Maine Indian Education

To the families, students, staff, and tribal leadership of Indian Island, Indian Township, and Sipayik:

The Portland Press Herald published an article about assessment results in our three schools. Some of you will read it; others will hear about it secondhand. Either way, I believe you deserve to hear directly from me and see the full record, not just a portion of it.

On September 4, reporter Reuben Schafir sent me a set of findings and four questions, with a deadline for response. I answered him in writing, at length, on September 5. Below you will find his questions exactly as he asked them, followed by my answers as I gave them. Nothing has been added or softened. You are entitled to the whole exchange, and to draw your own conclusions from it.

What he asked, and what I said

Mr. Schafir’s summary of his findings stated that the figures highlighted through district channels give an incomplete picture; that state-level statistics show decreases in reading and math at two of our schools, with Indian Island math achievement moving from 36 percent at or above state expectations in 2022–23, to 26 percent, to 16 percent last year; that just over half of Sipayik students met or exceeded state reading standards last year and 18 percent met the math benchmark; that results at Indian Township have held roughly steady; and that in spring 2025 through-year results our schools ranked near the bottom of the state lists in English and mathematics.

Before his four questions, I made two points that I want this community to see plainly.

First, on the figures themselves. The winter results and the spring results come from the same assessment but from different administrations that measure different things. The winter window reports national percentages showing how our students compare with peers nationwide; the spring window reports Maine achievement levels, showing how many students have reached a fixed state standard. A school can perform at the national median in reading, as Indian Island did this winter with an average reading percentile of 50.3, while a smaller share of its students clears Maine’s proficiency cut. Both are true at once, and I did not dispute the spring 2025 proficiency figures on the Maine DOE dashboard.

I also asked him to be careful with the vocabulary, because these terms are easy to blur and the difference matters. A national percentile is not a percent. When we report that Indian Island’s schoolwide reading average sits at the 50.3 percentile, that does not mean half our students failed something; it means our students, as a group, performed at the national midpoint — ahead of about half the students in the country who took the same assessment. A RIT score is different again: it is a growth scale, and a gain of 11 RIT points in a single trimester, as Grade 5 at Indian Township posted in both reading and math, measures how much a student learned, not where they finished against a cut score. “Percent proficient” is a fourth thing entirely — the share of students clearing one fixed Maine threshold on one day. Reporting a percentile as though it were a proficiency percentage, or a proficiency percentage as though it captured growth, tells the reader something untrue about our children.

Second, on what those figures can bear. In spring 2025, the state science assessment was taken by seven fifth-graders and four eighth-graders at Indian Island, eleven eighth-graders at Indian Township, and ten fifth-graders and twelve eighth-graders at Sipayik. At Indian Island, one eighth-grade student is 25 percent of the school’s result. A move from 36 to 26 to 16 percent in math over three years at a school that size can reflect the movement of two or three children as much as any change in instruction, and a rank of 201st out of 202 conveys a precision the underlying data does not support. The Maine DOE itself flags or withholds results for cohorts this small in parts of its public reporting.

Chronic Absenteeism: A Multi-Year Transformation

Prepared by the Office of the Superintendent. Individual student results are protected under federal and state privacy law and are not for public distribution.

Maine Indian Education has produced one of the most significant multi-year reductions in chronic absenteeism documented among comparable tribal school systems nationally. Drawing on the Maine DOE Chronic Absenteeism Detail Extract (2024–25), the data tell a clear story:

•     MIE system-wide chronic absenteeism: 19.6% — 80.4% of MIE students now meet the attendance goal, an improvement of roughly 37 percentage points from the 2021–22 estimated peak.

•       Indian Island School: 13.1% chronic absenteeism (only 11 of 84 students). This places the school below the Maine statewide average for all students and dramatically below the state’s American Indian student average of approximately 41.8%.

•       Sipayik Elementary School: 18.7% chronic absenteeism. Approaching parity with the Maine statewide average — a decline of roughly 35–43 percentage points from the post-pandemic peak.

•       Indian Township School: 27.0% chronic absenteeism, a substantial multi-year improvement from an estimated 58–68% in 2021–22, with continued targeted intervention underway.

These figures place MIE substantially below the current national American Indian / Alaska Native benchmark and competitive with — or stronger than — the Maine statewide average for all students. This is achieved against a national landscape in which American Indian students have consistently registered the highest chronic absenteeism rates of any subgroup, and in which analysis of underfunded and tribally controlled schools is not included in standard federal district-level analyses.

Winter 2026 Academic Growth

Prepared by the Office of the Superintendent. Individual student results are protected under federal and state privacy law and are not for public distribution.

The Winter 2026 Maine Through Year Assessment, administered in Grades 3–8 in Reading and Mathematics, documented growth across all three schools. The results below report national-percentile performance and fall-to-winter growth; they are not Maine spring achievement levels.

Indian Island School — Penobscot Nation (55 students assessed)

•       Grade 7 reading: 90% at or above the district’s benchmark, with individual students at the 89th, 93rd, and 95th national percentiles.

•       Schoolwide reading: average reading percentile of 50.3, at the national midpoint.

•       Mathematics: fall-to-winter gain of 13 percentage points at the benchmark; Grade 7 leads, with individual students at the 76th, 83rd, and 89th percentiles.

•       Early grades: Grade 3 reading 70%; Grade 5 reading 75% at the benchmark. 

Indian Township School — Passamaquoddy at Indian Township

•       Grade 5: +11.1 RIT points in math and +11.2 RIT points in reading in a single trimester; reading moved from the 37th to the 54th national percentile.

•       Grade 4 reading: +12.5 RIT points, from the 30th to the 48th percentile.

•       Additional gains: Grade 3 math +7.4 RIT; Grade 7 math +7.7 RIT (31st → 39th); Grade 6 math +6.0 RIT.

•       Schoolwide: +2.6 percentile points in math and +3.0 in reading, fall to winter. 

Sipayik Elementary School — Passamaquoddy at Pleasant Point (90+ students assessed)

•       Grade 3: 64% at the benchmark in both reading and math.

•       Grade 7 reading 63%; Grade 8 reading 57%, with top performers at the 70th, 81st, and 86th percentiles.

•       Individual high performers include a Grade 5 student at the 87th percentile in reading and 89th in math, and a Grade 6 student at the 86th percentile in math.

•       Areas of focused attention: Grades 4–6, where targeted support continues this fall. 

As superintendent, I have access to the complete student-level record for all three schools, and Maine Indian Education holds a waiver from the Bureau of Indian Education to report full results for federal accountability. I cannot share those records with the media; doing so would violate federal and state student privacy law, and with cohorts of four to twelve students, even grade-level tables can identify a child. The Maine Department of Education is preparing a new public platform for demographic and accountability data that will give the public a more complete view than is available today.

Question 1

Yes, those conversations are happening. The spring proficiency results are reviewed with each principal, with the three School Committees, and with the Joint School Committee. I provided Mr. Schafir with the specific steps taken to date.

Question 2

What is gained by highlighting growth and national-percentile results is that students, families, and teachers — in communities too often defined only by their deficits — see evidence that their work produces progress. Underlying this is a difference in how we define success. Measured against a fixed statewide bar, a student who moves from the 20th to the 30th percentile in reading is still counted as a failure. We do not see that child that way, and neither should the community that knows them. That student gained ground, and we celebrate it, because growth is the truest evidence that our instruction is reaching a learner and that the learner is rising to meet it. This is not a lowering of expectations; we expect every child to grow, every year, from wherever they begin. Shifting the conversation from a single pass-or-fail line toward honest recognition of growth does not excuse our schools from accountability. It does the opposite: it gives students and families a goal they can reach and a reason to keep reaching.

Question 3

Test scores are one measure, and they should be reported accurately, but they are not the only one. Attendance is a telling example. Chronic absenteeism at Indian Island School fell to 13.1 percent — below the Maine statewide average for all students, and far below the state’s average for American Indian students. Sipayik Elementary stands at 18.7 percent, near the statewide average, and Maine Indian Education system-wide is at 19.6 percent, meaning roughly four in five of our students now meet the state’s attendance goal. Each of those figures represents a substantial multi-year improvement. I would also point to retention of students through eighth grade, participation in Wabanaki language instruction, and persistence of our graduates through high school. None of these is a substitute for academic proficiency; they are the conditions that make proficiency possible.

Question 4

Three things. First, stable and adequate funding: our schools operate under dual Bureau of Indian Education and Maine DOE jurisdiction, and federal funding through the BIE has been both insufficient and unpredictable. Second, a teacher pipeline: recruiting and retaining certified educators, especially in mathematics, in rural Washington and Penobscot counties is our single greatest operational challenge. Third, continuity: our students carry the effects of generations of disrupted schooling, and progress requires sustained, multi-year investment rather than programs that reset each year. Closer oversight is not the missing ingredient. We are among the most closely monitored schools in Maine, and I am grateful for the partnership of Maine DOE and BIE.

How we intend to define ourselves

I want to say one more thing to this community, in my own words rather than in answer to anyone’s question.

We intend to know who we are by our own measure, not by someone else’s description of us. That is not a rejection of scrutiny, and it is not a claim that state standards do not apply to us — they do, we report them, and our families are entitled to see them. It is a statement about whose judgment forms our children’s picture of themselves. For generations, Native students in this country have been described chiefly by what they lack. Our students will not learn who they are from a ranking.

So, we define success as growth. Any growth, in any child, will be named and celebrated here. A student who gains a year and a half of reading in a single year has accomplished something real, whether that gain carries them across a fixed line drawn somewhere else. Our question each year is not only how many of our students cleared a bar, but how far each one traveled, and what we must do to make next year’s distance greater. That is the standard I will hold our schools to, and it is a demanding one.

I also make no apologies for celebrating our students publicly. Telling their story is part of my job. When our schools accomplish something, we will say so plainly and directly to the people it belongs to — our students, our families, our staff, and our tribal communities — and we will not wait for permission to do it. At the same time, we will not tell you only half of what we know. The spring results are what they are. Too many of our students are not yet meeting state standards, and the work of changing that is the work in front of us.

Our students face challenges few schools in Maine can imagine, and they meet them every day. I am proud to serve them, and I am grateful for your trust.