Dear Editor: Issues with Whitehall School's Letter to Parents

Dear Editor,

I’m writing this letter in response to the letter Superintendent Nieskins sent home to the Whitehall Elementary parents, as well as the Letter to the Editor Mr. Reiff had in the February 8 edition of the Whitehall Ledger.

As a parent of two students who attend Cardwell School, I have two issues with these letters.

First, I find it very unprofessional and unacceptable for a school district or a member of the school board to share information pertaining to another school district. If the letter had only contained data for the Whitehall School to represent what an amazing job the Whitehall teachers are doing, I would have had no issue with the letter. I believe Whitehall School does have amazing teachers and I know they work very hard to provide the best school for the students.

The second issue I have is the data that was in the letters representing the Cardwell School for the 2021-2022 school year. The numbers presented showed that Cardwell School had 0% of its students testing advanced in the math portion of the assessment. This number was alarming to me because my son took these assessment tests, and I personally know that his test results showed that he tested advanced in the math portion.

My first reaction was to go to the OPI website and look for the assessment data. I accessed the OPI website from my phone and under a school district data dashboard, I was able to find the data for the Cardwell School. The data I saw was indeed the exact same as what was presented in the letters.

I then decided it was best to directly call OPI to see if they could help me get a better understanding of the assessment data that was represented on the OPI website. Eventually, I was forwarded to a man that worked at the help desk for the website. I explained my situation to him and he helped me understand where I needed to go on the webpage to access the assessment data.

On the homepage of the OPI website is an Assessment Scores tab. After clicking on the Assessment Scores tab, there is a new tab titled “Math and ELA Assessments Dashboard (Grades 3-8).” From this dashboard, filters can be applied to the displayed chart and there I could find the assessment data for the Cardwell School.

I tried to access this dashboard on my phone, and for some reason, the dashboard was not compatible. I then went to the website on a laptop, and from there I was able to get the dashboard to work. I found the assessment data for the Cardwell School for the last six fiscal years and by moving my cursor over the data for the 2021-2022 school year, a pop-up box appeared showing the percentages for the Cardwell School, as well as the number of students that were in each category for their assessment scores. I noticed that in some of the boxes, there was an asterisk, so I asked the person helping me what that meant.

I was told that Montana has a child identity law in place to help protect the identity of students. Due to the fact that Cardwell has a lower number of students that took the assessment tests, there is most likely too small of a sample size. They have a masking policy programmed into their website so certain data may be excluded from the charts to protect a student’s identity. The data in this dashboard representing the Cardwell School was significantly higher than the data that was presented in the two letters. I asked the gentleman from the help desk why there was such a difference between the assessment dashboard and the school district data dashboard, and I was told that he didn’t know why.

He stated that the data on the assessment dashboard he had shown me was the most up-to-date and correct information and that the data should be the same in both dashboards. He said it was a mistake that they weren’t the same and that they would look at addressing the issue.

I felt it appropriate to share this information with the Whitehall School so I attended the February 7 School Board meeting, and during the public comment section of the meeting, I presented exactly what I stated above. I felt that it would be appropriate for the school to send out another letter apologizing to the Cardwell School and to recognize that the OPI website showed different data than what was represented in the letter.

The next day I had a phone conversation with Mr. Reiff in which I also stated that I felt it appropriate he writes a new letter to the Whitehall Ledger addressing this issue.

I personally feel like there are several different factors to take into consideration when determining the type of environment a school provides for learning and child development. School assessment scores are one of those factors, but not the only one.

I believe both the Whitehall School and Cardwell School are assets to the community, and I hope for a better relationship between the two in the future.

Levi Simon

Cardwell, Montana