P-H-M defends academics as conservative-backed school board candidates target test scores

Editor's note: For a detailed list of candidates and board seats up for election, see The Tribune's website here.

OSCEOLA — The second grader rocks in his seat. Grabbing his foot, his breathing grows faster and louder, drawing attention from the students around him. School interventionist Shelli Treely does her best to keep the group on task.

“Shuff! Jing!” she calls out, motioning to the worksheets in front of each student. “We’re on the third one over. What’s the word? Zaaaan.”

After about 15 minutes, Treely dismisses the squirming second grader to the school’s health aide. Politics aren't on her mind as the interventionist continues her lesson — an interactive reading of the short, paperback story "Smell Tells." Instead, Treely's thinking about what a big step those 15 minutes were for the Moran Elementary student who, like so many of his peers, is still adjusting to the classroom after months of remote learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just being in the room to absorb the lesson, Treely says, can make a difference.

“It’s almost like we’re looking for the right medicine for that kid for the specific area in which they need to grow,” said Lavon Dean-Null, a P-H-M administrator who works with Treely.

Treely's half-hour, in-school intervention time is one piece of a larger learning recovery effort that some state officials project could take up to three to five years. It’s also a strategy some P-H-M educators say they now feel called to defend after several school board candidates have increasingly ramped up criticism ofstandardized test scores as election day draws near.

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The candidates say recent results show evidence of a district in decline. Their focus on standardized testing comes amid an already tense time in education as “culture war” topics such as critical race theory fuel debate across the country. With it, P-H-M educators say they fear key decisions about administrative hiring, academic materials and programmatic funding could be at stake should conservative-backed candidates be elected to seats that, in Indiana, are traditionally nonpartisan.

“I have seen a slide in education results at Penn,” said one candidate, Andy Rutten. “Penn is a very good school (district), but I’m not sure that Penn is an excellent school right now.”

P-H-M educators, however, say those candidates’ statements fail to provide context for major changes in the state’s standardized testing and do not adequately account for learning loss sustained during the pandemic. Incumbent candidates Larry Beehler, Christopher Riley and James Turnwald, along with first-time candidate Dana Sullivan, say they trust the district's educators and that conservative groups' focus on issues such as critical race theory have distracted from the work school boards should be doing.

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“It’s disingenuous of all of our educators, our professionals that are working extremely hard, to say that our test scores are not reflective of excellence,” Turnwald said. “Anyone who’s using test scores solely as a way to say that our teachers are failing our students is oversimplifying the challenges of education.”

Multiple P-H-M staff, however, told The Tribune that some in the district are hearing this rhetoric and preparing “Plan Bs" at a time when schools across the country are grappling with continuing teacher shortages.

“It just comes all the time,” P-H-M Teachers Association President Lisa Langfeldt said of the growing pressure educators feel. “At what point are you like, 'I’m moving out or I’m moving on?'”

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P-H-M administrators first drew attention to test scores in late summer after state officials released the latest results of the ILEARN exam, a test given to Indiana's third through eighth graders.

Despite a difficult year, the district had reason to celebrate, Superintendent Jerry Thacker told school board members in August. The district as a whole increased its standing in Indiana from placing within the top 6% of public school corporations to the top 3.67%, based on students’ combined English and math scores. And, schools such as Prairie Vista and Discovery ranked among the state's top two performing elementary and middle schools, respectively. Northpoint ranked No. 1 among Indiana elementaries.

Weeks later, however, a slate of school board candidates began circulating materials comparing the ILEARN exam to another test, using data that stretched back about a decade ago to critique a decline they say has occurred in P-H-M academics.

As multiple other candidates leaned into the comparison, P-H-M leadership sent a letter to families. In it, Thacker explained how Indiana’s tests have changed and how P-H-M performed this year relative to other districts.

Unlike its predecessor, the ILEARN exam is administered during a single testing window and is computer adaptive, meaning questions vary in difficulty based on how a student responds while taking the test. The state updated its academic standards before introducing the new exam and, educators say, writing prompts have changed, requiring greater analysis and lengthier responses from students. In other words, students' testing experience has changed drastically from Indiana's past exam, ISTEP+.

“It’s like comparing a 1971 Ford Pinto to a Mustang and saying, ‘Well, they’re the same because they’re both Fords,’” said Mike Manis, a school psychologist with P-H-M. “It’s not proficiency on basic skills anymore. These are stretch measures and are supposed to be really deep.”

State officials cautioned against comparing ILEARN to other tests when it was first introduced three years ago. And, Republican lawmakers at the time readily backed proposals to hold educators harmless of an expected dip in scores. Results dropped further across the state after the pandemic hit.

Though the tests are different, administrators say, P-H-M's passing rate today exceeds state averages in some subjects by nearly twice the rate it did on the ISTEP exam nearly a decade ago.

“It has indeed changed,” Treely said. “But, we’re rising to the occasion and we’re gosh darn proud of that.”

Candidates continue to push message of academic decline

Despite the district’s attempts to correct misinformation, candidates such as Rutten — along with Matt Chaffee and Bryan Jones — have doubled down on their message. All three candidates continue to talk about P-H-M’s “declining” test scores, using ISTEP and ILEARN results as their justification.

Last month, Chaffee posted a video to his campaign’s Facebook page featuring several graphics lacking context along with the words “coalition for status quo” below a Democratic Party logo. Chaffee, whose website promotes a platform of accountability and transparency, was the only of eight P-H-M candidates to decline an interview request with The Tribune last month.

Jones and Rutten told The Tribune in separate conversations that they find educators’ clarifications about state testing “disingenuous.”

“Why would we go from a test that measures math and reading skills to another test that measures math and reading skills?” Rutten said. “The school superintendent for the state of Indiana, she had mentioned the tests aren't comparable. I just think that's a political statement and I'm not sure that that should be taken literally.”

Candidates driving the discussion of test scores told The Tribune they didn’t talk to any educators who created or administered the new exam before sharing data they’ve used to explain academic decline. Jones said he had “done a little research online” and Rutten said he came to his conclusions through intuition.

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Very seldom do the candidates speak of other measures such as the district’s graduation rate, which has increasedfrom 79% in 2008 to 97% this year, or third graders’ performance on the literacy exam IREAD-3, which has shown consistency over the last six years. Instead, the trio have continued to push the idea that P-H-M schools are no longer excellent and are in need of new leadership.

Part of the candidates’ narrative is rooted in performance differences among some P-H-M schools. How is it acceptable, they ask, that one school like Northpoint Elementary can score an 83% passing rate on ILEARN’s English and math sections while another elementary like Disney scores 32%?

“I’m running for school board because I think I can do better,” Jones said. “As simple as I can put it, I think I can do better.”

But P-H-M educators say concerns about "underperforming" schools and the disparity between Northpoint and Disney test scores deserve context.

Unlike the top-ranking Northpoint Elementary, Disney Elementary is a Title I school, meaning it serves a more socioeconomically diverse student body and receives federal dollars to help those students achieve academically. Disney serves twice as many students with disabilities and more than five times as many students who are economically disadvantaged than Northpoint, according to state data.

Regardless of those challenges, the school has consistently earned B grades in Indiana’s A-F accountability ratings and outperformed 118 of 127 schools with similar demographics on this year’s ILEARN exam, according to the school’s principal, Ryan Towner.

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Some of what candidates suggest the district do — such as working with students in small groups and comparing successful strategies across the corporation — is already done regularly, educators say. Another solution candidates have offered is to return “back to the basics.”

Chaffee, Jones and Rutten — along with a fourth candidate, George Bashura — say students would be better prepared for exams like ILEARN if educators committed to focusing on core subjects such as math, science, language arts and history.

“The focus needs to be on education as the top priority,” Rutten said. “There’s been a lot of frustration communicated by parents at school board meetings that there are other issues being brought into schools besides education.”

This same message has become a common refrain from conservative-leaning parent groups who have routinely called on schools to keep subjects they consider to be politics, including critical race theory, out of the classroom.

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P-H-M administrators first addressed the issue two summers ago in a series of community meetings organized to explain what is and isn’t being taught to students. The district removed topics such as anti-racism, implicit bias and microaggressions from high school lessons after some parents’ complaints and made social emotional learning exercises optional.

Yet, a group called Strengthen Our Schools continues to push for a ban on critical race theory, and one sitting school board member — Jim Garrett, who is not up for reelection this year — has tried repeatedly to introduce a resolution condemning the academic theory generally not taught in K-12 schools. Strengthen Our Schools has endorsed Chaffee, Jones and Rutten.

“I don’t know of one school corporation in Indiana that has critical race theory curriculum,” Thacker told The Tribune. “I cannot explain why some people continue to say there is when they do not point to any prescribed critical race theory that’s in our schools. … We’re teaching the Indiana academic standards, and we’re trying to get our kids prepared for college and career success.”

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Rutten has stated on his website that he's running as a conservative candidate. And, Chaffee and Jones have been pictured at multiple conservative events this fall. The Tribune requested to attend one such event, promoted by local conservative media as a discussion on “the radical indoctrination of our local schools,” but was denied access.

Jones told The Tribune some of his views on issues like school mandates and “family-first values” align with Strengthen Our Schools platforms, but that he’s “had disagreements” with the group.

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“If a group wants to support me in spreading the word of my campaign, I would take it from anyone that thinks I’m the best,” Jones said. “The support of your supporters does not define an individual.”

A day after sitting down with The Tribune, Jones thanked the conservative group Purple for Parents of Indiana for its endorsement in a public Facebook post. Purple for Parents describes itself as a group “dedicated to exposing the indoctrination and sexualization of children in the public education system” and has characterized teacher unions as Marxist radicals who “have declared war with parents over our children.”

“PHM is a cesspool of horrible activities that are too numerous to even list,” the group wrote in their endorsement of Jones. “This entire school board needs flipped and superintendent FIRED!!!”

The post left some of the district's educators disheartened that a candidate would so readily accept such an endorsement. Some say the added political pressure of this election cycle have drawn attention away from issues more deserving of educators’ time.

“The main focus is to get all these students up to their potential because the opponents, too, are pointing out that we only have a small percentage totally passing those tests,” said Beehler, the board’s longest serving trustee. “That should be their focus; to get as many of them up to pass those tests in the next year.”

Educators exercise 'relentless focus' on academic recovery

And as candidates knock on doors, P-H-M educators say they want the community to know that they’re not failing students.

Most of the students taking ILEARN in elementary and middle school will be with the district for years to come. That’s time educators can spend using their own internal data and assessments to identify students' needs and develop a specific intervention plan.

District leaders have acknowledged all P-H-M schools are feeling the effects of learning loss, and a trained instructional interventionist has been placed in each of the corporation’s 15 schools. The district has expanded before- and after-school tutoring, grown its summer learning programs and increased professional development opportunities for teachers.

Additional interventionists have been assigned to schools where administrators know extra support is needed. For instance, at Disney, which scored a 32% on the ILEARN, students who have fallen far behind in literacy skills receive 40 minutes of individualized time a day, meeting with a reading specialist in groups of no more than three to five students.

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Those students may also get extra help from their teachers and classroom aides with reading and writing support in some cases totaling more than two hours a day. Groups of teachers, principals, reading specialists and interventionists across the district meet regularly outside of the school day to review data and make adjustments to learning plans.

“It’s important in my mind that a parent knows that there’s this group of experts within their building who are coming together in the interest of their child,” Towner said in a September school board meeting. “It’s just this relentless focus that is individualized for these students.”

Candidates like Riley and Turnwald — who have sat on the board over the last year as members of the Strengthen Our Schools group have called for the resignation of trustees, administrators and individual teachers — say they trust the district’s educators to do what is needed for students. So does Sullivan, the first-time candidate.

"There's no doubt the pandemic hurt all schools ... but I do believe we can and will bounce back from this and be stronger than ever, because I think Penn, P-H-M school system, has a fantastic foundation," Sullivan said. "Education isn’t just about test scores ... It’s about growing kids to be good people.”

Email South Bend Tribune education reporter Carley Lanich at clanich@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @carleylanich.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: P-H-M defends academics as some board candidates target test scores