GOSHEN — Goshen Community Schools Superintendent Steve Hope apologized at Monday night’s board meeting for misrepresentation of comments made by Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Tracey Noe in an undercover video released by Accuracy in Media on April 12.
In a statement during the board meeting, Hope said of his review of the full-length interview, “When the video was made, I met with Tracey the following day. In my discussion with her, she thought that she had made the statement that we frequently hear at Goshen Community Schools which was that we do not teach CRT (Critical Race Theory) but that we follow Indiana State Standards, which is true. This a factually true and accurate statement. In reviewing the recent video, I discovered that Ms. Noe had misremembered. She did not make that statement on the video. In hindsight, I should have waited to review it prior to publicly releasing the statement. I want to apologize to the board for my mistake.”
In the video, Noe claimed the district changed the categorization of a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee” to a work group, to avoid certain public concern.
The following day, the district issued a press release following the release of the video. GCS Superintendent Steve Hope explained asserted in the release that the undercover reporters took Noe’s comments out of context, and that the district does not teach CRT, but that Noe would be placed on administrative leave for “misrepresenting Goshen Community Schools” “The only thing Mrs. Noe is guilty of is making sure every student has quality resources, a guaranteed literacy curriculum, and outstanding teaching,” Hope read in his original statement.
“Few have done more to ensure that every third grader in Goshen is reading on grade level than Mrs. Noe. Missing from that video clip was an emphatic statement from Mrs. Noe that we do not teach CRT and that we only concentrate on the Indiana standards. Of course, including those statements would have been truthful and transparent and not feeding the flames of divisive politics.”
On April 20, Public Affairs for Accuracy in Media Kevin McVicker emailed The Goshen News stating they would release the full footage of the video if the school corporation apologized for the accusation. The video has since been made available.
“I will tell you that we did change the name of our equity and inclusion committee, just because we just didn’t want to make a target of it, and we felt for the people that were a part of it membership” Noe said in the video. “So we renamed it, but that’s the work we do. Right now, it’s named a ‘work group.’” One interviewer calls it innocuous and asks if it would be permanently titled a work group, to which, in the unedited version, Noe explains that the district just hasn’t come up with a name for it yet and says the committee gets pushback just from the label and not from the work that is being done.
In the full-length, Noe further explains that the committee focuses on disparities among English Learner students, identifying those students for high ability, and creating recommendations to make the process easier by looking at how quickly students learn English, teacher recommendations, overcoming assessment bias, among other things. She explains that in recent years, high ability assessment has shifted from 1% to nearly 10% of Hispanic students. The undercover interviewer is heard telling her that she loves that the district is working on combating assessment bias.
“Right now, it’s been just the data that is driving some awareness in some of what we’re seeing in the gaps with that ‘equity’ piece,” Noe said. “Like extra curricular activities — disparity between girls and boys — trying to figure out ‘well, why is that?’ It’s just really examining the data and asking the questions until we can figure out what’s missing or what do we need to add that we don’t have.”
Noe also says she wouldn’t say there is a “good amount” of social justice in the district’s curriculum, but there is immersion into topics that “have content, which is different that what we had been doing in the past with reading instruction,” explaining that it brings content to life from multiple perspectives.
“Why did the character feel this way? Or what made those actions happen?” she explained.