Innovative Arts Academy pledges curriculum overhaul, improvement benchmarks
As the Innovative Arts Academy Charter School awaits a vote on the renewal of its charter, leaders sought to demonstrate their commitment to academic improvement Tuesday.
The career-focused charter school, which serves grades six through 12, is under new leadership with interim CEO Bradley Schifko. School leaders sought to distance themselves from the school’s past by presenting a strategic growth report to the Catasauqua Area School District board, pledging to rework curriculum and follow data-driven benchmarks for growth and progress.
The school’s charter is under review for renewal after administrators with the Catasauqua Area School District, where the charter school is located, determined the school was failing its students. The decision on whether to renew the charter rests with the school board, which will likely vote on Sept. 10.
Ernest Batha, director of curriculum for the charter school, said there would be a new focus on data benchmarks at the school to track progress as well as professional development and teacher performance.
Among the data presented in the strategic growth report are PSSA scores for students who are part of the class of 2022 and 2023, but only for 2017 and 2018. Data shows improvement on scores for those in the class of 2023 but not for those in the class of 2022. Catasauqua Area School District board President Carol Cunningham said she wanted to see the most recent year of test scores, which were not listed in the report.
Batha said the charter school will be reshaping curriculum for the entire school in an effort to increase these scores and will start with math.
“There will be no area of study that won’t be overhauled, reviewed and scrutinized,” he told the board.
Cunningham said it is “imperative” the school scrutinize its curriculum considering the low test scores.
“I have to hope they take a close look at the curriculum, for the sake of the students there,” she said.
Goals for improvement begin with the coming school year, according to the strategic plan. The school hopes to see math proficiency scores rise by 7% to 10% next year and by 11% to 15% for English and language arts scores.
The data does provide a quantitative record for the school board to see progress — something board members said was missing from previous promises by Innovative Arts Academy. But whether board members deem the information useful for the renewal of the charter remains to be seen.
In May, the charter school’s dismal test scores were scrutinized. The charter school routinely scored lower than most any other Lehigh Valley school, including Allentown which happens to be the school district that sends the largest number of students to Innovative Arts Academy.
More distressing than the low state assessment scores, Catasauqua officials said, was the lack of growth. The Education Department’s new metric showing whether a group demonstrates improvement didn’t lessen the poor scores at the charter school. In each subject, Innovative Arts Academy had the lowest possible growth score.
But the charter school’s legal counsel sought to defend the scores, explaining that the school expected a different demographic when it opened. Though Innovative Arts Academy expected 75% of the enrollment coming from the Catasauqua Area School District, the vast majority instead come from Allentown. The school has also received more special education students than anticipated. As the school addresses these challenges, scores have been lower than expected.
Parents with students who attend Innovative Arts Academy, as well as some of the students themselves, testified in May about the school’s positive influence. Some parents described children who blossomed and thrived in a smaller school environment that allowed them more one-on-one time with teachers.
Catasauqua Area School District board members had heard these promises before and implored Schifko to find a way to show progress. Under former CEO Douglas Taylor’s tenure at the school, teachers claimed that students’ special education needs weren’t being met and filed a whistleblower lawsuit when their employment wasn’t renewed.
During the May hearing, the charter school leadership indicated that under Taylor’s tenure certain information was improperly reported to the state, but they emphasized that those reporting structures have been fixed.