Catasauqua administrators painted the Innovative Arts Academy Charter School as a school that’s habitually failing students academically.
Charter school administrators sought to portray the school as one where students in need of extra attention found solace and purpose while staff contended with a demographic of economically disadvantaged students with unexpected challenges.
It will be the Catasauqua Area School Board who must decide whether the embattled school, which serves grades 6-12 with a career-based curriculum, will stay open with a renewed charter or will close its doors. The board has 30 days to issue their decision. The charter school can appeal the decision to the state if they disagree.
Student Mariah Simpson, a junior, provided an emotional appeal to the board to renew the charter.
“I’ve grown so much since it first opened. I never used to talk to anyone,” Simpson said, her voice wavering. “All the teachers they care about… they care about the students. They’re just like a family here.”
On Tuesday, the Catasauqua Area School District outlined their concerns about the charter school, focusing on the lack of academic achievement at the school. Superintendent Robert Spengler later emphasized the school’s problems were made under “prior leadership.”
Outgoing CEO Douglas Taylor, who started in April 2017 and presided over a handful of controversies, including a whistle-blower lawsuit, resigned weeks before these hearings. He leaves for good in June and transitional CEO Bradley Schifko will then become an interim CEO at the school.
Christina Lutz-Doemling, Catasauqua’s director of curriculum and assessment, detailed the charter school’s academic performances in state assessments from the Pennsylvania Department of Education over the last two years.
Consistently, Innovative Arts Academy Charter School underperformed, scoring below statewide standards in all subjects in 2017 and 2018 standardized assessments. In all but one subject in one year — the Keystone exam measuring literature in 2017 — the school also demonstrated negative growth. This means that not only did students fall below state standards, but comparing scores with the same group in previous years, they failed to demonstrate any improvement.
The charter school’s average growth index in 2018 was among the absolute worst in the state, according to data presented by the school district. The school performed in the bottom 3% of state schools in math and English language arts for grades 4-8 and the bottom 1% in Algebra I and literature. In biology, Innovative Arts Academy scored within the bottom 14% of schools statewide.
The district administration created scatter plots to demonstrate the charter school’s progress compared with regional schools — particularly the Allentown School District, where most of the Innovative Arts Academy student come from. The scatterplot maps showed Innovative Arts Academy routinely scoring worse, in terms of test scores and growth, than Allentown.
The one area the school did exceed the statewide average was in the career standard benchmarks. Innovative Arts demonstrated a 100% to the state average of 92% and the state standard of 98%. But it showed only 7% for industry-based learning, compared with 24% state average and 7% for rigorous study compared with a state average of 49%.
The Innovative Arts Academy Charter School, serving grades 6 through 12 with a career-based curriculum, has made headlines since it opened in 2016 when an anonymous mailer promoting the school and disparaging the Bethlehem Area School District caught the attention of the state’s auditor general.
Marc Fisher, the attorney representing Innovative Arts Academy, argued that the school expected a different population of students. The original charter expected 75% of enrollment from the Catasauqua Area School District. Instead the vast majority comes from Allentown, with the second most hailing from the Bethlehem Area School District. There were more economically disadvantaged students than expected and more special education students.
Lutz-Doemling conceded that these difference could affect scores but she said would still expect to see progress.
“I would still expect them to demonstrate growth,” she said.
Innovative Arts Academy transitional CEO Bradley Schifko, who will take over as interim CEO in June when Douglas Taylor leaves, testified Wednesday night that the school’s higher transient population makes growth assessments more difficult than in a public school.
Schifko said the school is making efforts to improve test scores, going as far as to hire an outside educational consulting firm to help with performances.
The charter school relied also on testimony from parents who say their children succeeded only after getting the special attention they needed at Innovative Arts.
Staci Wolfe, a Northampton parent, said her daughter was gripped by anxiety and depression, but thrived once she came to the school.
“I see my daughter again. We lost her for a long time. She started there and she’s back. And now she’s stronger than ever,” Wolfe said.
Catasauqua School Board member Don Panto implored Schifko to work on a metric to show progress moving forward. He said the board heard these promises before and he worried about students moving through the school when academic scores were failing them.
Morning Call reporter Sarah M. Wojcik can be reached at 610-778-2283 or swojcik@mcall.com.
