Deer Lakes Math Scores Climbed Four Years Running. Beth Hutson Is Starting With Reading.

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Correction (September 30, 2026): An earlier version of this article built Deer Lakes' test results by adding up its school-level rows and said Pennsylvania publishes no district-wide or statewide summary of these exams. The state publishes both. This version uses the state's published district-wide figures, which put 2024-25 proficiency at 53.3% in English language arts (not 53.6%) and 47.3% in math (not 47.6%) and move several other test figures by a few tenths of a point, and it adds the statewide comparison.

Beth Hutson had been listening to Deer Lakes teachers for months before she had the authority to act on what they told her.

"I was hired as Deer Lakes' Assistant Superintendent in early March, so I had the benefit of spending the spring and summer learning the district from the inside and, more importantly, listening to the people who know it best," she wrote in response to questions from The PAEdTribune.

She met teachers in grade-level and department groups and put the same four questions to each one. "What are you proud of? What are your aspirations for your students and your area? What challenges are you experiencing? And what can the district do to support you with resources or professional learning?" The answers went into the opening address she gave on her first day as superintendent of Deer Lakes^↗, and they set the agenda she named there: literacy, writing, executive functioning, and professional learning.

Pennsylvania's own test results say the first item on that list is the one that has been moving in the wrong direction.

The two subjects went in opposite directions

Deer Lakes students in grades three through eight scored proficient or advanced on 53.3% of their English language arts tests in 2024-25, the most recent year in the state's published results. That is the lowest figure in the published record and the third straight annual decline. In 2018-19 the same measure was 68.9%, so the district is 15.6 points below where it stood before the pandemic.

Math went the other way. Proficiency there was 47.3% in 2024-25, up in each of the four most recent published years from a low of 37.3% in 2020-21, and above the 38.2% Deer Lakes posted in 2014-15. Reading has not recovered its pre-pandemic ground; math has more than recovered its 2014-15 ground.

The gap between the two subjects tells the same story from a different angle. In 2018-19, English language arts ran 18.8 points ahead of math at Deer Lakes. By 2024-25 that margin was 6.0 points. The subject the district was strongest in is the one that closed on the subject it was weakest in.

Deer Lakes still finished 2024-25 above Pennsylvania in both subjects. Statewide, 48.5% of grade three through eight English language arts tests and 41.7% of math tests were scored proficient or advanced. The direction matched the state's, too: statewide math proficiency rose in each of the last four published years, and statewide English language arts proficiency fell in each of them.

Hutson put it in a sentence when asked what she would look for two years out. "Our data tell us that literacy requires our attention," she wrote. "We have to be willing to look honestly at that trend and respond with urgency."

Two features of the record deserve naming before anyone reads a straight line into it. Pennsylvania administered no PSSA in spring 2020, which is why the chart has a hole in it. The 2020-21 administration went ahead under disrupted conditions and drew fewer test-takers: 695 scored English language arts tests against 821 two years earlier. The Deer Lakes and statewide figures above are the state's own published district-wide and statewide results for grades three through eight.

A K-12 problem, not an elementary one

The coherence complaint came from the teachers, not from the superintendent's office. "A consistent theme was the need for greater coherence across the K-12 experience," Hutson wrote. "Teachers want students to experience a progression of skills and expectations as they move from one grade level to the next and from one building to another."

Her response is to refuse the usual division of labor. "Reading is not just an elementary responsibility, and it is not just the responsibility of an English teacher," she wrote. "Students read to learn in science, social studies, mathematics, the arts, and every other discipline." The instructional lever she named is deeper professional learning in the Science of Reading, and the outcome she wants from it is a workforce change rather than a score change: "I would expect our educators to have a deeper and more consistent understanding of the Science of Reading and how that knowledge translates into effective classroom practice."

Executive functioning sits alongside literacy in the same plan, and Hutson describes it as a set of habits taught deliberately rather than absorbed by accident. Teachers told her students needed help with "organization, planning, time management, self-monitoring, persistence, and managing increasingly complex academic demands." Her framing: "We are not simply teaching students content; we are developing their capacity to manage their learning, apply strategies, persevere, and transfer skills to new situations."

There is a staffing number that bears on whether a K-12 push has hands behind it. Deer Lakes reported 153 classroom teachers to the state in 2025-26, up from 113 in 2014-15, and 176 professional personnel against 135 in the same span. That file counts positions the district reported as staffed, not positions it tried to fill, and the single largest year-over-year move in it came in 2023-24, so the climb is not a smooth one.

The district those plans have to fit

The student body they will be delivered to keeps getting smaller. Deer Lakes enrolled 1,699 students in 2025-26, the most recent school year in the state's published data, down from 1,988 in 2014-15. That is 289 fewer students, a drop of 14.5%, against a statewide decline of 2.9% over the same years. Enrollment has fallen in each of the last 10 published years.

The grade-by-grade picture for 2025-26 shows where the shrinkage is coming from. Deer Lakes enrolled 171 twelfth-graders that year, its largest grade, and 109 kindergarten students.

The enrollment file records the size of the decline and nothing about its cause. It does not separate families who moved away from students who enrolled somewhere else, and it does not distinguish a reporting change from a real one. Current-year counts inside the district will differ from these figures until Pennsylvania publishes the 2026-27 file.

What she says would count as failure

Hutson was sworn in on August 18, 2026, the day after Dr. Janell Logue-Belden's tenure ended, and the district's own administration page has carried her as Superintendent of Schools since. Logue-Belden's retirement notice describes a planned handoff. "I was officially sworn in on my first day as Superintendent of the Deer Lakes School District on August 18, 2026," Hutson wrote. "Prior to that, I had served as the district's Assistant Superintendent."

An internal promotion is usually described as a shortcut past the learning curve. Hutson named the risk that comes with it instead: "Knowing Deer Lakes gives me context, but I don't want familiarity to prevent me from seeing new possibilities."

She was also specific about what she would say if the reading numbers do not move. "I don't want to evaluate the success of this work solely by looking at a single assessment score," she wrote. Two years is the horizon she set, and she named the ugly version of it: "If the data have not moved in two years, I will not make excuses." She would tell the community, she wrote, "that we need to examine the work honestly."

The next PSSA file will carry the 2025-26 results, the last set of scores produced before she took the job. The one after that is the first she will own outright.

Enrollment and professional staff counts come from the Pennsylvania Department of Education public data. Test results come from the department's assessment reporting. Dr. Hutson answered questions in writing; quotations and descriptions of her priorities come from that response.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Deer Lakes - EdTribune PA - Pennsylvania Education Data

Deer Lakes Math Scores Climbed Four Years Running. Beth Hutson Is Starting With Reading.

The two subjects went in opposite directions

A K-12 problem, not an elementary one

The district those plans have to fit

What she says would count as failure