Submitted by John Arbeeny.
Lakewood CARES will be providing an academically based response to schools highlighted in the Clover Park School District (CPSD) “#SuperSchoolShoutOut“ articles in The Suburban Times. This is data you will not find elsewhere in CPSD public relations pieces, Board meeting agendas or “Inside Schools”. This week’s CPSD “beaming with pride” article covers Hudtloff Middle School which was featured in a Suburban Times article on 10 September 2024:
It’s the beginning of a new school year and the CPSD Public Relations (PR) Department has given up any pretense that academics matter in their “puff pieces” published in the Suburban Times. Indeed it continues to be all about anecdotal celebration of a staff members and students. In Hudtloff’s case that’s 1 staff member out of 54 teachers and 1 student out 586 students celebrating athleticism. That’s hardly a representative sample of Hudtloff’s learning environment. We primarily send our children to schools to succeed academically; athletic achievement is a distant second at best.
In 2017 Hudtloff was a middle school that was slightly above average academically ranked at 52.6 percentile. Since then, and despite a brand new building, there has been a precipitous decline academically down to only 5 percentile in 2024: 508th out of 535 middle schools state-wide. 95% of the State’s middle schools out perform Hudtloff academically. That’s over a 90% reduction in Hudtloff’s academic ranking in just 8 years! How did the Board and Superintendent allow this to happen?
https://www.schooldigger.com/go/WA/schools/0141000257/school.aspx
This academic freefall is not unique to Hudtloff. CPSD now has the dubious distinction of having again fallen to a new low in 2024 of 25.9 percentile: 183rd out of 247 school districts state-wide. How much longer can the taxpayers of CPSD endure the current Board’s and Superintendent’s inaction to this academic travesty? When you elevate “culture change” over academics, as they have since 2018, the outcome is predictable.
https://www.schooldigger.com/go/WA/district/01410/search.aspx
CPSD’s typical excuses for individual school and district academic failure aren’t going to cut it anymore: it’s too long a trend to ignore. Free lunch, racial and ethnic membership, languages, military associated students, economic factors, culture, COVID, etc. etc. etc. are just that: excuses. Lakewood’s population hasn’t changed so much since 2018 that the success of just a few years ago can’t be duplicated today.
The Office of Superintendent for Public Instruction (OSPI) statistics confirm Hudtloff’s academic situation discussed above as shown below:
OSPI has pulled a “switch” on their school report card site and made some not so obvious changes this year. OSPI eliminated the percentage of students meeting state standards in ELA, math and science and Student Growth Percentile (SGP) from their front page for reasons unknown.
Instead we now have “students on track for college level learning” and “students showing foundational grade level knowledge” which are not directly relatable to the earlier “students meeting state standards” and SGP. It is now more difficult to develop academic trends using past criteria and the changes made to current criteria: a case of “apples and oranges” comparison.
It is not clear what “students showing foundational grade level knowledge and skills or above” specifically means but perhaps the closest would be past statistics of “students meeting state standards”. There is some question as to the correlation since in 2023-2024 Hudtloff “students meeting state standards” is shown below:
2023/2024: ELA 28.2%; Math 12.6%; Science 17.7%
Compare this to the new spring 2024 “foundational grade level knowledge and skills” standard as shown below”
Spring 2024: ELA 48.8%; Math 34.6%; Science 37.4%
This enormous change appears to be an inflation of academic achievement from a combined rating of 19.5% of “students meeting state standards” in 2023-2024 to a combined rating of 40.3% of students showing “foundational grade level knowledge and skills” in the spring of 2024. That’s a magical 100%+ increase academically in less than a year! Perhaps this is the result of simply lowering state academic standards in order to pump up the numbers. Coincidentally, 2024 is an election year for OSPI!
Only 17.8% of Hudtloff’s students are on track with combined English, math and science achievement for “college level learning”: 82.2% are on track to need remedial classes! 80%+ of Hudtloff students will not be prepared to enter college upon graduation based upon middle school performance. What programs does CPSD offer these students in order to develop trade or vocational skills after high school or did they just spend 12 years in school for something (college) that wasn’t in their future? No wonder so many students have become apathetic about their education.
Hudtloff’s academic decline may be in part attributed to discipline exclusions and poor attendance.
OSPI defines “discipline rate” as “What percent of students are excluded in response to a behavioral violation?” “Exclusion” means suspensions or expulsions. Since 2018 Hudtloff discipline rate has ballooned from 10.8% to the 2022-2023 rate of 17.2%. There are no OSPI figures for 2023-2024. This alarming trend does not even give a true picture of the disciplinary environment which includes all disciplinary incidents short of exclusion. Is class room chaos the result? Students need a stable environment in which they can learn without disruption.
Hudtloff’s attendance rate of students attending 90% or more school days is 57.4%: 42.6% of all Hudtloff’s students did not meet this criteria in 2022-2023. You can’t learn if you don’t attend school and you don’t want to attend school in a chaotic environment!
https://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/ReportCard/ViewSchoolOrDistrict/102226
CPHS and Hudtloff both have similar feeding elementary schools and share many of the same systemic problems. The District has concentrated some of its lowest academic performing schools through elementary-middle-high school. Here are the academic percentile rankings for Hudtloff feeder elementary schools.
Oakbrook: 37.7%
Custer: 27%
Idlewild: 17.6%
Four Heroes: 9.6%
Park Lodge: 7.9%
Lakeview: 6.2%
Tyee Park: 5.1%
The average academic ranking for Hudtloff feeder elementary schools is 15.9% which though deplorable is still better than Hudtloff’s academic ranking of 5%. Unfortunately most of CPSD’s elementary schools have fallen into the low academic performing category with the exception of some JBLM elementary schools which are outstanding academically. This increasing academic deficit feeds on itself and compounds negatively over the course of a student’s 12 years in the system. Things not learned in elementary school lead to things not learned in middle school, high school, through graduation and beyond in life.
Academic performance, disparities, long term neglect, unsuccessful “solutions”, lagging student growth, school associations, discipline and administrative decisions are eight systemic issues, among others, that should be addressed before Hudtloff’s academic performance and that of associated schools can improve. More “people”, “stuff” and “money” aren’t necessarily the solution to these systemic problems. It’s going to take changes to system design to get meaningful long term results.
Resting on the laurels of Hudtloff’s academic past does nothing to fix its academic situation today. To fix CPSD’s high school academics requires a fix of Hudtloff’s and other middle school academics which requires a fix of feeder elementary schools’ academics. Today is the day to start that process.
As an aside: I will be writing a follow up article on the inexorable slide towards academic disaster at CPSD now that spring 2024 data is becoming available. There has been a general decline academically across the board at CPSD over the last year. Perhaps the worst case scenario is at Lochburn Middle School. See my Suburban Times article of 31 May 2024 on Lochburn at:
Things have gotten so bad academically at Lochburn that it is now ranked at 0.4 percentile: 533rd out of 535 middle schools! 99.6% of state middle schools outperform Lochburn academically. How low can Lochburn go?
https://www.schooldigger.com/go/WA/schools/0141000263/school.aspx
The community (Lakewood) is to blame. Poor community planning, especially housing, led to this decline.
The overwhelming amount of “market rate” apartments built in the town, instead of affordable medium density (townhomes) individually owned housing built has caused a shift away from home owner care and investment in the community.
CPSD has a highly transient population now, evident from the data of the last decade.
A highly transient population is not an economically secure or academics first invested population (parents/guardians). If the primary adults in a CPSD student’s life aren’t invested in Lakewood, their child won’t flourish in Lakewood.
The second obvious reason schools nation wide are declining, not just in CPSD, is lack of culpability – the guardians, the administrators and the children must be held to a unilaterally upheld and enforceable discipline code. The superintendent received a handsome salary, is seen giving platitudes on occasion, but in all his effectiveness is unproven. A fish rots from the head down. Challenge the town to focus on their community planning to include pressuring CPSD to improve. And pressure CPSD families and the Board to put a time limit on how much longer this superintendent should remain at the helm given the excessive school performance declined have occurred on his watch!
These are all systemic issues that affect the success or failure of a school system. Community development determines what kind of community we will have. Emphasize “growing the tax base” for the benefit of government spending and you may harm the very people you ostensibly are supposed to be helping.
Discipline is another major issue. CPSD has discarded “zero tolerance” discipline in favor of a form of race/ethnicity based discipline which seeks to level out the “disparity” numbers regardless of the behavior involved. Result: much more acting out and disciplinary problems that disappear behind “fudged numbers”. There are many other systemic issues that must be addressed to turn this academic free-fall that has occurred under the current CPSD Superintendent.
WOW! I just got a flash back to the movie “Stand and Deliver”. It appears to me students have become fodder for feeding the school system/union bureaucracies.
Indeed if poor Latino “gangsters” can learn calculus then anything is possible.
I am not a Lakewood citizen, but believe Lakewood is fortunate to have such a fact based ‘whistle blower.’ To an outsider, I can’t but wonder why Lakewood citizens aren’t up in arms for such a disastrous, poor performing school district. Heads should be rolling. Why aren’t they?
They aren’t “up in arms” because CPSD is so good at concealing the truth from them.
I look forward to reading your frequent articles addressing CPSD’s academic performance and failures. You clearly research statistics that confirm your point of view. I find no quarrel with your facts, but I wonder about your conclusions. I agree school teachers and administrators should be held accountable, but parents and guardians must accept some of the blame for poor academic performance. Over and over in your letters to The Suburban Times, you acknowledge the superior academic performance of the CPSD schools located on Joint Base Lewis McChord. I believe there is ample evidence to support the view that parental involvement and community discipline is a major factor in student success. While I do expect more from CPSD staff, I hope for more from the district’s parents.
“…parental involvement and community discipline is a major factor in student success.” Without a doubt parents are a key component for academic success.
However, CPSD seldom addresses the topic by advising parents as to their schools’ academic success or failure. “Everything is just fine” according to their public relations department. Lulled into a false sense of security/apathy why would you expect parents to be concerned about the academic trajectory of the district? Keeping parents in the dark is a great way to keep them out of district decision making.
There are several other environmental issues that haven’t been addressed by CPSD. PTA’s are almost non-existent except of course on JBLM. Indeed CPSD is not interested in and does not follow PTA organizations because they are “private” and outside CPSD’s organizational structure. Yet if PTAs are part of the success story on JBLM why hasn’t CPSD launched an initiative to have one at each and every school? What better way to get parents involved?
How about a sense of neighborhood which prevails on JBLM? Lakewood used to have several active neighborhood associations but to my knowledge only Tillicum has one that is active. City council members are elected at large largely by a few more affluent high voter districts. What about the rest of Lakewood? Perhaps, like Tacoma, there should at least be some council members elected by districts.
How about representation? Current board members only have to live in one of the 5 districts for which they are running, not necessarily campaign in the district they supposedly represent. As a result all the campaign effort goes into high voting districts (Oakbrook/Nyanza/etc.) and precious little into the districts and neighborhoods that need it most. A typical campaign might require 10000 doorbells rung, most of which are going into the high voter districts. 10000 doorbells rung in the district you represent means you could literally meet you constituents 4 times as much. That’s how you get parental interest. When you treat voters apathetically apathy is what you get in return.
These are just a few of the systemic problems faced by CPSD. Bottom line is that CPSD leadership has not displayed the academic interest or creativity to deal with the very problems they created to solve their academic dilemma. It’s much easier to blame parents, race, ethnicity, language, economic status, etc. etc.
As a taxpayer who gives thousands of dollars to CPSD, and whose children and some grandchildren have attended CPSD, I am so sorry to read about the academic failure taking place. Parents, you need to step up and make sure your children are in attendance, that they are doing their schoolwork, they are getting to bed early enough at night, that they don’t stay on their phones half the night, and that they show respect in class. They need to listen and behave themselves so the teachers can teach and fellow students can learn. I believe this low performance failure begins in the home. Our young people need to begin reaching towards a higher standard.
Parents seem to be by enlarge broken, apathetic individuals in today’s society. The cell phone/tablet substitutes for the presence/affection/positive nurturing of the parent. It’s ridiculous and America is hurting because individuals aren’t held to higher standards anymore.
Yet there are surrounding school districts that excel (UP, Peninsula, etc.). Is that because the parents are better at parenting or that those districts have different values, principles and goals? Blame parents if you want but if the district has the wrong values, principles and goals all the parental concern is for naught until they challenge the district for change. Blaming parents is no more effective than blaming race, ethnicity, language, economic status, etc. etc. What is the district doing about it?
It’s a stretch to state UP or any Western WA public school district is excelling. Yes, parents may in fact be held more accountable in these better performing districts.
For comparison’s sake UP school district is ranked at 94.3% and Peninsula at 90.3% versus 25.9% for CPSD. Yes if holding parents more accountable is part of the recipe for academic success then do it; don’t complain about it.
You aren’t making sense now.
Not a CPSD product or parent.
I can see the decline is administration level leadership within CPSD- anyone can search SBAC score reports and the like. It’s truly eye opening to see the abysmal principal management skills in action – just walk by Hudtloff MS or Thomas MS at dismissal time (3:30pm)- quite shocking. Lochburn MS perhaps too but I haven’t witnessed this myself.
Students going to buses at Lakeview Hope, Four Heroes and Park Lodge ES if one happens by at dismissal – very noisy and chaotic. If schools maintained the highest expectations for behavior, which means follow through on inappropriate behavior with a parent, dismissals wouldn’t run so roughly. I stand by room for improvement easily being achieved by expecting parents to parent!
Visiting a school at 3:30 and see the bedlam at dismissal requires only an address: many parents do it every day. Very few visit less obvious websites that detail academic performance, least of all CPSD leadership, and then publish the same. Each has its own reason and value.
Parent accountability goes beyond just the individual parent-teacher-student connection. It is a responsibility of parents (plural) individually, collectively and organizationally to hold the district and school administrators responsible for their performance academically. That isn’t happening with predictable results.
Fixing things at the individual student level matters to that individual. Fixing things at the organizational level matters to all students.
These problems can be helped with good leadership. I have heard nothing but terrible things about Hutlofts Principal, by teachers and community members alike. She is allowed to have free reign and have no accountability. She had something like 50 staff turn over in 5 years. A few years ago the whole science department resigned. That goes to show you that CPSD is more concerned with holding on and enabling terrible administration than keeping high quality educators who are actually making a difference. Shame on them.
As P. Jacobson so aptly put it “A fish rots from the head down” Without “good leadership” the entire enterprise will collapse despite heroic efforts by lower level members’ to prevent it.