Dayton School Board discuss performance standards

DAYTON — The Dayton School Board met in the high school library at 6:30 p.m. on October 15, 2025. Superintendent Jeremy Wheatley, Board Chair Jeffrey McCowen, and board members Pat Davidson and Ryan Paulson were present. Aneesha Dieu joined via Zoom, and Grant Griffin was absent.

The board approved the consent agenda, including the CTE Career & Technical Education and the four-year plan. Dieu asked that it be removed from the consent agenda and designated as an action item so it could be covered more thoroughly. Wheatley offered to make a presentation at the next meeting and to have the plan voted on afterward. The board accepted the agenda change.

Homecoming activities prevented several of the usual participants from attending the meeting, including Jaelynn Chapman, the student representative.

Paulson and McCowen acknowledged the Dayton downtown merchants and property owners who displayed Bulldog school colors for homecoming week.

Jaelynn Chapman, the board’s student representative, submitted a written report with the Students of the Month, recognized for school spirit:

Freshman – Claire Garrott

Sophomores – Georgia Reser

Juniors – Ike Wother

Seniors – Colton Steinhoff

Wheatley presented reports from the principal and the science teachers, who were not present due to homecoming activities. The superintendent presented charts and graphs comparing Dayton schools’ science performance to national and state test scores. Some members of the board asked to see the scores for all subjects more frequently to determine better areas of education needing improvement.

Dieu said that parents often hear that their student is “approaching standard.” She said it was a term used commonly nationwide. She thought the term was a way to convey that the student is not doing too badly, but even though they have not met the standard, they are passed along to the next grade. She suggested that standards are becoming less rigorous. She said other countries are light-years ahead of the US and that their students will be speaking six languages before they graduate. She said that as a board, they need to look at getting rid of terms such as “approaching standard” and come up with their own terms.*

The meeting adjourned at 7:20 p.m.

*Most recent verified International student assessments.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the industry standard for comparing student performance across different countries.

The most recent PISA data available as of October 2025 comes from 2022, which debunked the claim that the U.S. is at the bottom of the list.

Reading: The U.S. ranked 9th out of 81 in reading.

Science: The U.S. ranked 16th out of 81 in science.

Math: The U.S. ranked 34th out of 81 in math.

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