsrooms. KARN, WRVA and WIOD, like their broadcasting peers, once had a regulatory obligation as well as a sense of civic obligation from local owners to provide strong local news coverage. Ted Snider, who owned KARN and the Arkansas Radio Network for decades, knew that necessitated hiring a full staff of anchors, reporters, editors and producers.
Don’t get me started about what deregulation and distant corporate owners have done to the radio industry. And with a merger approved last Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission, the same thing is now happening to television. Public broadcasters definitely stepped up to fill the void and that’s the direction I took my career.
In 2003, as the build up to the war with Iraq was dominating national news coverage, I was getting less work from CBS. So when the Miami Herald was creating a radio news team as part of a new partnership with NPR station WLRN, I was hired there, starting a wonderful 22-year run in public broadcasting, which eventually included a return home to Little Rock, where I led the news department at KUAR, before three years at Arkansas PBS. But public broadcasting is retrenching after last year’s elimination of federal funding and the simple truth is that fewer people are watching or listening to over-the-air broadcasts.
Some partisans are cheering the demise of legacy media, but the evolving landscape will have fewer fact checkers and less accountability. It’ll be harder for people to know what is true. But at the same time, podcasting is exciting in that it allows anyone with an idea to reach an audience without the need for a broadcast signal.
The demise of CBS News Radio is disappointing in so many ways. The network was started in 1927. Couldn’t the current management at least let it live one more year to celebrate its 100th birthday rather than having the date for its death be planned for May 22? I guess not.
This is the online home of Michael Hibblen, managing editor of Newsroom Ventures, which publishes six Arkansas newspapers. I've worked as a reporter, editor and manager for newspapers, radio and TV stations for more than three decades, with this website telling the story of my career. Also featured are outside interests I've researched. The views expressed here are my own and might not reflect those of my employers.
Preserving the Rock Island Depot at Perry
Since 2017, I've been part of a group working to preserve the former Rock Island Depot at Perry, Arkansas. To keep it from being demolished, we raised money to move the depot to an adjacent lot, still alongside the tracks, which is now owned by the city. The building has since been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and our group has become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PRESERVATION OF THE DEPOT.
My Book
Released by Arcadia Publishing in 2017, Rock Island Railroad in Arkansas delves into the history of the railroad, which once had a huge footprint in Arkansas. The book features historic photos and tells the story of the Rock Island, which was shut down in March 1980. READ MORE ABOUT MY BOOK.
For 13 years, from May 2009 to December 2022, I worked for NPR station KUAR-FM 89.1 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. That included 10 years as News Director while continuing to anchor and report. You can read and hear reports from that time on Little Rock Public Radio's website.
