The local organization Fishers One has issued a challenge to the local school board, citing iLearn test score data, but HSE School officials paint a different picture of the iLearn results.
Fishers One says it wants the local school board to “reprioritize its agenda and take
practical steps toward improving academic performance across all HSE Schools.”
The group cites the following iLearn data:
• More than 50% of HSE 8th graders are below an 8th grade proficiency in Math
• Nearly 40% of HSE 8th graders are below an 8th grade proficiency in English/
Language Arts.
“We are calling on the HSE School Board to take meaningful steps toward
academic improvement in this new school year and to prioritize learning
recovery for all students above everything else,” says Fishers One.
The local school district has a different view.
“As one of the largest school districts in the state, Hamilton Southeastern Schools ranks as one of the highest-performing public schools, according to the most recent ILEARN proficiency assessment results,” HSE Schools say in a statement to LarryInFishers.
The district says Math and English Language Art increased 5% from the previous year. School officials also point to “notable growth in all student subgroups, and we are trending in the right direction.”
Superintendent Yvonne Stokes mentioned some of this data while speaking to teachers Tuesday morning in the annual day-before-school-starts event.
“Our teachers and staff work diligently every day to prepare our more than 21,000 students to meet and exceed the standards associated with high academic achievement and becoming a productive member of society,” the HSE statement says. “While there is always room for improvement, any association of letter grades with proficiency percentages is an inaccurate representation of the assessment.”
Comparing the HSE scores to the state results reveals two things:
1. The test is poorly designed (e.g. problems with test execution on electronic devices distort the results). Other indicators like graduation rates, college acceptance, etc. strongly suggest that the truth is other than the test would reveal.
2. The state is not sufficiently funding the schools (statewide) to achieve the standards set forth. Hardly a surprise to anybody that’s been paying attention (even casually) over the past 20-30 years.
Either is bad, but both create a serious problem – adding fuel to the fire for groups like Fishers One. Their slate of school board candidates would be a disaster for our community.
Between harebrained policy “recommendations”, overreaction and misinterpretation of data (seen above), and politicization of academic content, their election would cause measurable harm to students in the short- and long-term. It would also trigger an exodus of teachers (from HSE or the profession in general). Not instantly, but ramping over their term. And it will take years to undo the damage they will cause.
All of these candidates already had reputations (as parents and community members) of being difficult at best to work with, if not downright irrational and unprofessional, among both teachers and building administrators. Given the already strained working environment for HSE staff, they expect nothing but the worst if these people are elected.
Do not speak for all staff. I am a teacher that will be voting for Fishers One candidates. HSE continues to shift its focus away from core academics and although our test scores are good in comparison to the entire state, our drop-off compared to comparable systems like Carmel and Zionsville should not be accepted. We have some schools in the the district cutting instructional hours for core subjects in favor of kids having more electives. Block schedules taking away from the frequency of instruction kids need in subject areas like math, english, foreign languages are hurting the learning and retention of our students.
We have a school board that does not listen to its own polling of families or staff. By majority , families and staff were against moving elementary start time to the early time and jr high to the late time yet the school board pushed forward against the will of the community. Why? Most people don’t know HSE gets a kickback in money from the YMCA for every kid in after school care. Having after school care full brings in extra money for the district while causing thousands of dollars of extra cost to families even over $10k a year for larger families who now have all their kids in after care for many hours a day due to the early start time for our youngest children.
I signed up and was trained to teach math/english. I am not interested in teaching SEL lessons and other areas related to health and values that the district is forcing me to teach. As a teacher of plus 15 years, I was here when HSE was a leader in the state and as each year passes with more unneeded changes, we see data showing we are falling further behind districts with similar demographics. Teachers in the district are frustrated with administration lowering standards, not enforcing rules and changing handbooks eliminating rules and policies that helped us manage orderly classrooms because they do not want to enforce policies unpopular with entitled parents. Dress code is basically gone. Kids can have phones and devices whenever they want. They are allowed to have earbuds in when they want. Teachers don’t want to teach in these environments with nonstop distractions.
The district is a mess and there are a lot of teachers like myself prepared to start looking else where next school years. Based on the teacher shortage, it will not be difficult to find employment elsewhere and HSE should prepare to see even more staff leave based on its current approach and what seems to be little or no raise in the upcoming contract negotiations. HSE used to be a district where once you got a job, you did not leave. Now look at the BoardDocs for school board meetings. Almost every meeting, there is a posted list pages long of staff turnover. This does not indicate that HSE is a good place to teach when you see this high level of staff turnover. Since admin is unresponsive to the staff and community it serves, it will take changing our school board to install leadership that is responsive to the community.
I don’t presume to speak for all staff, but I believe I have a representative sample. My spouse also is an experienced teacher with over 15 years in HSE, over 20 in total. So all of their coworkers and many of our friends are teachers or school building administrators. And yes, we have had the same conversation that you imply for many years: “If it becomes too bad, can I ditch it?” (The answer has always been “yes”.) If the Fishers One candidates sweep, I can pretty much guarantee we’ll be adding to that long turnover list.
Although I disagree with your solution (I don’t think the result you’re looking for is what they are looking for), I think we would agree on nearly all of your complaints:
* block schedules
* changing start times
* lack of focus on core subjects (e.g. SEL, electives)
* way too many meetings
* a special education program that relies on core teachers, not specialists
* lack of discipline
* a lowest common denominator for educational goals
All of these are bad and getting worse. I was not aware of the YMCA situation; we do not have children that young now. But I would agree on that, too.
The root causes are a severe, chronic lack of funding, lack of respect and trust for the teaching profession in elected government, misguided policy changes, and poor choices in spending priorities locally. There is too much overhead at central admin, though I’m not sure that’s really enough to move the needle. But the funding problem is not fully actionable by the Board. Sure they can do bits here and there, but if they push the referendums too far, the State will curtail or ban them. So responsibility lies with the State, and they are not interested in fixing this. Rather, they’ve been actively degrading the funding situation and working conditions for almost three decades. In this scenario, most of what the Board can practically do is only make things worse; which they have consistently done for the past ten years (listed above).
But this is where we part ways … on who should sit there. Fishers One wants “accountability”. As far as I can tell, that does not involve finding/developing solutions, only placing blame (and likely never accepting responsibility for anything, either). That’s what accountability in education almost always means.
The ILEARN test is the standardized test mandated by the State of Indiana to measure the proficiency percentages of Hoosier schoolchildren. The data from ILEARN shows that Hamilton Southeastern is not faring well compared to similar school districts. Here are the 2022 ILEARN numbers. The numbers speak for themselves.
School District Math %
Brownsburg Community School Corp 74.7
Barr-Reeve Community Schools Inc 70.9
Carmel Clay Schools 69.9
Southeast Dubois Co Sch Corp 68.8
North Spencer County Sch Corp 68.3
Diocese of Evansville 67.9
Zionsville Community Schools 66.3
West Lafayette Com School Corp 66.1
The Oaks Academy 65.8
Diocese of Lafayette Catholic Sch 64.6
Wa-Nee Community Schools 64
School Town of Munster 63.7
Westfield-Washington Schools 63.2
North West Hendricks Schools 62.7
Plainfield Community School Corp 61.8
Valparaiso Community Schools 61.5
Liberty-Perry Community Sch Corp 60.8
Hamilton Southeastern Schools 60.8
Center Grove Community School Corp 60.7
Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp 60.1
School District ELA %
Brownsburg Community School Corp 71.1
Diocese of Evansville 71
Carmel Clay Schools 67.7
Zionsville Community Schools 66.6
North Spencer County Sch Corp 66.4
Diocese of Lafayette Catholic Sch 66
The Oaks Academy 65.9
Southeast Dubois Co Sch Corp 65
West Lafayette Com School Corp 63.7
North West Hendricks Schools 62.6
Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp 61.3
School Town of Munster 61
Wa-Nee Community Schools 60.5
Westfield-Washington Schools 60.3
Valparaiso Community Schools 60.1
Hamilton Southeastern Schools 60
Plainfield Community School Corp 59.1
Center Grove Community School Corp 58.3
Barr-Reeve Community Schools Inc 58
Liberty-Perry Community Sch Corp 52
Remember the famous idiom, a poor craftsman blames his tools? The ILEARN test is a tool, an important tool to be used to measure whether the children in our community are on grade level. HSE school board members and HSE administrators who fail to listen to the numbers, but instead offer our community lame excuses are no more than poor craftsmen. Or I should say, poor “craftspeople”. After all, our community recognizes that the current agenda of promoting gender neutrality and support, micro-aggressions, and mental health issues leaves little time to be concerned about academic success and learning outcomes.
There’s another dimension to this; many actually. I’ll ignore the quite loosely-defined “similar” which (based on the list) clearly includes many dissimilarities. Instead, consistency.
The range of scores for schools within HSE (i.e. between buildings) is pretty broad. Do other districts have as wide a variation internally? My guess is no, since to have a high score, you cannot have low scores dragging you down. But I don’t have specific data on that; just asking the question.
While mental health support, etc. are not intrinsically “bad”, they can be a distraction for already overworked, underfunded teachers who are not generally trained in those fields. But a more actionable goal would be raising academic expectations for students and staff (something HSE was once built on), rather than ensuring that a lot of students continue to be uncomfortable going to or at school.
The percentages are based on the total number of students in grades three to grades eight who took the ILEARN assessment test. Individual schools also received scores based on their individual student populations, but the district totals would be based on total numbers not weighted by an average of the school’s percentages. Variance between schools would not be a factor.
My use of the word “similar” refers primarily to economic factors. One of the greatest determinants in standardized testing results comes down to how affluent a particular school district is. Wealthy communities have greater access to learning resources, tutors, higher wages for teachers, etc… Hamilton Southeastern Schools is an affluent school district. Are the ILEARN scores reflective of that fact?
I agree with you that we need to stop making our teachers wear so many hats. Teachers are trained to be experts in their subject fields. Let a math teacher teach math! Teachers are not social workers, mental health counselors, social justice activists, gender transition specialists, micro aggression experts, and SEL educators. Is it any wonder that so many HSE students are below grade level? When do teachers actually find time to teach?
Fishers One is a cancer, spreading lies and misinformation for their own vile means. Disgusting.
Couldn’t agree more Bob!
I agree with you Bob. I hope strong, level-headed candidates run for school board because Fishers One running the school board would be a disaster. I moved into the area partly because of the school system and overall I have been very happy with the education my children receive at New Britton Elementary. If the school board is taken over by the book banning, bigoted, fear-mongering Fishers One, then I think I would have to consider moving the kids out of the district.
For the benefit of everyone reading this post, can you please share examples to support your claims?
We too moved to Fishers for the schools but became disillusioned after several years of drama, poor administration and arguably questionable teaching. My child’s last teacher openly criticized how my child was taught by previous years teachers and made my child (consistently near the top of their class) so fearful of failing iLearn that we had to get them therapy. Our kids are in private school now in a much better environment.
For those worried about Fisher One candidates gaining the majority of the schoolboard, you have only YOU to blame. YOU elected candidates who were more focused on everything BUT educating kids on core subjects. CRT, SEL, racial and gender awareness and anything else is a total distraction from teaching how to read and write and comprehend and calculate and study, etc.
If you want that taught to your kids then YOU do it on YOUR time, on YOUR dime, in YOUR dwelling. Its a waste of HSE Schools time and money and its shows in the SIGNIFICANT drop in test scores. So unintended consequences apply here.
RickS,
I am unaware of my children being taught CRT in their elementary school. If they were, I would not have an issue with it because CRT is just American History. It is the misinformation campaign against CRT by ignorant people which has distorted the true meaning of the term.
SEL is MANDATED as a result of the REPUBLICAN dominated Indiana State Legislature. See below:
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/education/what-is-sel-and-how-is-it-used-in-a-classroom/531-665f5c1a-24f2-425b-85b7-6c2adb333ffc
Remember when you vote that the REPUBLICAN PARTY has pushed and mandated SEL and that our district test scores have dropped while REPUBLICANS have underfunded education, stripped the Indiana School Superintendent of power, and completely ran education at the State level.
Um, no.
There’s no CRT. You don’t understand what that is if you make that statement. And something that doesn’t exist cannot be the cause of anything. Yes, the administration has taken their eye off the ball, but your dog-whistle meme is not the reason.
Also, we’re talking about low scores, not a drop in scores. It’s a fairly new test, and it takes a while to establish the statistics of them. Also, I believe it was cancelled at least one year due to COVID? The issue is low scores compared to neighboring districts.
A mention was made of the overhead and administrative staff at HES. As I recall, the podcast with HSE Schools Chief Equity & Inclusion Officer, Nataki Pettigew discussed the current work of her office. No mention was made of working with generational poor or English as a second language. Does my memory service me correctly. The staff of the Equity & Inclusion staff numbered 45 professional.
This speaks volumes about the focus of the school district.
Curious where the figure came from. Dedicated E&I staff are very few. The “team” is large, but most are people that already have another “real” job, and this is simply a task they perform; i.e. being included in this team.
https://www.hseschools.org/academics/teaching-and-learning/equity-and-inclusion/district-team
They do things like make sure district staff know about upcoming religious holidays, student situation at home (e.g. non-English speaking family), help lunch staff understand why some students cannot eat certain foods for religious reasons, etc. It’s not some dedicated crusade of 45 people trying to brainwash kids – lol. It’s part of the district’s mission to educate all students, and being aware of these circumstances (i.e. they are NOT “issues”) is simply part of being effective teachers and administrators.
When I mentioned central admin overhead above, I meant the legion of assistant superintendents and their attached staff.