Chalkbeat

Indiana’s new diplomas emphasize flexibility for older students, but some requirements are controversial

2024-05-17T11:00:00+00:00

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A proposed redesign of Indiana’s high school graduation requirements to emphasize student choice and work-based learning has drawn concerns from educators who say it’s too much change too soon.

The plan would offer Indiana students beginning with the class of 2029 two diploma options, one of which resembles today’s graduation requirements but with less advanced math and social studies, and another that would require significantly more work experience.

Indiana education officials presented their plan to significantly redesign diplomas to the State Board of Education in March, touting the new emphasis on career training in high school as a first-in-the-nation move.

But some educators say the proposed requirements leave out key academic courses like world history and language in favor of more work experience, which they say may not be the best track for all students.

Preparing graduates to enter the workforce immediately after high school has been a priority for Indiana, especially as college-going rates stagnate. In addition to proposing new diplomas, the state recently rolled out Career Scholarship Accounts that give students some state funding for workforce training in high school, as well as career-focused graduation tracks that often allow students to start work while in school.

The state’s current Core 40 diploma requires students to take a set of foundational classes throughout grades 9-12 in English, math, science, social studies, and other courses. Students can also earn an honors designation for academics or technical skills.

Beginning with the Class of 2023, all students also have to undertake some college or career preparation.

At a State Board of Education meeting this month, many educators said it’s too soon to change the requirements again.

“If there’s any broad advice, it’s please slow down,” said John Hurley, a Career and Technical Education teacher at the South Spencer School Corporation. “While portions of the new diplomas are labeled flex, smaller schools will likely not be able to offer all options, and students will become stuck in only one track for graduation.”

What’s new about Indiana’s proposed diplomas?

Indiana is proposing two diploma tracks.

One is the GPS Diploma, which is a combination of the current Core 40 diploma and the graduation pathways — the additional college or career preparation requirements added starting with the class of 2023.

The other is the GPS Diploma Plus, which requires more work experience and more evidence of college readiness.

Students will make graduation plans in middle school to determine which courses they’ll take throughout high school.

Both diplomas begin with foundational requirements worth a total of 20 points in grades 9 and 10. These require students to demonstrate:

Academic mastery of English, math, and science by taking four credits of each subject.
Civic, financial, and digital literacy by taking U.S. history, government, personal finance, and computer science, as well as demonstrating skills in one of the above by participating in a robotics team, starting a student-led business, or working as a poll worker.
Work ethic by taking P.E., health, and other activities during or after school. Students must also meet three of six other criteria, such as having a 94% attendance rate, a 3.0 GPA at the end of grade 10, or two seasons of an activity.
Communication and collaboration by participating in four school activities like debate, Future Farmers of America, or student council, and one outside activity like volunteering or leading a church youth group.
College and career readiness by taking one readiness course and showing competency in three other ways, for example, taking a career aptitude test or dual credit course, or attending a job fair or a job shadowing opportunity.

Beginning in grade 11, students pursuing the regular GPS Diploma would need to earn 20 more points — similar to the Core 40 requirements — but would be able to choose which courses they take to do so.

Meanwhile, those earning a GPS Diploma Plus will take additional courses they need to complete a work-based learning opportunity and earn a credential.

The GPS Plus diploma has three levels. First is the Level 2 Plus diploma where the student must complete 75 hours of work-based learning. A level 3 diploma requires 650 hours of a state pre-apprenticeship, or modern youth apprenticeship. And a level 4 diploma requires 2,000 hours in a U.S. Department of Labor Registered Apprenticeship.

Diploma Plus students must also demonstrate postsecondary readiness by earning a professional credential, an International Baccalaureate diploma, or an AP Scholar with Distinction designation.

Some new requirements are controversial

Some educators say the heightened emphasis on work experience comes at the expense of academics and could hurt students aiming to attend out-of-state universities.

But not everyone agrees that the work experience requirements are too much.

At a March State Board of Education meeting announcing the new diplomas, Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said the lowest tier of work experience required by the GPS Diploma Plus could be completed in one semester with an internship taken during one period. Some people had pushed for that bar to be higher, she said.

At a marathon public comment session during the May board meeting, teachers said the regular GPS Diploma was not rigorous enough for their brightest students, who would feel compelled to meet the work experience required by the GPS Plus Diploma perhaps at the expense of academic courses.

“What we are missing is a huge middle,” said Aaron Warner, a teacher in Terre Haute. “To get that bottom diploma, your maximum math class is Algebra I. No world history required. That is not the direction we need to be going.”

A junior at Borden Junior-Senior High School, told the board that the choice of the two diplomas requires high school freshmen to make a choice that’s difficult to reverse.

“Between those two options, I would feel far too intimidated by the strenuous workload of the higher level courses and would end up restricting myself to the GPS diploma, which in turn would inhibit my chance of changing my mind once I get into my later years of high school,” the student said.

Educators also told the board that classes like world history and languages are missing from the requirements.

Finally, they took issue with the state changing graduation requirements yet again when the graduation pathways have only been in effect for one graduating class so far.

Hurley, the South Spencer schools teacher, also questioned how students’ hours outside school would be tracked, and how the new requirements would affect students who transfer to Indiana schools late in high school.

What are the next steps?

The department will host two public comment periods this year, as well as accept feedback through its online form, prior to a final adoption of the requirements this fall.

Schools can opt-in to begin offering the new diplomas as soon as the requirements are adopted by the state board of education. They’ll go into effect for all students beginning with the Class of 2029, or today’s seventh graders.

The state will continue to offer the federally mandated alternative diploma for students with severe disabilities.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Civics simulations help this teacher’s students connect to lessons about history and citizenship

2024-05-13T11:00:00+00:00

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In Adam Williamson’s social studies class, students learn American history “in the full light of day.”

That means everything the country has accomplished and its historical significance, along with its mistakes along the way, Williamson said.

As a 16-year veteran teacher and department chair at Mississinewa High School, a school around 70 miles northeast of Indianapolis, Williamson told Chalkbeat that the criticism that teachers face for teaching negative or divisive lessons about history is misdirected.

“Contrary to some prevailing opinions out there, teachers aren’t responsible for this attitude — we are often the first line of defense in trying to convince students that the United States is worth revering despite its past mistakes,” Williamson said. “I savor those moments when I can make a student stop to reflect and consider the perspectives of people who lived in the past and evaluate their decisions accordingly.”

And just as important as helping students understand the past is helping them grow into their roles as future adults, citizens, voters, and leaders. For this goal, Williamson said active learning is the key.

He leads students through mock legal proceedings, as well as simulated congressional hearings as part of the We the People curriculum and competition, and helps them understand how civics will affect their day-to-day lives.

“The fact that many of them are eager to begin adult life can provide leverage for engaging them in these sorts of participatory lessons,” he said. “I often say, “You’re going to be an adult in the eyes of the world soon, so you might want to know how this works.” That reality check tends to be effective for most students.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a social studies teacher?

I considered the career when I was in high school and then attempted a career in acting when I got to college. I quickly decided that there was too much drama in the drama department and reverted back to social studies education. Now, I have a difficult time thinking of something else that I would find more rewarding than teaching.

What’s a lesson that you like to teach that helps your students understand how civics is relevant to them?

I often teach civics using simulations. I particularly enjoy my mock trial and legislation simulations — I find that students begin to make direct connections to their own lives when they engage in those processes. Active learning pays dividends!

Mississinewa High School (Indiana) social studies teacher Adam Williamson

What are the biggest questions that your students have and have those changed over time?

In my history courses, I get a lot of questions about why the United States government has historically made a poor choice, or why the nation has made so many mistakes. The “information age” has presented us with new challenges regarding communication. Social media and internet video blogs have created echo chambers for criticism toward the United States government. Contrary to some prevailing opinions out there, teachers aren’t responsible for this attitude — we are often the first line of defense in trying to convince students that the United States is worth revering despite its past mistakes!

I see the teaching of United States history as an opportunity to invite my kids to confront American history in the full light of day, warts and all, and consider all that America has accomplished and all that it represents to humanity despite our missteps along the way. I savor those moments when I can make a student stop to reflect and consider the perspectives of people who lived in the past and evaluate their decisions accordingly.

What are some of the obstacles to engaging young people in voting and other civic duties? What helps?

Disengagement seems to be chronic, but that might be an illusion. It’s easy to focus on the cynicism toward government among Generation Z, but there are actually quite a few students who are engaged and/or want to be engaged in their communities.

Trying to make the rest of them understand that civic and political engagement is worthwhile isn’t an easy task. I find that running students through the processes of civic and political life demystifies things for them. Again, active learning is key. The fact that many of them are eager to begin adult life can provide leverage for engaging them in these sorts of participatory lessons. I often say, “You’re going to be an adult in the eyes of the world soon, so you might want to know how this works.” That reality check tends to be effective for most students.

Tell us about your work with We the People and the impact it has on your students.

We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution is, without a doubt, the most rewarding and effective curriculum I’ve ever used. I underwent training for the program at the annual summer institute as soon as I finished student teaching and soon after began teaching it at my first job in middle school.

The students thrived under the curriculum. It was so encouraging to see those young people diving into complex topics and engaging in dialogue about them with respected adults! Soon after, I was moved to our high school to pilot the program there and coordinate the program across the district. Since that time, we’ve had very successful We the People teams at all three levels and I’ve been able to enjoy watching students of all ages broaden their minds and consider their role in our body politic.

Nearly every student who has taken the We the People course with me has personally reflected on how thankful they were that they took part. That is very fulfilling for a teacher to hear. A few of those students have moved on to law school and public service, and I find it extremely satisfying to know that I played some part in those students’ journeys.

How do you approach news events or community happenings in your classroom?

I encourage students to stay in touch with current events by following their favorite news source, and I often invite students to ask questions about what’s going on in the country and in the world. There’s usually a connection to something we’re discussing in class, whether I’m teaching history or civics. Topical conversations pop up regularly as a result.

I also begin each semester by establishing norms for discussion and debate, and these often go a long way toward keeping the conversation civil and on-topic. When students make their own norms for discussion, they are not only invested in sticking to those norms, but they keep each other accountable to them.

Perhaps most importantly, I encourage students to be aware of the source of their information, particularly in regard to media bias and information reliability. We talk about how to determine trustworthy information sources and how to determine bias.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I was a fairly conscientious student in high school. I cared about my grades, and I embraced the practicality of being a rule-follower. When I became a public school teacher I struggled to confront students who didn’t share those same values. It took some adjustment to understand the perspectives of students who intentionally deviated from school rules and norms and those who didn’t value academic success. I’m thankful for colleagues who helped me understand those perspectives and build rapport with those students.

In high school, I was very involved in the arts. Since I began teaching I’ve done everything I can to support those programs, from attending performances and donating to their funds to encouraging students to take that leap and express themselves through art, music, and dramatic performance.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

Before you speak, ask yourself: “Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said now? Does it need to be said by me?” Asking myself those three questions has, on more than one occasion, helped me avoid more trouble than I bargained for.

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

It’s a toss-up between “Teaching with Love and Logic” by Jim Fay and David Funk and “Help for Billy” by Heather Forbes.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers confront Indiana education officials over literacy license requirements

2024-05-08T19:28:01+00:00

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A new Indiana law requiring some teachers to learn about teaching literacy in order to renew their licenses drew hours of criticism from educators at Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting.

State lawmakers this year expanded a requirement that new teachers earn a literacy endorsement to include all elementary and special education teachers who are renewing their licenses. It was part of their effort to address declining literacy scores by implementing science of reading practices.

Under the law, teachers renewing their licenses must earn an Early Literacy Endorsement by 2027. They can do so through a third-party professional development program that’s free through 2025. They will also receive a $1,200 stipend for completing this training.

This new requirement wasn’t on the state board’s agenda Wednesday. But in extended public comments, elementary and special education teachers said the new 80-hour Keys to Literacy training and PRAXIS exam were hardships, especially during the summer, when many teachers teach summer school, work second jobs, or take planned vacations. Moreover, the free courses are full, some said.

“I’m teaching summer school so I can afford to live near my place of work,” said Maya Simon, a special education teacher in Indianapolis. “Your free training feels like a slap in the face to someone who has earned an [associate of arts degree], a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a license in special education.”

Teachers also argued that the requirement is too broad. Elementary teachers of subjects like math and music said the training was irrelevant to their work, and that their time could be better spent on professional development related to their subject areas. They pointed out that they were taking away training spots from reading teachers who actually needed them.

Addressing the dozens of gathered teachers prior to the meeting’s public comment period, Secretary of Education Katie Jenner reiterated concerns about reading scores in Indiana, which have been in decline for more than a decade.

In conjunction with the new requirements for teachers, Indiana passed stricter requirements this year on holding back third graders who don’t demonstrate key reading skills.

Representatives from the nonprofit advocacy groups Stand for Children and the Institute for Quality Education, meanwhile, urged the board Wednesday to keep the literacy requirements intact, saying rigorous training is necessary to teach reading.

Jenner said almost 12,000 teachers signed up for the Keys to Literacy training in three weeks, and that the state is adding cohorts.

“I saw some people joking that it’s harder to get signed up for this than to get Taylor Swift tickets,” she said.

She said the state board was willing to hear solutions and ideas.

Teachers said the state should provide flexibility for teachers to meet the literacy requirement, and account for teacher expertise and professional development already offered at schools. They also urged board members to expand early learning opportunities, including lowering the mandated age of school entry from 7 to 5.

Guidance from the state education department says teachers who don’t meet the literacy requirement by 2027 may be eligible for a grace period, though details about that flexibility haven’t been finalized.

“No other profession is going to be okay with being told, not only do you have to do this to keep your license, but you have to do it outside your contracted hours,” said Cory Freihaut, a special education teacher who works three jobs. “I understand we’re getting a stipend, but … that’s like $15 an hour. I make more than that at the pizza shop I do on the weekends.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana election results: Pike Township schools referendum passes

2024-05-08T14:49:05+00:00

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Updated: 10:45a.m. May 8

Voters gave their approval for Pike Township schools to raise property taxes in order to fund district operations and programs that had relied on federal COVID relief funding.

With the measure passing, the district will become the first to share some of its property tax revenue with eligible charter schools as mandated by a 2023 state law.

Unofficial results as of 10 p.m. Tuesday in Marion County show around 59% of voters approving the Pike tax referendum. The vote tally was 5,417 in favor and 3,799 against, with 100% of county vote centers reporting.

Three other districts in Indiana had tax referendums on the ballot during Tuesday’s primary election.

According to unofficial results, around 52% of voters approved a referendum from Fremont Community Schools, with a vote tally of 935 to 874 as of Wednesday morning.

And around 55% of voters approved a referendum from Brown County Schools 2,122 to 1,754.

Meanwhile, around 83% of voters rejected a referendum from Blue River Valley Schools in Henry County. The vote tally was 884 to 179 as of 9:45 p.m. Tuesday.

Districts can seek ballot measures to raise tax revenue to fund operations and construction, as well as school safety. Each district with a referendum this year hoped to use at least some of the dollars to attract and retain staff, as well as fund programs, and more.

The referendums need a simple majority to pass.

We’ll keep updating this story with results as they become available.

Metropolitan School District of Pike Township

Property tax rate: $0.24 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $14.5 million

If approved, the district could have to share some funds with eligible charter schools.

Unofficial results:

Yes: 58.8%

No: 41.2%

Blue River Valley Schools

Property tax rate: $0.19 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $359,594

Unofficial results:

Yes: 16.8%

No: 83.2%

Brown County Schools

Property tax rate: $0.10 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $1,879,051

Unofficial results:

Yes: 54.7%

No: 45.3%

Fremont Community Schools

Property tax rate: $0.15 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $2,384,719

Unofficial results:

Yes: 51.7%

No: 48.3%

Correction: May 7, 2024: A previous version of this story gave an incorrect figure for the annual revenue that Brown County schools’ referendum would raise. It would raise around $1.9 million.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Voter guide: 4 Indiana districts are asking voters for funding in the May primary election

2024-05-01T19:34:29+00:00

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This voter guide was updated May 1 to include Fremont Community Schools’ referendum.

This May, four Indiana school districts will ask voters to approve funding to do things like raise teacher pay, continue programs supported by pandemic relief that will soon expire, and improve school safety.

These ballot measures seeking tax revenue will be on the primary election ballots on May 7 in Blue River Valley Schools, Brown County Schools, Fremont Community Schools, and the Metropolitan School District of Pike Township.

School districts can seek voter approval for referendums to pay for operating costs, as well as construction and safety expenses. They need a simple majority to pass.

The ballot language shows the percentage that school property taxes would increase from the base amount going to schools, not the percentage that property taxes overall would increase.

Additionally, a law enacted last year requires school districts in Marion, St. Joseph, Vanderburg, and Lake counties to share revenue from ballot measures for operating costs with charter schools. That law applies to one district on May 7, Pike Township, which is the first district in Marion County to hold a referendum since this law went into effect.

Here’s what to know about each district’s referendum:

Pike wants to fund pandemic programs, attract teachers

Rate: $0.24 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $14.5 million

For the first time, Pike Township is asking voters to help fund operations. The tax rate would be 24 cents per $100 of net assessed value for eight years.

The ballot measure would fund three key areas: continuing programs and staffing added since the pandemic, attracting and retaining teachers, and school safety and security.

Out of the total funding, $4.5 million would continue programming and keep staff who are supported by federal COVID relief.

The funding would cover everything from 1:1 computing devices and academic interventionists to social workers and a new curriculum to help students cope with traumas outside the classroom. It would support salaries and benefits for nearly 60 staffers.

“The funds are going away, but the needs are still very much there,” said Pike Superintendent Larry Young said.

Another $9 million would help Pike Township offer competitive salaries and attract top educators to the district, Young said. The funding would cover instructional staff, but also custodians and secretaries.

Finally, an estimated $1 million would pay for additional school resource officers and safety personnel to the district, although Young said there’s not a specific number. It would also fund security upgrades, including a security system that multiple people can walk through at once.

Pike must share referendum funds with charter schools that enroll a student living in the district and opt in.

However, 15 charters are seeking to receive money from Pike’s referendum, according to school board documents. If they ultimately do, the schools collectively will receive more than $412,000 annually of the estimated $14.5 million. The largest amounts would go to Indiana Math and Science Academy (roughly $81,000) and Herron Charter (roughly $71,000).

The average assessed value for a homeowner in the school district is $237,200, which means the referendum’s average tax increase would be $295.20 annually.

Property owners can also use this calculator on the Pike Township Schools website to see how much their taxes would change if the ballot measure passes.

Reviving career education, theater in Brown County Schools

Rate: $0.10 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $1,879,051

Brown County schools is seeking a renewal of its 2016 operating referendum, but at a slightly higher rate than before — 10 cents per $100 of assessed property value for eight years, rather than eight cents.

The referendum would generate around $1.9 million in annual revenue for the district, with the bulk of the funding earmarked for salaries, benefits, and programs, according to the district’s spending plan. Around $188,000 will be set aside for programming at a Career Resource Center.

One of the largest expenditures — around $650,000 — is a plan to increase teacher salaries by $5,000 in order to make the district compensation more competitive, according to a district presentation. Their salaries in Brown County schools start at just over $40,000 a year.

Another $255,000 is earmarked for a 5% pay bump for non-certified staff to increase retention, and $356,000 would go to sustaining current and future salary levels.

The remaining $423,000 would fund new positions in special education, career and technical education, arts, and work-based learning. Some of this funding will allow Brown County schools to reinstate career and technical education classes, as well as theater at Brown County High School.

The district enrolled around 1,500 students in 2024 — a drop of over 300 students since 2018. A presentation from the district says that the enrollment drop has meant a loss of $2.3 million in funding, but that costs don’t necessarily decrease when the number of students decreases.

Brown County voters rejected the district’s most recent operating referendum proposal in 2022.

Blue River Valley seeks increase in teacher pay

Property tax rate: $0.19 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $359,594

Blue River Valley Schools, which serves a portion of Henry County, plans to make its teacher pay more competitive if the first ballot measure for operating costs it’s ever put to voters gets approved.

Declining student enrollment and a state-mandated limit on property tax revenue has created a financial strain on the district — particularly in its quest to attract and retain high-quality teachers, the district said in a presentation to voters. Recent enrollment figures from Superintendent Trend McCormick indicate about 570 students, compared to the nearly 700 students it had in 2018-19.

Meanwhile, the $40,000 starting salary for teachers is the lowest among school districts in Henry County and neighboring Wayne County, according to the district.

The district’s average salary of $49,995 is also below the state’s average of $58,531 for 2023.

The district plans to use the additional revenue to increase pay for its roughly 41 teachers by at least $5,000 over two years; it would increase starting salaries to $45,000, McCormick said. The district hopes to offer a $2,500 raise in the fall of 2025 and another $2,500 raise in 2026.

The referendum would be an annual tax increase of $111.27 for a property valued at $138,100, the average residential value for homes in the district, according to the district’s referendum calculator.

Fremont Schools want to attract, retain teachers

Rate: $0.15 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $2,384,719

After voters narrowly rejected the district’s attempt to renew its referendum in 2023, the Fremont Community Schools in Steuben County is trying again with a lower rate.

The district received enough signatures from voters to hold another referendum without the waiting period required by Indiana law.

Due to the district’s debt reduction efforts, many voters may actually see a decrease in their property taxes earmarked for schools, said Superintendent William Stitt, who added that his own taxes would decrease by $60 annually.

The bulk of the 2024 referendum — around $1.66 million — is earmarked for retaining and attracting teachers and staff.

That’s the district’s top priority, Stitt said. While many districts have struggled with labor shortages, Stitt said Fremont schools started the last two years with every position, from teachers to bus drivers, filled.

Without those funds, teachers may face layoffs leading to larger class sizes, according to the district’s referendum materials. Science, special education, and English as a second language positions would be at risk, and programs for at-risk students and gifted and talented students would be reduced.

“We want to keep those people, and that means being competitive and having competitive salaries,” Stitt said.

The district enrolls just under 1,000 students and has 158 teachers and staff, according to its website.

Referendum funds will also help the district maintain its after-school and extracurricular programs, and allow schools to hire new teachers.

Approximately $424,000 will go to academic programming, while the remaining $300,000 is needed to enhance school security according to the district’s spending plan and other materials.

Stitt said this may include an emergency alert system for teachers and staff that does not depend on cell service, which can be spotty in Fremont, he said.

Correction May 7, 2024: A previous version of this story gave an incorrect figure for the annual revenue that Brown County schools’ referendum would raise. It would raise around $1.9 million.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Wayne Township school’s International Festival celebrates newcomer students and diversity

2024-05-06T15:48:54+00:00

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An Indianapolis middle school is celebrating its growing population of newcomer students with its 11th annual International Festival.

Like other schools throughout Indiana, the Lynhurst 7th and 8th Grade Center in Wayne Township schools has seen a rise in the number of immigrant students it serves this year. Indiana has welcomed over 7,000 new immigrant students this year — a jump from the 5,000 students who arrived last year.

The school’s International Festival highlights the countries that these students are from while introducing all students to international cultures. For many students, Wayne schools is their first home district since coming to the U.S., and it’s important to make them feel welcome, said Alesha McCall, a Language Assistance Program (LAP) teacher who works with English learner students and is running the festival this year.

“We have grown in our newcomer population and we need to celebrate that,” said McCall.

The May 15 festival, open to the public, is part fun and games for students, and part information and resources for their families. Tickets are $2 per person or $5 per family.

Students compete in a soccer tournament and play chess and Azul, a board game based on Portuguese tiles. And community groups perform Bollywood dancing, salsa dancing, and line dancing.

The rise in newcomer students is reflected in another trend. This year, just over one quarter of the school’s students are English learners — up from around 23% last school year and around 16% in 2021-2022, according to Indiana Department of Education data. In Wayne schools overall, around 24% of students are English learners this year, up from 21% last year.

Statewide, immigrant students make up around 1% of all Indiana students, and that number has basically remained constant since 2020, according to education department data.

In her first year as a LAP teacher in 2021-22, McCall said she had fewer than 10 English learner students who tested at the lowest level of English proficiency. This year, she has more than 30, she said.

The festival is also evolving. This year, a seventh grade student approached McCall about creating and operating a booth about Haiti in order to represent her home country. It might be the festival’s first time with a booth dedicated to Haiti, McCall said.

“The purpose is to bring our community together and celebrate diversity,” McCall said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana teachers union endorses former state schools chief Jennifer McCormick for governor

2024-04-24T20:05:03+00:00

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Indiana’s largest teachers union on Wednesday endorsed former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick for governor, casting her as an experienced voice against policies that have defunded and deprofessionalized public education in the state.

McCormick is the presumptive Democratic nominee preparing to face off against one of six Republican candidates — as well as Libertarian Donald Rainwater — in the November election.

The timing of the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) announcement is notable, because it comes a day after the last scheduled debate for gubernatorial hopefuls in the GOP primary race, and roughly two weeks before the May 7 primary elections. The union did not endorse a gubernatorial candidate in 2020.

McCormick’s emphasis on funding for traditional public education differentiates her from the field of Republican candidates, who champion school choice policies like universal vouchers and the potential expansion of Education Savings Accounts next year. She faces an uphill battle in Indiana, which has been led by Republican governors since 2005. If elected, she would need to work with the Republican supermajority in both chambers of the legislature.

But speaking at a Wednesday media event with the union’s political arm, the Indiana Political Action Committee for Education, McCormick said she would lead with civility and common sense, rather than “chaos and extremism that helps no one.”

Among her priorities, she said she would challenge lawmakers’ moves to divert more money from public schools and oppose depictions of public education as a boogeyman.

“We have 90% of our families at a time of choice that … choose public education, but the funding does not,” McCormick said. “It is the only system that is inclusive, that allows anybody who walks through that door to get educated, and embraces everyone, regardless of color, socioeconomics, who they love, who their parents are married to, and how they identify.”

McCormick is a former teacher, principal, and district superintendent, who in 2016 ran and was elected as a Republican for the state’s top education job against Democratic incumbent Glenda Ritz.

McCormick was the last elected superintendent of public instruction before the office was changed to an appointed one in 2021. That year, she broke with Republicans over issues like standardized testing, and later she announced that she had switched her political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

She is also endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers Indiana.

On Wednesday, she also said that more teachers are leaving the profession because of increasing expectations for them and attacks on what and how they teach. It would be better, she said, to listen to teachers about what would help improve educational attainment.

“They change our curriculum, our instruction, and assessment, and it’s not just to prepare us for a new world, it’s to make trend data confusing so that it makes public education look as bad as it can look,” McCormick said. “We’ve reinvented our high schools three times in the last five years … it causes chaos.”

Speaking in support of McCormick, teacher Stacy Kurdelak said lawmakers’ moves over the years have led to fewer collective bargaining protections for teachers, less funding for schools, and reduced resources for students.

“I have watched positions not be filled when teachers leave, slowly shrinking our staff, leaving my students in our community with less,” she said. “We can do better.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

New ‘intellectual diversity’ law could have major effects on Indiana teacher training

2024-04-24T11:00:00+00:00

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In a Ball State classroom on a recent Tuesday, Professor Sheron Fraser-Burgess told her class to brace themselves for the “really controversial” argument from their reading:

“There’s no such thing as reverse ‘-ism.’ Women can be just as prejudiced as men, but can’t be as sexist, because they don’t have the power.”

Then she invited the class to weigh in.

Her students were quick to disagree with that argument and with each other, as well as Fraser-Burgess, who leaned back against a desk and listened.

She said it’s critical to her that her students — potential future teachers — learn about prejudice, discrimination, racism, sexism, and other “isms,” before they step into their own classrooms and assume power over others. That power can turn personal prejudice into an “ism” they perpetuate, she told them.

But some fear a new Indiana law that drastically alters universities’ diversity policies could have a chilling effect on teacher prep classes like Fraser-Burgess’ multicultural education course. The result could be that preservice teachers are less prepared to use best practices, challenge their own assumptions, and work with students who come from a variety of backgrounds through practices like culturally responsive teaching, these critics say.

That’s not the intent of the new law, said Sen. Spencer Deery, a Republican and the architect of the statute, which compels universities to stress “intellectual diversity” alongside cultural diversity. It requires professors to present a variety of viewpoints in their curriculum, and imposes consequences for not doing so, including demotion and denial of tenure.

It also creates a complaint procedure for students and staff to report faculty who bring unrelated politics into the classroom to their universities. To a certain extent, that aspect of the law resembles a public web portal set up by state Attorney General Todd Rokita for parents to submit complaints about how schools address race, gender, and political ideology.

Pushing back on concerns that the law could shrink the pool of future educators, Deery said it could instead encourage students who currently don’t feel welcome on college campuses — namely, conservative students — to enroll.

“If we don’t recognize that some Hoosiers are not going into higher ed because they don’t feel like someone from their background is going to be respected, or they’re going to be exposed only to views of some paradigms, that’s a problem,” Deery said.

What does the new ‘intellectual diversity’ law do?

Universities are currently in the process of implementing the law known as SEA 202, which Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law in March.

During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers heard hours of testimony in opposition to SEA 202 from faculty and students who said it represented an overreach into university classrooms, and could force professors to teach flawed information.

They drew comparisons to similar laws on the books in Florida targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and said it could lead to brain drain in the state as faculty leave or decline jobs in Indiana, accept positions elsewhere, and take their grant funding with them.

This could have an outsize effect on faculty of color, who are often tasked with leading diversity initiatives, and already face more complaints from students about what and how they teach, said Russ Skiba, an IU professor who has led opposition to 202.

In teacher training programs, this could create a snowball effect on preservice teachers and their future students, said Alexander Cuenca, an IU professor who has written about the barriers facing teacher candidates of color.

“If students can’t see themselves in the classroom, if we’re scared to mention Black perspectives in social studies, why would they go into teaching social studies?” he said.

But Deery, who spent a decade working at Purdue University, said he wrote the bill after seeing data that conservatives were losing trust in higher education.

A 2023 survey of free speech on Indiana campuses by the state Commission on Higher Education found that 72% of students believed that politically liberal students were free to express their views on campus, compared to 55% who said conservative students could do the same. Overall, 78% of survey respondents said that generally, students are free to express their opinions at their universities.

Deery has also cited data showing that conservative students feel less welcome on campuses than other students think they might feel. This data was part of the free speech survey, but has not been released publicly, Deery said. The commission was not able to make this data available to Chalkbeat by deadline.

Deery said 202 doesn’t prescribe or prohibit specific curriculum, but instead requires that professors present the full spectrum of viewpoints that exist within their discipline.

It’s up to university boards and departments to decide how to implement that — and that could mean some curriculum is cut while curriculum from underrepresented viewpoints is added, he said. When it comes to teaching diversity, Deery said he believes that should include cultural, racial, and ideological diversity.

“It’s not about making students feel comfortable, but feel respected,” he said. “College should make you uncomfortable. But that doesn’t give you license to ignore some perspectives.”

How the law affects teacher preparation

As the discussion of sexism went on in Fraser-Burgess’ class, one student pointed out the growing number of female band directors as a sign of more equality in the industry. Another countered that someone should ask those directors about the sexism they’ve experienced in their careers.

One recalled that a male kindergarten teacher faced distrust from parents as an example of how sexism can affect men.

The discussion zeroed in on the pressure boys and young men face to be stoic and successful. It continued until the final moments of the class.

Fraser-Burgess said she aims to cultivate an environment where students feel heard and know they won’t face retaliation for disagreeing with her.

The objective of her course is to help preservice teachers understand how bias can emerge in education, and how students’ backgrounds may affect their school experience.

What concerns her most about the new law is the reporting mechanism that would allow students who feel uncomfortable confronting these topics to complain about her class to the university.

Under the law, universities would need to establish a procedure allowing students and staff to complain about faculty who have not fostered free inquiry and intellectual diversity, who don’t expose students to a variety of political and ideological frameworks, or who bring politics unrelated to their discipline into the classroom. These complaints would be referred to supervisors and human resources departments for consideration in tenure promotion decisions.

“I’m an African American teacher telling them they need to disavow racism to be a public school teacher. It can come across with much more intensity, it may seem I’m being political or ideological,” she said.

If these complaints chill classroom discussion, it would mean future teachers have less exposure to teaching practices that are good for all students, she said.

“If we’re not fostering an ability to live with others and appreciate how they contribute to our society, to question our own experience as right or the default, we’re weakening our democracy, which is based on difference,” she said.

Deery said colleges already have a number of ways for students to report complaints about professors, and that the reporting mechanism of 202 only standardizes the process. Deery also said he trusts schools to filter out bogus complaints.

But some say the threat of complaints is enough to chill speech. And preservice teachers are learning as much from observing their professors as they are from the course content, said Cuenca, the IU professor.

“They’re in front of me, watching me teach,” Cuenca said. “If it influences the way I am able to speak, it’s going to impact how they’re going to be able to do it.”

What culturally responsive teaching looks like in practice

In recent years, teachers in Indiana and nationwide have reported a hesitancy to approach topics about race and diversity in class amid attempts to ban such lessons.

But teachers say learning culturally responsive teaching — or connecting students’ backgrounds and experiences to the classroom — is still an important tool.

For one, it helps educators build relationships with students and their families, said Cynthia Diaz, a teacher at Enlace Academy, an Indianapolis charter school where more than 80% of families speak a language other than English at home.

For example, when her students read “When Stars are Scattered,” the story of Somali refugees resonated with many of them, Diaz said. But the book also offered an opportunity to invite families to discuss the book and their own stories of immigrating to the U.S., both with their students at home and at a school event.

Having an awareness of their students’ cultures, backgrounds, and experiences also allows teachers to pause and challenge their own understanding, Diaz said.

“It’s the ability to be reflective. When you’re in a silo, you think ‘this is what I was taught, what school was like for me, so this is what school should be like.’” Diaz said. “In my opinion, it should be about what school should look like for the students in front of you.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Inside a unique public microschool in Indianapolis

2024-04-16T10:45:00+00:00

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On the bottom floor of Cornerstone Lutheran Church in Indianapolis on a recent Friday, all of the Purdue Polytechnic High School Lab School students gathered in a circle to clear their heads.

The entire school is just about 20 students — ninth and 10th graders who came to the new microschool from the charter network’s Englewood campus just a five-minute walk away.

As a public program, the Lab School is unique among the dozens of loosely defined microschools around Indiana, which are usually very small private schools. But like the other models, it emphasizes customized education for students — something Indiana lawmakers have hinted at funding.

Each Lab School student chose to attend after a recommendation from PPHS teachers who felt they’d do better in a small environment that could offer more personalized curriculum and social-emotional support, like the community circle time on Fridays. There, students shared how they felt listening to calming music after a week that included PSAT testing.

“It makes me feel like my problems are smaller,” one student said.

The Lab School opened in the fall of 2023 with a model that school leaders describe as part one-room schoolhouse, part all-day advisory period.

The school has access to the resources of the Purdue Polytechnic charter network when it comes to administration, extracurriculars, and food services.

PPHS CEO Keeanna Warren said it was important to PPHS leadership to provide a small, personalized environment for students who need it, especially as a tuition-free public charter school.

“If we want to see academic changes, if we want to support all students, we have to try new things and be responsive to what families and communities are saying they want,” Warren said.

Students at the Lab School work on personalized learning plans at their own pace, which allows for acceleration, Warren said. But they often gather in groups studying the same subjects — half the school might work on biology, while the other half studies algebra, for example.

While some students received a recommendation from PPHS teachers to attend the Lab School, many also came due to word of mouth.

When she pictured high school, ninth grader Emagine Thompson said she thought she’d go through the whole day without breaks. Instead, she said she found flexibility at the Lab School, which has allowed her to participate in job shadowing.

Jeff Edge, one of the school’s two all-purpose coaches, says the flexibility is purposeful. When one of his students needs a course or work experience, he can find ways for them to meet the requirement in the community.

“In a big public system, you’re a cog in the machine,” he said of his decade in teaching.

There’s also time in the day for things like podcasting and volunteering in the church’s mother’s pantry, said Tamika Riggs, the school’s other coach.

During one recent community-led session, students produced poems exploring the impact of their family background on their identity — and then read them aloud to the school, Riggs said.

“A student might not feel comfortable doing that in a class of 2,000,” Riggs said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Letting vouchers fund Indiana microschools could spur innovation, but also a fight for cash

2024-04-16T11:00:00+00:00

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Indianapolis mom Alicia Smith home-schools her three children, working with another parent to organize field trips, virtual meet-ups, and community service projects.

Meanwhile, at Streams of Hope school in Fort Wayne, 35 students are taught in a church by three teachers for $5,000 a year in tuition.

And around 20 students from Purdue Polytechnic High School work on individualized lesson plans in an Indianapolis church basement.

These approaches to education are very different. But they can all be considered “microschools,” a loosely defined and regulated category of schooling that is growing in Indiana. They’re often described as a midway option between home school and traditional school. And in the case of private microschools, they could be eligible for vouchers in the near future.

Some state lawmakers say that next year, they’ll support a push to let all parents use Education Scholarship Accounts — established in 2021 for students with disabilities — to purchase classes, tutoring services, and extracurriculars from a variety of providers.

This could lead to more state funding flowing toward the two most common kinds of microschools: Very small private schools and collectives of students educated at home. Both prioritize small class sizes and flexibility for student learning.

Indeed, as more states have expanded ESA programs to all students, they’ve seen a boom in microschooling.

“If we really want to make a difference, we need to give parents more than two choices,” said Indiana Treasurer Daniel Elliott earlier this year. “We need to give them the option to create their child’s unique educational pathway.”

But such an expansion would also raise concerns about academic accountability for the constellation of programs, which can be difficult to track in detail. Home-schooling families, too, may be divided by the question of whether to accept some government regulation in exchange for financial assistance.

And the use of the term “microschool” could proliferate even as clear definitions of it prove elusive.

Given Indiana’s robust school choice landscape that already includes nearly universal private school vouchers, a move to expand scholarship accounts to cover microschooling could draw opposition from private school as well as public school advocates over funding.

“With the use of public funds, shouldn’t there be some role — whether that’s data, outcomes, test scores — to make sure this was operating as it was designed to?” said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank.

Regulations might ‘defeat the purpose’ of microschools

Microschooling grew during the pandemic, when families tried out pods, online, and hybrid learning and found these models to be beneficial to safety and mental health, said Ben DeGrow, a senior policy director of education choice for ExcelinEd, an education nonprofit.

Indiana has gone from just a handful of these schools a few years ago to around 45 microschools operated by tutoring organizations, private schools, and others, said Jill Haskins, Indiana field coordinator for the National Microschooling Center. The center has identified Indiana as a priority state for expansion.

It’s not clear how many Hoosier students participate in microschools, which don’t have a definition in state code, and are purposefully broadly defined by advocacy organizations.

Haskins is also the CEO of Streams of Hope, a private, nonaccredited microschool in Fort Wayne with 35 full-time students and three teachers.

The school charges around $5,000 in full-time tuition, but it also offers a menu of other services for home-schooled and ESA students.

Home-schooled students can participate in per-credit classes and enrichment activities, while their parents remain responsible for grades and diplomas, Haskins said. Starting next year, the school will add a two-day hybrid program for home-schooled students.

Streams of Hope can also accept Education Scholarship Account students as a business entity, but not as a school. That’s an important distinction under the provisions of Indiana’s ESA law, which requires schools to be accredited to accept the funds.

One student currently uses the accounts to pay for the school’s tuition and enrollment fees, Haskins said, and next year, an additional four plan to use the accounts.

The requirements for each set of students — full-time, home school, or ESA — differs, but for each, Haskins said the Streams of Hope model can provide flexibility.

As Indiana considers expanding the ESA program to all students, Haskins said the Streams of Hope would consider participating as a school, if the accompanying regulations weren’t too onerous. A testing requirement might be acceptable, she said.

Currently, the school does not participate in state testing, and has been able to offer students flexible paths to graduation, Haskins said.

“The beautiful thing about microschools is that we approach education differently, to have regulation put on us would defeat the purpose,” Haskins said.

Vouchers and microschooling: Stackable or an awkward match?

Indiana lawmakers briefly discussed this year a proposal to combine the state’s three voucher tracks into one program and give parents funding directly to pay for classes and services, whether it’s a private school math class or lessons with a professional musician.

Though it was shelved, author Sen. Ryan Mishler expects the proposal to return next year, when lawmakers craft the biennial state budget.

In other states, this kind of universal ESA program has opened the doors for more microschooling as small groups of families pool resources to purchase curriculum, or enroll in a hybrid school option.

In the latter example, students might learn at home primarily from their parents, but take one or two courses from a microschool, an online program, or even a public or private school. ESA accounts could fund the per-credit costs of these classes. This is already allowed for students with disabilities under Indiana ESA law.

But Indiana has the well-established Choice Scholarship program that pays for tuition at private schools. After the state expanded eligibility for the scholarships last year, participation in the voucher program soared by about 30% to a record high of over 69,000 students.

In contrast, just 169 students participated in Indiana’s ESA program. And it’s not clear from the available data what educational setting they chose to use the dollars in, according to the Indiana Treasurer’s Office. Nationally, while most families used an ESA account like a voucher, around 10-15% opted for a custom option, noted DeGrow of ExcelinEd.

Since Indiana lawmakers have favored incremental expansion of voucher eligibility over the last decade, it’s unlikely that they would eliminate the voucher program in favor of a new, universal ESA, said Betsy Wiley, President and CEO of the Institute for Quality Education, an Indianapolis-based school choice advocacy organization.

Wiley said the institute would support creating a universal ESA program to function as a stackable fund on top of Choice Scholarships: The latter would pay for tuition and fees, while the former could cover tutoring, therapies, and other costs.

If Indiana does opt to merge the programs, the state will likely continue to require voucher students to take state tests for accountability purposes. That could prompt a range of responses among home-schoolers and microschoolers.

It could also create confusion for students using the funds for single courses or nonacademic expenses like transportation, for home-schooled students who don’t expect to take state tests, and for school providers who would have to decide whether to accept the regulation that comes with the funding.

Microschools are not quite home school

Both home-schoolers and microschoolers use terms like pods and co-ops. But the key distinction is that home schools are nonpublic, nonaccredited schools with less than one employee, said Kylene Varner of the Indiana Association of Home Educators.

Home-schoolers were initially included in this year’s bill to create a universal ESA in Indiana, but lawmakers later cut them out of the proposal at the urging of home school advocates. While they’re eligible to receive ESA’s under existing Indiana law, they are no longer legally considered home-schoolers.

In states like Florida and Arizona that offer universal ESAs, home-schoolers are allowed to participate, but are similarly no longer considered home-schoolers.

This is because traditional home-schooling families don’t want government funds or intervention in their children’s education, said Wiley of the Institute for Quality Education. But an ESA may appeal to parents interested in a hybrid schooling model.

Microschools need to be clear about who they serve, and parents must understand what laws they will be subject to if they enroll in a microschool, Varner said. That could include testing, responsibility for grading and transcripts, Department of Child Services procedures, and more.

Smith, the Indianapolis mom who home-schools her children, said she’s worked with another friend to create something that’s become a microschool, she said.

She has considered whether she would use an ESA if it were to become available, but is wary of the potential strings attached. Furthermore, taking the money might mean less for children who have disabilities, she said.

Better, Smith said, for her and her friend to pool their talents and resources and provide the education that’s best for their children.

“There is a bigger opportunity here to educate children that don’t fit inside the mold,” Smith said. “And you shouldn’t have to get to a breaking point. I don’t think there should be a prerequisite for teaching you the way you learn best.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

New statewide testing is coming for some Indiana babies and toddlers

2024-04-10T20:11:27+00:00

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More Indiana babies and toddlers may soon participate in state testing as education officials seek to assess whether children are ready for kindergarten.

The Indiana Department of Education announced Wednesday that it would expand access to two early learning assessments in an effort to measure students’ skills before kindergarten and provide interventions when necessary.

Beginning this year, all schools and public and private early learning providers will be invited to administer the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment and the Indiana Student Performance of Readiness and Observation of Understanding Tool, or ISPROUT.

The purpose of the tests is not just to evaluate young children’s skills, but to provide support for those who might need intervention “when the windows of opportunity are wide open,” said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment is given once in the first six weeks of kindergarten, and will form the basis of the Kindergarten Readiness metric on the Indiana GPS Dashboard, a tool that compiles various statistics about school and student performance. That metric has been marked as “coming soon” since the dashboard launched last year.

The ISPROUT, meanwhile, can be given to preschoolers ages 3-5 or babies and toddlers from birth to age 2. It’s already administered as part of federally required reporting for children ages 3-5 who have disabilities.

Servizzi said that while some may balk at the idea of testing for babies and toddlers, the ISPROUT assessment is based heavily on educator observations. And for older preschoolers, the test measures skills through ongoing observations of a child’s typical daily routine, according to a State Board of Education presentation Wednesday.

The assessments will be provided at no cost to the providers, and initially only on an opt-in basis, said Kelli Servizzi, director of kindergarten readiness at the state department of education.

Schools and providers can opt in to administer both tests to kindergarteners and preschool students in May 2024. For younger children, the assessment will be available in October 2024.

Kindergarten Readiness Assessment data will be available on the dashboard in early 2025, Servizzi said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Should students have cell phones in class? Indiana just said no — with a few exceptions.

2024-03-12T13:47:01+00:00

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Indiana students will need to put their phones away during class starting next school year, under a new law that requires districts to ban communication devices from classrooms.

Senate Enrolled Act 185 bans “any portable wireless device.” The bill — which was signed into law Monday by Gov. Eric Holcomb and takes effect in July — requires districts, including charter schools, to adopt policies banning several types of devices during class time.

Lawmakers and advocates hope the ban improves student engagement, behavior, and mental health, all of which they say have declined since cell phones became a common sight in students’ hands. They’re part of a national push to enact bans on cell phones in schools.

“Even as adults, we’re distracted by using our cell phones,” said Sen. Jeff Raatz, a Republican and the bill’s author, in a Feb. 14 meeting of the House Education Committee.

Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming cell phone ban, including exceptions to it, what schools have previously done to limit cell phones, and concerns about it.

How does the new cell phone ban work?

Under the new law, school districts will need to adopt policies banning communication devices during instructional time. That includes phones, tablets, laptops, and gaming systems, as well as any other devices that can provide communication between two parties.

Exactly how that will be done is up to each individual school district. Students might be required to put their phones in locked pouches or designated places in the classroom.

It will be up to school boards to adopt these policies this summer.

However, the law says a student can use their device:

if a teacher allows it for educational purposes during instructional time.
if a student needs to manage their health care, as for blood sugar monitoring, for example.
in the event of an emergency.
if the use of the device is included in their Individualized Education Program or 504 plan.

The law does not define what constitutes an emergency.

The exception for instructional time is important for students in dual credit programs, said Mary Jane Michalak, vice president of legal and public affairs at Ivy Tech Community College, because it will allow them to access two-factor authentication.

Why do people want a cell phone ban?

Lawmakers attempted to ban cell phones in schools over two decades ago, said Rep. Vernon Smith. However, the law was reversed due to safety concerns.

The rapid adoption of phones between 2010 and 2015, coupled with the development of more attention-grabbing apps, has led students to spend more and more time on their phones, said Evan Eagleson, regional advocacy director for ExcelinEd, during testimony.

Eagleson said studies have shown students spend seven to nine hours a day on their phones, receiving around 237 notifications — a quarter of which occur during class time.

Since COVID, teachers report that student behavior and mental health issues linked to cell phones have spiked, said John O’Neal of the Indiana State Teachers Association in testimony.

“It’s becoming a major problem,” O’Neal said. “Students aren’t motivated in class because they’re distracted by their devices.”

How do educators and parents feel about it?

While schools already have the power to ban cell phones, such prohibitions have largely been left to the discretion of individual teachers, the bill’s supporters said, creating inconsistency from classroom to classroom.

A statewide law provides consistency and helps to enforce existing local policies, said Terry Spradlin, executive director of the Indiana School Boards Association, during testimony on the bill.

Education groups that supported the new law include the Indiana State Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the Indiana School Boards Association, and the Indiana Association of School Principals.

While the bill saw little opposition from advocates or lawmakers, some noted the potential increase in school discipline for students who try to circumvent their districts’ new policies. The enforcement of the ban, as well as any potential consequences for students who violate it, will be up to school districts.

Parents, too, have expressed concerns about being able to reach their students in the event of a school emergency.

How have schools tried to limit cell phones?

Spradlin said school districts’ existing guidelines on cell phone use typically ban the devices from classrooms, or leave it up to teachers. They often permit cell phone use during lunch and passing periods.

But a few Indiana districts have recently moved to ban cell phones during the school day. Fort Wayne Community Schools announced in February that it would pilot “phone-free schools” at two of its middle schools and two of its high schools this spring.

Students will be required to put their phones in locked pouches, which will be unlocked at the end of the day.

Hammond and Martinsville schools also adopted policies at the beginning of this school year requiring students to put their phones away.

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect the law includes both traditional public school districts and charter schools.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

The 2024 legislative session has started in Indiana. Here’s what to expect.

2024-01-08T22:28:46+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

After several years of focusing on how teachers teach, Indiana lawmakers appear to have largely shifted their attention this year to concerns about students’ academic performance and behavior stemming from the pandemic’s disruptions.

Banning cell phones from classrooms, holding more kids back, and improving student discipline and absenteeism have all emerged as priorities for the 2024 legislative session, which began Monday, when Gov. Eric Holcomb also laid out his education policy agenda.

It’s a short session in an even-numbered year, meaning lawmakers have less time to consider bills, and no budget to put together. Legislative leaders have also said to expect a quieter session after several years of major curriculum changes affecting things like literacy, as well as divisive and high-profile bills about critical race theory and book bans.

But that doesn’t mean those types of cultural issues won’t get any attention.

On Monday, Sen. Jeff Raatz, the GOP chair of the Senate Education and Career Development Committee, along with Republican Sen. Gary Byrne introduced a bill to require local school boards to approve curriculum materials for sex education classes. They would also have to publicize certain information about those classes, such as what is taught and whether the lessons separate or integrate male and female students.

Here’s what to expect from policymakers this year that could mean big changes for students, families, and teachers.

A focus on reading and third grade retention

Holcomb and Republican lawmakers agree there’s a need to reinvigorate the state’s policy to hold back third graders who don’t pass the state reading test, known as the IREAD.

While retention has long been Indiana law, data from the state education department shows that a growing number of these students have moved on to fourth grade regardless of whether they have what’s known as a good cause exemption, like if they have special education or English language learner status.

Studies on retention have demonstrated mixed results, often showing positive academic effects but negative social-emotional effects. A recent study of Indiana data from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found that retention did not affect attendance or student discipline.

A renewed focus on retention would be the next phase of the state’s ongoing efforts to improve literacy, which have included new laws enacted last year mandating instruction rooted in the science of reading.

“We want to make sure folks aren’t put at a disadvantage in grades 4, 5, 6 and on when they haven’t mastered that reading skill,” Holcomb said Monday.

But teachers, Democratic lawmakers, and education advocates have expressed skepticism over more retention. They say that policies that encourage personalized attention and intervention could better boost students’ reading performance.

“We can’t just hope that we can put 29 or 32 first graders in a classroom and believe the outcomes are going to be the same for schools that are able to staff at a class size of 18 to 20,” said Keith Gamble, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, in a November press conference.

Additional early learning programs, including universal preschool, would improve literacy rates more than “holding kids back and bottleneck schools,” said House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta, a Fort Wayne Democrat, in his opening remarks on Monday.

Lawmakers had yet to file a bill focusing on retention as of Monday. Senate bills must be filed by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, while House bills must be filed by 2 p.m. on Thursday.

Holcomb also called for a new requirement for schools to administer the state reading test, the IREAD, in second grade — an option that the state department of education has offered since last year.

Almost 46,000 second graders in over 700 schools took the IREAD early, allowing their schools to offer targeted interventions in third grade for those who didn’t pass.

Holcomb’s agenda also included new summer reading programs for students who don’t pass the IREAD, as well as ongoing testing for students who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency after third grade.

The state department of education has previously said that there’s little data tracking whether students who don’t demonstrate reading skills by third grade ever catch up.

Senate Bill 6, which Raatz also introduced Monday, would charge the department with developing a method to identify older students who don’t have reading skills.

Laws on attendance, cell phones, antisemitism expected

Legislative leaders have also suggested that they’ll crack down on absenteeism, which has spiked nationwide, as well as consider a ban on cell phones in schools.

While those key pieces of legislation have yet to be released, several bills have already been filed that offer a look into what lawmakers may discuss, including one to require armed intruder drills in schools.

The House Education Committee will meet for the first time on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., with three bills on the agenda:

House Bill 1001 aims to make changes to last year’s legislation on career scholarship accounts, including allowing students to use their scholarship funding to obtain drivers’ licenses. It would also allow students to use funds earmarked for college courses for job training.
House Bill 1002, a repeat bill, aims to codify the state’s policy against antisemitism and discrimination on the basis of religion at educational institutions.
House Bill 1042 would allow the state to use any remaining balance in the next generation Hoosier educators scholarship fund for additional funding for transition to teaching scholarships.

The Senate education committee had yet to schedule a meeting as of Monday.

Meanwhile, the teachers union has called on lawmakers to help fix growing student discipline issues by creating a pilot program on social-emotional learning, as well as a statewide commission to improve student discipline, including absenteeism.

The union also wants to see increased education funding — a tough sell to lawmakers during a non-budget year — in order to boost wages for education support professionals and reimbursements to schools for textbooks that were made available to families for free last year.

More early learning and higher education options

Outside groups like the Indiana Chamber of Commerce have again called for lawmakers to focus on early learning and child care as a critical component of workforce development.

But while the Republican-controlled legislature has taken incremental steps to expand access to child care in recent years, they remain reluctant to commit to sweeping changes like a universal preschool program championed by Democratic lawmakers.

Holcomb called for several deregulatory initiatives likely to gain traction with lawmakers, including lowering the minimum age for infant and toddler caregivers from 21 to 18, and making it easier for K-12 teachers to also work as substitutes in early education.

In higher education, Holcomb outlined several potential initiatives that would allow students who have some credit hours — even those who have left school — to earn associate degrees. Another would require state universities to consider creating three-year degree programs.

One bill already filed by GOP Sen. Blake Doriot would require state educational institutions to publish information about job placement and average wages for different degree programs.

The House and Senate will meet again Tuesday afternoon, with committee hearings throughout the week.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Few students signed up for career scholarships, as lawmakers look to expand the law

2024-01-10T19:19:06+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Just over 200 Indiana students received state funding for job training in the first year of the state’s Career Scholarship Accounts program, state officials said Wednesday, as lawmakers consider expanding the allowed uses for the money to include paying to get a driver license.

These accounts were the centerpiece of Republican lawmakers’ plans to “reinvent high school,” during the last legislative session, and allowed students to access state funding for workforce training outside of their schools. Advocates said the law would open more doors for students whose schools didn’t offer certain training programs, while critics said it lacked transparency, and could affect funding for high schools’ career and technical education programs.

State officials anticipated that 1,000 students in grades 10-12 would participate in the program during its first year, with each one eligible to receive up to $5,000 for job training and related expenses. Lawmakers appropriated $15 million over two years for the scholarship accounts.

While 574 students applied for the program, around 40% were rejected because they did not have job training lined up, said representatives from the Indiana Treasurer’s Office during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Wednesday. The program is jointly administered by the treasurer, the Indiana Department of Education, and the Commission on Higher Education.

The 234 students who were approved for scholarship accounts received an average of $3,200 each for curriculum and course material, they said, for a total allocation of $1.17 million.

A total of 30 organizations have been approved as providers for job training, including Indiana University, Ball State, and Ivy Tech, according to the higher education commission.

Lawmakers are considering a bill during this year’s session that would make changes to the law, including allowing students to use the funding to obtain driver’s licenses so they can commute to job training — something that advocates say would encourage participation.

House Bill 1001, authored by Chuck Goodrich, a Noblesville Republican, also seeks to allow students to use scholarships earmarked for attending college after high school for job training instead — a proposal that was rejected last year.

Proponents of the driver’s license provision said that allowing students to use the funding for licenses would open the program to those who otherwise could not get to work sites. The original career scholarship bill provided funding for transportation, but did not specify driver’s licenses.

“Driver’s licenses are a big barrier to growing the program. Kids couldn’t get to where they needed to get,” said Abhi Reddy, legislative counsel at the Treasurer’s Office.

However, Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, noted that offering funding for driver’s licenses through one program might motivate students to drop academic paths in favor of pursuing a job training scholarship.

The education committee rejected DeLaney’s amendment to remove the provision allowing students to use college scholarship funds — like the 21st Century Scholarship aimed at low-income students — for job training.

It also turned down a separate amendment authored by DeLaney that would’ve required that students be paid for the work they do during their job training opportunities.

“The potential for abuse is all through this bill, and this is one example where the abuse would directly affect the student,” DeLaney said.

HB 1001 passed the education committee and will move to the House.

You can track this bill on the General Assembly’s website.

This story has been updated with a total allocation for career scholarship accounts from the treasurer’s office.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s what’s in Indiana lawmakers’ proposal to hold back more third graders

2024-01-12T19:09:34+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Starting next school year, thousands of Indiana third graders could be held back if they don’t demonstrate key reading skills under a new bill from GOP lawmakers.

Senate Bill 1 — authored by Sen. Linda Rogers, Sen. Jeff Raatz, and Sen. Brian Buchanan, along with 28 Republican co-authors — seeks to bolster the state’s retention policy and is the centerpiece of GOP lawmakers’ education agenda this year. It’s the newest phase of an ongoing effort to improve the state’s early literacy rates. Last year, lawmakers passed a sweeping new law requiring reading instruction to be based on methods rooted in the science of reading that have gained traction nationwide.

Around 80% of Indiana third graders passed the statewide reading test, known as the IREAD-3, in 2023 — a number that has remained stubbornly flat since the pandemic. The Indiana Department of Education wants 95% of third graders to pass the reading test by 2027.

While third grade retention has been part of Indiana policy for over a decade, schools have increasingly avoided actually holding students back, according to data from the Indiana Department of Education, especially since the pandemic. Guidance from the department in 2021 encouraged schools to consider a student’s “overall academic performance” in determining whether retention is necessary.

In 2023, of the 13,840 third graders who did not pass the IREAD, just 412 stayed in third grade for another year, while the rest moved on to fourth grade.

The state has offered “good cause exemptions” for students with disabilities or those who are English language learners that let students who don’t pass the IREAD. But recent state data showed that most students who moved on to fourth grade did not have an exemption, and were instead “socially promoted” to the next grade.

Of those third graders who moved on to fourth grade in 2023, around 5,500 received such exemptions, and nearly 8,000 did not.

The GOP bill would remove language from statute that students “might require retention as a last resort.” Instead, it would require that students repeat third grade if they don’t demonstrate proficiency on the IREAD or meet one of a few exceptions.

It would also require schools to identify and remediate students who are at risk of not passing the test by offering summer school, as well as science of reading-based instruction through eighth grade. Schools would also need to monitor students who fail the IREAD beyond third grade and retest them until they reach proficiency or move into seventh grade.

Students with disabilities and those who are English language learners would still be exempt under the bill, which would add a new exemption for those who demonstrate proficiency in math. Those who have already been retained once would not be retained again.

Around 72% of students who did not pass the IREAD in 2023 came from low-income families. Approximately 43% are white, 25% are Hispanic, and 24% are Black, according to department of education data.

In an email Friday, Secretary of Education Katie Jenner indicated the education department supported the measures outlined in Senate Bill 1, including “creating a strong definition of retention for the first time to ensure significantly fewer third grade students who cannot read are promoted to fourth grade.”

But the retention proposal has encountered skepticism from teachers, education advocates, and Democratic lawmakers, who say the state should focus on non-punitive measures and individualized support for students.

In a panel Thursday hosted by the Indiana State Teachers Association, literacy researchers said improving early education, including preschool and kindergarten, play a significant role in improving literacy. Also key, they said, is ensuring that schools have sufficient resources, teachers, and time for quality reading instruction.

You can track this bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers: Bills on absenteeism, third grade retention will mark 2024 session

2023-11-21T22:51:06+00:00

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Indiana lawmakers want to catch their breath.

After two consecutive sessions of headline-grabbing legislation that put the state in the national spotlight for trying to restrict what could be taught in classrooms, and expanding vouchers to nearly every student, legislative leaders say the public should expect a more measured approach to the 2024 session, which begins Jan. 8.

Without a budget to put together during the short session, which ends in March, lawmakers will instead “build on recent achievements,” like last year’s sweeping expansion of work-based learning for high schoolers, House Speaker Todd Huston said on Organization Day Tuesday, when lawmakers preview the upcoming session.

Lawmakers also intend to further tackle literacy issues — after passing a law last year to require the science of reading — specifically by addressing Indiana’s third grade retention laws. Currently, Indiana requires retaining students who don’t pass the state reading test unless they meet certain criteria.

“Passing them along is a terrible disservice to the student,” Huston said in his Tuesday remarks.

Lawmakers will also consider a proposal to address antisemitism on college campuses, Huston said.

While leadership aims to have a quieter “transition year,” there’s no guarantee that the controversial social issues that have marked the last two sessions will take a backseat in 2024. Indeed, without a budget to pass, lawmakers may have more time to bring forward bills like the “divisive concepts” bill that headlined the last short session in 2022.

Next year’s elections will also factor into lawmakers’ decisions. All 100 seats in the Indiana House of Representatives and half the seats in the state Senate will be up for election. Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers.

“Lots of bills will be filed,” Huston said at an Indiana Chamber of Commerce event Monday.

Here’s what lawmakers have said to expect on education policy next year.

Literacy, careers, and absenteeism in the spotlight

Huston and Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray each said this week that their caucuses would focus on addressing literacy. Last year, the legislature passed landmark laws mandating curriculum and teacher training based in the science of reading, and forbidding instruction that uses models like “three-cueing.”

Huston and Bray indicated that legislation this year would focus on keeping students who don’t pass the state reading exam in third grade. Current Indiana law requires schools to retain those students unless they’ve been retained twice before, or if they’re English learners or have disabilities and receive approval from their educators to advance to the fourth grade.

Lawmakers will also look to expand last year’s laws on work-based learning, which allow students to receive Career Scholarship Accounts for workforce training outside of their schools. Huston said his caucus would once again push to allow students to use state scholarships earmarked for postsecondary education for work-based training as well.

Further tweaks to allow for more applied learning and apprenticeships could be coming as well.

At a legislative preview event Monday hosted by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Huston and Bray also highlighted the need to address chronic absenteeism, which remains higher than before the pandemic.

“Anything good we do in the education system, for those kids who aren’t there, they’re not going to have success,” Bray said.

Bills about divisive social issues could return

In recent years, Indiana lawmakers have attracted national attention for a series of controversial education-related bills, including one to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts” related to race that failed in 2022, and another that banned “harmful materials” from school libraries that passed in 2023.

Lawmakers have also passed legislation aimed at transgender youth, including one that prohibits transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams in 2022, and another that bans health care providers from providing gender-affirming services to anyone under 18 in 2023.

Leaders of the Democratic caucus said lawmakers should leave such issues alone during the 2024 session.

“We don’t need to bog down this session with [critical race theory] and how we feel about affirmative action,” said Senate Minority Leader Greg Taylor, an Indianapolis Democrat.

One piece of controversial legislation likely to make a comeback is the push to make school board elections partisan. Previous versions of the bill have divided lawmakers and drawn public backlash, but momentum for the idea grew between 2022 and this year.

Chamber calls for more action on child care

In a legislative preview event Monday, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce called for the state to once again focus on access to child care as an avenue toward economic development.

Lawmakers passed several laws on child care last year, including expanding eligibility for the On My Way Pre-K program and approving a third-party review of child care regulations, with the intent to streamline administrative burdens on providers.

The Chamber of Commerce called for an acceleration of this review, as well as other changes, like allowing child care workers to automatically qualify for child care vouchers.

This summer, the interim committee on Public Health, Behavioral Health and Human Services also approved a draft report of recommendations centered on testimony from child care providers who raised concerns about the affordability and access.

Bray referenced this report Monday when discussing how the Senate may tackle the child care question in 2024.

Lawmakers can begin filing bills now before reconvening in January.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana bill allowing chaplains in public schools advances despite constitutional concerns

2024-01-24T21:43:36+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana lawmakers advanced two bills on Wednesday that could further blur the lines between religious instruction and public schools, despite concerns that they might put schools in legal jeopardy.

Senate Bill 50 would allow schools to bring in chaplains as volunteers or employees to provide counseling to students and educators, while House Bill 1137 would require principals to let students leave campus for religious instruction under certain conditions.

Both bills passed their respective chambers’ education committees Wednesday despite questions about whether they maintain appropriate boundaries with respect to religion in public schools. Proponents say that neither bill requires students to receive religious instruction.

Under Senate Bill 50, school chaplains could provide only secular counseling unless the students or their parents gave permission for nonsecular guidance — prompting concerns from the ACLU of Indiana about violations of students’ constitutional rights.

Sen. Stacey Donato, a Logansport Republican who wrote the bill, described the proposal as another tool to address students’ social-emotional needs while alleviating the workload on the state’s school counselors. Indiana has one school counselor for every 694 students, according to one report from last year from the American School Counselor Association, which recommends a ratio of one for every 250 students.

The bill, which passed along party lines, received support from education groups, including the Indiana School Boards Association, the Indiana School Counselors Association, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, who all said the bill provided clear guidelines for chaplain positions.

Last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation allowing unlicensed chaplains to work in state public schools. Donato’s legislation says the chaplains must have master’s degrees and at least two years of counseling experience under the provisions of the bill, and would have to pass a criminal background check.

Their communication with students would be confidential, though Donato said she will amend the bill to require that they report child abuse or neglect.

The ACLU of Indiana raised concerns about violations of the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion. Similar concerns were echoed by Democratic lawmakers.

They also raised several questions, such as whether the chaplains would be school employees, what would happen if a student practiced a different religion from the chaplain, and what would happen if a student’s parent requested that they receive religious counseling against the student’s wishes.

Sen. Andrea Hunley, an Indianapolis Democrat, also said the bill didn’t specify how a parent would be notified if a student gave permission on their own for the chaplain to provide religious instruction — a departure from lawmakers’ recent efforts to ensure schools notify parents when students request to use different names or pronouns.

Republican lawmakers defeated an amendment to require parental permission for religious counseling, as well as another to require that the religious counseling be nonsecular.

Clergy members did not immediately throw their support behind the bill.

Chaplains may not have training in child development and psychology, and may not be qualified to act as counselors, said Gray Lesesne, dean and rector at Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis, who opposed the bill. And the provision protecting communication between a student and school chaplain as confidential could violate boundaries, he said.

“Even if I were to dispense secular advice to a young person as a chaplain, they would have a difficult time separating me from my role and calling and could interpret that as religious counseling whether I intend it to be or not,” he said.

Bill would change off-campus religious instruction rules

House Bill 1137, meanwhile, would bolster an existing Indiana law that allows students to leave school grounds for religious instruction for up to 120 minutes per week, subject to their principals’ discretion.

Under the bill, principals would be required to allow students to leave. The principals would work to determine an appropriate time to do so in collaboration with parents and religious organizations. In order to leave for religious instruction, students must not be listed as chronically absent.

The bill received broad support from lawmakers and advocates for religious instruction, who said many parents wanted to provide students religious teaching during the school day.

While the bill passed unanimously out of committee, Democratic lawmakers and representatives of public school organizations raised concerns about its impact on student absenteeism and academics.

With several religious organizations potentially pulling students out of the school day, the bill takes away principals’ discretion to keep academic time intact, said Christopher Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association.

Furthermore, Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, said it empowered religious organizations to pressure public schools into allowing students to leave — and put schools at risk of lawsuits.

Still, advocates for the bill said releasing students for religious instruction — a concept protected under U.S. law — allowed students to take religious lessons during times that didn’t conflict with academic courses or after-school extracurricular activities.

“A lot of parents want the ability to send a message to their students, this is how important it is to our family that you have religious instruction,” said Joel Penton, founder of LifeWise Academy, a national organization that provides Bible-based education to public school students off-campus during the school day.

Dennis Gutwein, a board member at the West Central School Corporation, said students at his district took LifeWise classes during library hours, but that the librarian allowed them to visit at other times during the day, like during study hall.

Committee members also added an unrelated amendment to House Bill 1137 that seeks to bolster civic education in the state by creating a seal to recognize excellence in civics for students, teachers, and schools.

Both HB 1137 and SB 50 will advance to their respective chambers.

You can track HB 1137 and SB 50 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers advance bill to hold back more third graders who don’t pass reading test

2024-01-17T22:44:34+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

A bill to hold back and provide more support to third graders who can’t read proficiently passed the Senate Education and Career Development Committee Wednesday along party lines.

Senate Bill 1 would reinforce the state’s policy of holding back students who fail the state’s reading test, while also requiring schools to identify and give remediation to those who are at risk of not passing the exam.

Under the provisions of the bill, schools would also need to track students’ reading skills beyond third grade, and provide reading instruction rooted in the principles of the science of reading through eighth grade.

The legislation continues the state’s recent focus on improving students’ literacy and reading instruction. Last year, Indiana lawmakers enacted a law requiring schools to adopt research-backed curriculum based in the science of reading. The state also prohibited schools from using a reading instruction method known as three-cueing.

Sen. Linda Rogers, a Republican from Granger who authored the bill along with 30 other GOP lawmakers, denied that her proposal amounted to a “retention bill.” She said that retention would continue to be a last resort after other intervention methods — like early identification and summer school for young students who lack key reading skills — have been exhausted.

Still, Rogers called retention a “necessary policy” for students who can’t read by third grade, and who don’t have a qualifying exemption like a disability.

“While some may say that retention is not good for a child, what really isn’t good is to move that student on without foundational reading skills,” Rogers said.

Details of the legislation surfaced last week. In 2023, out of 13,840 students who did not pass the third grade reading exam (known as the IREAD), just 412 stayed in third grade for another year.

The bill has support from GOP policymakers as well as several statewide education advocacy groups like RISE Indy and the Indiana School Boards Association. Advocates said the measures are necessary to address Indiana’s stagnating literacy rates. Around 1 in 5 students did not pass the IREAD in 2023 — a number that has remained about the same for three years.

But teachers, parents, and other education experts expressed skepticism about increased retention, saying that it would negatively affect students’ social-emotional well-being and long-term outcomes.

“Painting with broad strokes is dangerous,” said Rachel Burke, president of the Indiana Parent Teacher Association, who told lawmakers Wednesday that mandatory retention would have harmed her daughter. “She just needed more time, and it didn’t need to be in third grade.”

How retention and remediation would work

If the bill passes, beginning in the 2024-25 school year, students would have three attempts to pass the test — in second grade, third grade, and the summer after third grade. Those who don’t pass would be eligible for summer school focused on literacy, and their parents would be notified of their skill level, as well as any interventions needed.

Students who don’t pass the IREAD in third grade, or don’t have an exemption, would repeat a year. Qualified exemptions under the bill include having a disability or an individualized education program that specifies that retention is not appropriate; being an English learner who has received less than two years of language services; and passing the statewide math test — though these students would receive extra support in reading in fourth grade.

A repeated year must look different than a student’s first year of third grade, said Kymyona Burk, former state literacy director at the Mississippi Department of Education who spoke at the hearing. (Mississippi has attracted attention for its dramatic gains on national tests, including reading assessments.) Students should be placed with teachers who have a proven record of teaching reading, and need intensive literacy interventions throughout the year.

Burk noted that data from Mississippi showed that among students who were on the borderline of passing the statewide test, students who were retained performed higher in the long-term than those who moved on to fourth grade instead.

“We can prevent reading difficulty in children. We have to make sure that we are identifying them early and providing them with support much earlier than third grade,” Burk said.

A long-term decline in literacy

In testimony supporting the bill, Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said literacy has declined in Indiana for over a decade. But retention rates have also declined, as the state softened its policy on holding students back and allowed for “social promotion.”

“This was not just a COVID challenge. It would almost be easier if it was purely due to COVID,” Jenner said.

Asked why students are struggling to learn to read, Jenner pointed to absenteeism as one possible cause. Of the 20% of students who did not pass the IREAD in 2023, nearly one-quarter were considered chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more days of school. Among students who passed, chronic absenteeism was around 9%, she said.

“We can invest all the dollars we want but if you’re missing school, then your teachers can only do so much to get you there,” Jenner said.

Without a clear understanding of the reasons for the decline, some speakers said lawmakers should refrain from adopting any sweeping solutions.

“In order to prescribe a solution to the problem we need to understand what caused the problem in the first place,” said Joel Hand, speaking on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers Indiana and the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

Concerns about student well-being

Public testimony in opposition to the bill focused on concerns that a broad mandate would supersede local control and parental input on when and how a student should be retained.

Other speakers expressed concern that a retention mandate would disproportionately affect students who are learning English, and thus exacerbate existing disparities.

Studies on retention frequently find positive academic outcomes among students who have been held back, but mixed or negative social and emotional effects, including more behavioral issues and higher dropout rates

State policy should focus on solutions proven to be most effective, said Vincent Edwards, who authored a Ball State University analysis on retention that found a slight positive effect for retained students. More effective solutions could include additional staffing or early learning programs.

“We need to focus on what we feel really confident about instead of what is at best marginally positive,” Edwards told lawmakers.

The committee rejected an amendment by Sen. Andrea Hunley, an Indianapolis Democrat, to delay the implementation of the bill until the 2025-26 school year.

Committee members discussed but did not yet vote on Senate Bill 6, a companion bill by GOP Sen. Jeff Raatz to identify older students who can’t read proficiently.

Senate Bill 1 will now head to the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

You can track this bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana school funding bill would give money to families to create ‘a la carte’ education

2024-01-18T23:19:24+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

A school funding bill heard in Indiana’s legislature Thursday proposes to radically reshape the state’s education system by allowing families to use state money to pay for a wide range of services and effectively customize their children’s education.

The bill, Senate Bill 255, is on hold until next year, when lawmakers take up issues tied to the state budget. But its backers say it’s the start of a conversation about expanding school choice in the state, far beyond the scope of existing voucher programs.

For now, few details are available about how the program would work. But depending on how it takes shape and how many students participate, it could have a major impact on K-12 schools, graduation requirements and postgraduate paths, and give Indiana one of the most relaxed school choice policies in the country. And it would add to the financial pressures on public school systems that already stand to lose funding to voucher programs, while they try to improve low reading scores and college-going rates.

Lawmakers have already made nearly all Indiana children eligible for private school vouchers, on the premise that parents should be empowered to determine how educational dollars are spent.

But critics say these voucher programs aren’t reaching the students they were originally intended to help — those from low-income backgrounds who are attending failing schools.

Families could choose programs a la carte

Indiana’s existing voucher programs allow students to use state funding for private school, or for special education services outside of public school. A new program also allocates funding for career training.

Under the new proposal, those programs would be combined into a new program, with relaxed requirements that allow families to use state funding to purchase classes and services a la carte from schools, tutors, and other approved organizations.

So a student could take a chemistry class at a public school, a math class at a private school, and music lessons with a professional musician, said Indiana State Treasurer Daniel Elliott, who spoke in support of the bill at the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday.

Lawmakers at Thursday’s hearing listened to concerns about the bill from a wide array of groups, including the Indiana School Boards Association, the Indiana Association of School Principals, the Indiana Catholic Conference, and home-schooling advocates.

The bill’s fiscal note estimates that state expenditures would increase by $46 million just for the cost of migrating students from the existing voucher programs to the new funding pool.

Author Sen. Ryan Mishler, a Republican from Mishawaka, said he wanted to begin the conversation about the proposal this year and expects it to continue through the summer.

Mishler notably voiced opposition to last year’s expansion of the school voucher program, citing concerns about a lack of accountability at private schools. In introducing the bill, he said he hoped to offer even more flexibility to Indiana parents.

Elliott agreed.

“If we really want to make a difference, we need to give parents more than two choices,” said Elliott. “We need to give them the option to create their child’s unique educational pathway.”

How the money would move

The grant program in Senate Bill 255 would function like an expanded version of the existing Education Scholarship Account program, which allows families of students with disabilities to use funds on services outside their schools. It would replace the education scholarships, the state voucher program, and the new Career Scholarship Accounts established last year.

Under the bill, students enrolled in a public school could receive 50% of the foundation grant amount — around $3,000 in 2023 — to spend on services outside of their school’s jurisdiction, likely making an impact on their school’s funding. Students enrolled in private school would receive 90% of the foundation grant amount.

They could use the funds to pay for expenses like tuition and fees at a private school, services for a disability, extracurricular activities provided by a school, apprenticeships, and transportation.

While home-schooled students were included in the bill draft, Mishler and Elliott said they would change the bill to exclude them from the funding and the accompanying requirements of state oversight.

Lawmakers raised questions about the additional cost, as well as the increased workload for the treasurer’s office, which would administer the combined program.

Schools may need to price their classes at a credit hour rate, according to Elliott. And parents would be responsible for transporting their children to different schools and classes.

Sen. Shelli Yoder, a Bloomington Democrat, said the transportation issue raised concerns about equity, as parents who can’t drive their children to different schools likely wouldn’t be able to benefit from the program.

Elliott said that it’s likely very few families would take advantage of the program.

Currently around 90,000 students attend private schools in Indiana, compared with over 1 million students who attend public schools. Recent data shows that voucher use grew by 30% over last year, compared with a 5% increase in private school enrollment, suggesting that most of the beneficiaries of vouchers are families whose children are already in private schools.

For the career scholarship accounts, just over 200 students received vouchers in the first year. The program, which offers students state funding to take career training courses outside their schools, is a centerpiece of GOP lawmakers’ plans to “reinvent high school” in 2023.

Senate Bill 255 is not expected to be heard again in the 2024 session.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana bill would make schools disclose details about sex ed classes

2024-01-31T21:45:32+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a bill requiring schools to seek school board approval for their sex education materials, as well as publicize information about who teaches the courses and when.

Sex ed is not required in Indiana schools, despite evidence linking such courses to improved behavioral outcomes among teens. Schools are required only to teach lessons about HIV and AIDS, and if they do choose to offer additional sex ed, they must emphasize abstinence.

Still, many schools do offer sex ed, sometimes contracting with outside organizations that offer lessons on consent and healthy relationships alongside reproduction and contraception.

The legislation from two GOP lawmakers marks the latest attempt by the Indiana legislators to shape how schools should approach sex, sexuality, and gender. Last year, they restricted the teaching of human sexuality in the earliest grades. And a state law that took effect last school year requires schools to disclose students’ requests to use different names or pronouns, prompting criticism from the LGBTQ community and mixed reactions from districts.

Supporters of the bill say it’s appropriate for schools to be especially sensitive about sex ed in particular, and that the proposal could defuse political tensions. Critics say it could shut down conversations related to sexuality and run afoul of federal law. Observers pointed out that some of the bill’s provisions are already part of state law.

Under Senate Bill 128, schools would need to seek approval from their school boards before using curriculum materials related to sex ed. They would also have to share details like which grade levels will receive sex ed lessons and when, whether male and female students will be taught together, and whether the class is led by a male or female instructor.

The bill would also require schools to post all this information on their websites.

The bill passed the Senate Education and Career Development Committee on Wednesday on an 8-5 vote, with GOP Sen. Dan Dernulc joining the four Democrats on the committee in voting no.

The bill was authored by Sen. Gary Byrne and Sen. Jeff Raatz, chairman of the Senate education committee.

Byrne said publishing the information would help parents decide whether they want to allow their children to take the lessons. Indiana already allows parents to opt their students out of sex education.

Byrne said the bill targeted sex ed — and not other subjects — because of the sensitive nature of the subject and families’ differing views on when it should be taught.

“I think putting the local school boards in the driver’s seat is an issue that makes good sense,” Byrne said.

The bill received support from the Indiana School Boards Association for strengthening local control and parental engagement. But Terry Spradlin, the association’s executive director, said its provisions requiring school board approval and public posting of curriculum were already part of Indiana law.

Other supporters said the bill could prevent turmoil at school board meetings by making board members aware of what’s being taught.

But critics of the bill, including advocates for gender diversity and sex education, said school boards already have the ability to review and approve curriculum. They also say a state mandate could create an additional burden on teachers and school administrators and ultimately serve as a deterrent to offering sex ed at all.

“This is a bill requiring every school district in the state to now hold hearings on very volatile issues in which a small number of folks can come and take over those meetings, that also allows a small number of school board members to inject their own political beliefs into sex education,” said Chris Daley, executive director of the ACLU of Indiana.

Daley also called the proposal an unfunded mandate.

Emma Vosicky of Gender Nexus, a group that advocates for gender diverse people in Indiana, said the ambiguous language of the bill could create a chilling effect on broader discussions of gender, including on children’s books about LGBTQ families.

Furthermore, the requirement to approve things like the gender of the person teaching a sex ed course leaves districts at risk of violating federal mandates prohibiting sex discrimination, she said.

Sen. Shelli Yoder, a Bloomington Democrat, said that requirement could also be discriminatory toward teachers who identify as a gender other than male or female.

Tammy Carter, CEO of Lifesmart Youth, a nonprofit organization that provides sex ed to 26,000 students in 122 Indiana schools, said the bill’s requirements are redundant, as the organization already meets with school boards and parents and posts its full curriculum material on its own portal.

Additionally, the bill would force her organization to release proprietary information to schools to post online under the bill, Carter said.

Other efforts have sought to expand access to medically accurate sex education, especially in the wake of Indiana’s near-total abortion ban.

Both GOP and Democratic lawmakers have previously authored bills to require schools to provide information about conception and contraception if they choose to teach sex ed. These bills have not been taken up, and similar bills have not been filed this year.

You can track SB 128 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers want more parental help, wraparound services to reduce young students’ absenteeism

2024-01-31T23:53:56+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Too many students in Indiana are missing school. And Indiana lawmakers have struggled to find a fix for the issue of absenteeism.

Finding a balance between punitive and proactive measures to fix absenteeism where it’s highest — in the earliest grades and in high school — has evaded Indiana lawmakers trying to grapple with the state’s absenteeism rates, which peaked during COVID and still remain high in Indiana and nationwide.

With Senate Bill 282, which members of the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development approved unanimously on Wednesday, they seek to begin to address the bell curve of absenteeism.

“There are younger students that have truancy issues, and there are older students. Trying to wrap your arms around that 900-pound gorilla I found to be absolutely impossible,” said said Sen. Stacey Donato, a Republican from Logansport and the bill’s author.

GOP lawmakers flagged absenteeism as a priority for their agenda this year. But they had yet to bring a bill forward before Wednesday, the last opportunity for bills to be heard in the education committee before midway deadlines.

The proposals targeting each side of the bell curve are different.

First, it prescribes steps that schools must take to contact the parents of truant elementary students and provide them information and wraparound services to help improve attendance.

The bill also urges the bipartisan Legislative Council to further study absenteeism this summer — including ways to promote school attendance and age-appropriate consequences for habitually truant students — which will help address absenteeism among older students, Donato said.

“We’re going to do our absolute best to get those children the services that they need, the parents the services that they need, and work with those children to get them to school so that they can learn to read,” Donato said.

Donato ended up heavily amending her original bill, which in its initial form prescribed both punitive and preventative measures that schools could use to curb habitual truancy.

It would have referred more students to juvenile courts, which could have assessed fines of up to $1,000 to parents of truant students and assigned community service to the students themselves.

Absenteeism is ‘far beyond’ scope of one bill

Under Donato’s revised bill, schools would be required to notify parents of elementary students in writing of their student’s absences, their responsibility to ensure their student’s attendance, and the possible consequences for failing to do so, like juvenile court intervention. Schools would need to hold attendance conferences with parents no more than five days after the student’s fifth unexcused absence in a 10-week period.

The revised bill also mandates that schools create behavior plans to improve students’ attendance, and offer counseling to address any underlying issues keeping them from attending school.

Donato’s amended bill received support from a wide array of groups, including the Indiana Teachers Association, the Indiana School Social Workers Association, and the Indiana School Boards Association. They said they would have opposed the bill as originally written.

“This is an issue that goes far beyond what any one bill could possibly fix,” said Joel Hand, representing the School Social Workers Association. “But this is a step in the right direction.”

You can track SB 282 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Bills on literacy, cell phones, sex ed, and civics are advancing in the Indiana Statehouse

2024-02-07T20:27:55+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

The first half of the 2024 legislative session in Indiana has come to a close, and the dust is settling on the bills that cleared their original chamber.

Bills prioritizing reading instruction are again the top of lawmakers’ agenda and will likely become law, as the state tries to address stagnating reading scores. They build on lawmakers’ efforts last year to require instruction based on the science of reading in schools.

A bill allowing schools to ban cell phones from K-12 classrooms also advanced. But as the session has progressed, lawmakers have significantly altered other bills tackling absenteeism and behavior issues in schools, admitting these are tricky problems to solve.

Lawmakers have largely steered clear of controversial social-issue legislation that marked the last two legislative sessions. But bills on publicizing sex ed curriculum and further blurring the lines between public schools and religious instruction drew concerns.

The bills now head to the opposite chamber where they may have further amendments. The 2024 session must end by March 14.

Here are some of the key bills to watch in the second half of the session.

2024 bills addressing Indiana curriculum and instruction

Senate Bill 1 would tighten the state’s policy for holding back and remediating young children who don’t demonstrate reading skills. The most recent amendments to the bill would create a policy for parents to appeal a remediation recommendation. Meanwhile, Senate Bill 6 requires the Indiana Department of Education to identify older students who don’t read proficiently.

Senate Bill 50 would permit chaplains to serve in public schools as counselors providing secular support. An amendment to the bill allows them only to provide religious support if a parent or emancipated minor gives permission. House Bill 1137, meanwhile, requires principals to allow a student to leave for off-campus religious instruction at their parents’ request.

Senate Bill 287 would require schools to teach cursive, and directs the state department of education to develop an internet safety curriculum, while House Bill 1243 would establish a computer science curriculum requirement.

Senate Bill 128 would require schools to seek school board approval for their sex ed curriculum, and publicize the materials plus information about who teaches the courses and when.

House Bill 1137, along with Senate Bill 211, would establish a civics seal and expand civics education to the youngest grades.

House Bill 1073 would require schools to install video cameras in special education classrooms, and allow parents to review recordings in certain situations.

These bills target cell phones, mental health, intruders

Senate Bill 211, along with House Bill 1380, would define charter school corporations as a collection of charter schools operated by a single organizer — a change that raised concerns about financial transparency following last month’s federal indictment of former virtual charter officials.

Senate Bill 185 would allow schools to adopt policies banning cell phones from the classroom, though the policies must include exceptions for emergencies, health needs, and cell phone use at the direction of a teacher or under an individualized education program.

Senate Bill 282 originally laid out preventive and punitive measures schools could use to address truancy, but the bill was amended to focus only on preventive measures in elementary schools while a summer study committee considers how to improve older students’ attendance.

Senate Bill 214 would require schools to post links to mental health resources for students, and Senate Bill 141 would require counselors to spend a certain amount of time providing services to students.

House Bill 1104 lays out requirements for schools’ armed intruder drills, including that students can’t be subject to drills that include sensory components.

Funding bills could affect referendum revenue

Though 2024 is not a budget year, several bills moved forward that could affect funding for schools and students.

House Bill 1001 would allow students to use Career Scholarship Accounts to obtain their drivers’ licenses. It will also expand the uses for two kinds of college scholarships, allowing students to put them toward career training.

House Bill 1376 restricts school referendums to general elections or municipal elections only.

House Bill 1380 includes a number of potential funding changes.

It would prohibit schools from charging a fee for transfer students.
It would expand the Indiana Learns program that gives students up to $1,000 for tutoring beyond 2026.
It would require that Innovation Network schools receive 100% of their state tuition support dollars and prohibits school districts from charging them for goods and services if that amount is more than the charter receives in revenue from non-referendum operating fund property taxes.

Senate Bill 270 would clarify that schools must close underutilized buildings and make them available to charter schools for $1.

Some higher education bills take aim at Indiana’s universities

Many of the bills aimed at higher education this year would assert more legislative control over the state’s colleges and universities.

Senate Bill 48 originally would have required colleges to compile information about jobs and pay related to their degrees. But when colleges reported that they already have much of this information, lawmakers amended the bill to require schools to prominently post links to it instead.

Senate Bill 8 would require all high schools to offer the College Core. It would also require colleges and universities to explore the possibilities of conferring associate degrees and offering three-year degree programs.

Senate Bill 202 includes many changes to colleges’ boards, tenure, and diversity policies.

It would prohibit colleges from offering tenure to faculty who have failed to support a culture of “free inquiry,” and create complaint procedures aimed at faculty who have shared political opinions unrelated to their academic discipline.

House Bill 1002 codifies a definition of antisemitism and prohibits religious discrimination at the state’s schools.

Deregulation bills focus on child care, youth employment

Senate Bill 2 removes several child care regulations and makes employees of childcare centers eligible for childcare subsidies.

Senate Bill 147 also offers tax exemptions for for-profit childcare operators, as well as businesses that provide on-site childcare to employees.

House Bill 1093 is not strictly an education bill, but would relax regulations on when teenagers are allowed to work.

The 2024 bills that didn’t make it, but might in 2025

Several bills that didn’t pass this year offer a clue into what lawmakers might tackle during next year’s budget session and during summer study committees.

House Bill 1219 sought to create a mastery-based education pilot program, and along with Senate Bill 165, measure the educational time that students must receive in minutes instead of days.

Senate Bill 255 would have dramatically expanded Indiana’s choice program and allow families to choose where they would spend state dollars to create customized programs. The bill was heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee, with chair Sen. Ryan Mishler saying it would return next year.

House Bill 1262 originally laid out several punitive measures schools could take to address student behavior. The bill passed the House education committee with lawmakers promising to amend the bill to send the issue for further study instead. But it died on the House floor after a disagreement over what kind of committee should study the issue.

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that charter schools would not be charged for goods and services if the cost exceeds the amount they receive in non-referendum operating fund property taxes in House Bill 1380.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Civics education to come to the earliest grades under Indiana proposal

2024-02-12T17:51:41+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

In Heather Veatch’s fourth grade class at East Washington Academy in Muncie, students run for office at the beginning of the year.

Despite their nerves, they each give a speech to their peers introducing themselves and their ideas and then vote for president, vice president, senators, and representatives. Veatch’s students bring issues to their elected leaders, who work to address them.

This year, they campaigned for and successfully passed a proposal for a new sensory space, which Veatch then granted.

While those who don’t win the class elections are often disappointed, Veatch tells them that they’re now occupying the most important role of all — citizen.

“Kids at a young age need to know they’re part of a bigger picture,” she said. “They’re not just them alone. But they alone can have a big impact on the bigger picture.”

This is the kind of civics education that Indiana leaders hope to see more of under new bills that would reward students, educators, and schools for engaging the next generation of Hoosier voters.

While Indiana has made progress in civics education through new standards requiring a semester of civics in sixth grade, advocates say there’s still work to be done, especially as the state faces a “concerning” drop in voter participation, according to one report.

House Bill 1137 and Senate Bill 211 would each establish a civics seal to recognize students, teachers, and schools for excellence in civics education — which could look like offering civics-minded lessons and field trips to students.

Students could receive the seal on their diplomas, while schools could earn a certification, similar to existing recognition for STEM education.

The bills also seek to increase access to civics material in the earliest grades as part of the state’s push to provide young students with high-quality reading curriculum. And by introducing basic concepts of citizenship and fairness early, advocates hope to build a foundation for improved civic engagement later in life.

“We don’t want to lose social studies standards in the push for science of reading,” said David Roof, a professor and director of the Center of Economic and Civic Learning at Ball State University. “The focus on literacy and the focus on civics don’t need to compete. They should be intertwined.”

While the civics provisions earned widespread approval, each bill also comes with less popular provisions.

Civics education to improve civic engagement

Civic engagement in Indiana has been persistently low, according to the Indiana Civic Health Index, a report compiled by the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence at Indiana University Northwest.

The center’s 2023 survey found Indiana ranked second to last in voter turnout in the 2022 midterm election, with around 42% of voters voting. While turnout nationally is the highest it’s been since the 1980s, Indiana’s rate has dropped nearly 15 percentage points during that time, the report notes.

Common theories about this drop include the absence of contested elections in the state, according to the report, as well a lack of accessible voting policies common in states with high turnout, like unrestricted absentee voting and same-day voter registration.

A foundation in civics education in K-12 schools will also help address the particularly low voter turnout of young voters, said Roof.

“Improving civic education will improve civic engagement,” said Charles Dunlap, president and CEO of the Indiana Bar Foundation. “It’s a long game.”

The bills would direct the Indiana Department of Education to help provide families and schools with affordable, civics-based reading instruction and materials — with the aim of infusing elementary reading instruction with material about U.S. history and government, Dunlap said.

They would also establish recommendations for a civics seal, which students could earn as an endorsement on their diplomas, Dunlap said. To do this, they might go to school board meetings, or receive certain grades in their government classes.

Many schools in Indiana already offer civics education that could form the basis of a civics seal.

Muncie schools, operated by Ball State University, received a $1.3 million federal grant to revitalize its civics curriculum. Students take field trips to the Indiana Statehouse, and Washington D.C. and participate in classroom-level government exercises. Bills include controversial policies about religion, charters

Both bills have passed their chambers of origin.

And while the civics education proposals received unanimous support from lawmakers and members of the public, each bill includes other proposals that raised concerns.

HB 1137, for example, changes existing Indiana policy to require principals to release students for religious instruction during the school day at their parents’ request. Critics said this proposal could cause disruptions to the school day, and open schools up to legal liability.

SB 211, meanwhile, drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers for its definition of “charter school corporations. Critics argued the change removed a layer of financial transparency from reporting requirements.

Tying less popular provisions to a fairly neutral topic like civics education may help those provisions pass with hesitant lawmakers, said Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis.

Roof, Dunlap, and other advocates for civics emphasized that their support is limited to the civics portions of the bills. It’s not uncommon for lawmakers to consolidate topics, Dunlap noted.

“In moving out of the Committee, perhaps we will see a more focused consideration of the topics on their own,” Roof said.

You can track House Bill 1137 and Senate Bill 211 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How the reading retention bill moving through Indiana Statehouse impacts English learners

2024-02-23T17:30:22+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

A bill that would hold back more third graders in Indiana has raised alarms among teachers of English language learners, who say the retention mandate ignores research on language acquisition, and could violate federal law.

Senate Bill 1 — a priority bill for GOP lawmakers this year — requires schools to remediate young students who don’t demonstrate reading skills and retain most third graders who don’t pass the state reading test, the IREAD3. It’s part of a legislative effort to address the state’s literacy scores, which have declined for more than a decade.

The bill has passed the Senate and is heading for a full vote in the House with support from the Indiana Department of Education.

The bill includes “good cause” exemptions to retention for several groups of students, including English learners who have received services for less than two years and whose teachers and parents agree that promotion is appropriate.

But advocates for English learners say that the exemption for this population doesn’t align with what research says about how long it takes for students to learn a new language.

With a growing population of 93,000 English learners in Indiana, and a history of shortages of educators licensed to teach language learners, advocates worry that English learners will be denied an appropriate education if they’re retained. The state also has an increasing number of immigrant students, some of whom will need language services.

Advocates also say the provision conflicts with the state’s implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which gives students six years to demonstrate proficiency in English before their schools face a penalty. Federal law also states that English learners should not be retained solely on the basis of their English language proficiency and that they are entitled to age-appropriate curriculum and participation in school programs.

State officials who support the bill, however, say it does not conflict with federal law or state rules.

Sen. Linda Rogers, the bill’s co-author, said in a statement that the language conforms with federal guidance, and that the bill’s authors “worked to ensure that was the case as the legislation was being written.”

And the Indiana Department of Education said in a statement that federal guidance requires school districts to help students become English proficient and participate in regular classes “within a reasonable period of time.”

Per the bill, that reasonable amount of time is two years to make sure EL students aren’t retained only because of “their lack of English proficiency and before they have been provided with meaningful opportunity and academic instruction,” the IDOE statement said.

But learning a new language can take anywhere from five to 14 years, said Patricia Morita-Mullaney, a professor of language and literacy at Purdue University and past president of the Indiana Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, or INTESOL.

English learners who are retained under the provisions of Senate Bill 1 could sue the state for failing to meet federal requirements, Morita-Mullaney said.

“Indiana is setting itself up for an enormous class action lawsuit,” Morita-Mullaney said.

Meeting the needs of English learners

Historically, most of Indiana’s young English learners were U.S. citizens who had attended American schools since kindergarten, Morita-Mullaney said. A large percentage then could become eligible for retention in third grade, when they are in their fourth year of receiving English language services — an insufficient amount of time, she said.

The effect would be a penalty for the child, instead of the school as currently outlined by ESSA, she said.

Current Indiana law exempts English learners from retention.

In addition to concerns about violating federal law, holding students back based on their English proficiency has a negative impact on their content knowledge, said Donna Albrecht, a professor of ENL/ESL at Indiana University Southeast and a member of the advocacy team at INTESOL. Instead, teachers should be trained in methods that teach content and language at the same time.

“It’s not that they weren’t taught to read; they’re learning two languages. It takes more time,” Albrecht said. “By the time they reach fourth and fifth grade, they’re surpassing their monolingual peers.”

Of the 2,819 English learner students who failed the IREAD-3 statewide in 2023, 1,922 received a good cause exemption from retention, while 897 did not. Most of the latter — 868 students — were promoted to fourth grade anyway. Such “social promotion” has increased in Indiana schools over the last decade.

Retaining hundreds more students will affect both urban districts like Indianapolis Public Schools, which has a large population of English learners, as well as small, rural districts where these students make up a large share of the population, Morita-Mullaney said.

In both cases, schools will need to staff additional third grade classrooms with teachers who are prepared to teach English learners, Morita-Mullaney said. Indiana schools have struggled to find enough qualified teachers for English learners — another federal requirement.

“They’ll move teachers to third grade, or they’ll bring in new people who have never been in high-stakes testing environments before,” Morita-Mullaney said.

Improving Senate Bill 1 for English learners

There are 93,625 English learners in all grades statewide in 2023-24, according to Indiana Department of Education data.

To improve the bill for English learners, INTESOL recommends changing the exemption language to reference scores on Indiana’s assessment for English learners — WIDA.

Under the organization’s proposed language, students who score less than a 5.0 proficiency level on WIDA, the score needed to exit the English learner programs and join the general student body, would be eligible for an exemption if they fail IREAD3.

On average, students gain half a level of proficiency per year on the assessment, said Albrecht. But even students who gain a full level of proficiency each year may not be ready to pass the IREAD-3 in third grade if they started learning English in kindergarten.

It’s not clear from available state data at what WIDA level students can typically pass the IREAD-3, Albrecht added. Comparing data has been challenging due to years of changes in state and federal testing, Morita-Mullaney said.

The state Department of Education said WIDA measures English language proficiency at grade level, as mandated by ESSA, while IREAD3 measures reading proficiency overall.

Advocates pushed back on this interpretation saying WIDA focuses on all parts of language, but IREAD is designed to test reading for native speakers.

Bill author Rogers also said that retention would not conflict with Indiana’s ESSA plan.

“The legislation highlights early identification of students that may not be reading proficient by the end of third grade. These students will be provided remediation and summer school aligned with the Science of Reading,” Rogers’ statement said. “The goal is not to retain anyone that doesn’t have a good cause exemption and ensure that ‘Every Child Learns to Read.’”

Previously, proponents said that retention will remain a last resort for students after they have more intervention and multiple attempts to pass the test. Still, retention is a necessary step in some cases, they said, giving students another year to develop literacy skills.

Both Rogers and Secretary of Education Katie Jenner have said they don’t believe very many students will be retained after receiving increased intervention.

“This is a crisis for our state right now and we have no time to waste,” Jenner said at a Wednesday meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The bill is scheduled for a second reading in the House on Monday.

You can track Senate Bill 1 on the General Assembly website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How an Indiana bill to recognize great civics education became a bill to allow chaplains in school

2024-02-26T23:22:02+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Lawmakers have altered bills originally designed to recognize Indiana schools and students for civic education to instead cover chaplains in schools, internet safety, and student discipline.

Previous versions of Senate Bill 211 and House Bill 1137 included a requirement for Indiana to establish a civics seal recognizing schools, students, and teachers for excellence in civics at a time when Indiana’s civic participation is declining. The bills would have also brought civic education to the earliest grades through reading materials.

But lawmakers have dramatically rewritten the bills during the legislative process, which is nearing its end on March 14.

House Bill 1137 began as a bill to require schools to release students for religious instruction at their parents’ request, which House lawmakers amended early in the session to include a new civic seal recognition.

But after the bill passed the House, lawmakers on the Senate Education Committee stripped the bill of language related to civics, and added instead a provision to allow chaplains to serve in schools. Senate Bill 50, which passed the Senate but has yet to be heard in the House, includes similar language about chaplains.

The House bill’s provision on chaplains has also been changed by senators to address concerns that it allowed children to receive religious guidance without their parents’ knowledge. In the most up-to-date language, only emancipated minors and parents of unemancipated minors could give permission for religious instruction. Chaplains would otherwise have to provide secular guidance only.

Another amendment to House Bill 1137 adopted by senators would require chaplains to disclose to parents any communication with their students, at parents’ request.

But critics, including the ACLU and Democratic Sen. J.D. Ford, still say school corporations that employ chaplains could run the risk of violating the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause.

Meanwhile, House lawmakers changed Senate Bill 211 to remove the civic seal language. Instead, they added a provision to require the Indiana Department of Education to establish a civics proficiency designation for schools “to further develop student understanding of civil society, constitutional government, and the democratic process.”

The House has also amended the bill to require the Department of Education to approve an internet safety curriculum on cyberbullying and dangerous online behavior. Another amendment would allow school personnel to remove disruptive students and bar them from returning to the classroom.

A House amendment by Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, on Monday would have banned Attorney General Todd Rokita from operating the Eyes on Education portal — a website for parents and others to file complaints against teachers and schools over lessons on politics, race, gender, and sexuality.

Another amendment by Democratic Rep. Carey Hamilton from Indianapolis would have required members of the General Assembly to spend time shadowing public school teachers.

These amendments from DeLaney and Hamilton were rejected for not being germane to the bill.

“Every session, we pass new laws, requirements, and restrictions that impact teachers in their work with students and I think it’s incredibly important for us to be informed about what their work looks like,” Hamilton said.

House Bill 1137 and Senate Bill 211 are advancing to a final reading in their respective chambers. If they pass, they’ll head to the governor’s desk. You can track each bill on the General Assembly website.

Correction: Feb. 27, 2024: A previous version of this story referred to J.D. Ford as a state representative. Ford is a state senator.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How a revised Indiana absenteeism bill could affect students and parents

2024-02-27T17:44:17+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana House lawmakers have amended a Senate bill focused on chronic absenteeism to require school districts to prohibit habitually truant students from participating in extracurricular activities.

They also altered Senate Bill 282 to add instructions that school officials must report habitually truant students to the prosecutors’ office, and that prosecutors must notify parents that they’ve filed affidavits related to their students’ absenteeism.

But in a policy change not directly related to absenteeism, legislators also amended the bill on Tuesday to provide new protections for teachers who are targeted by unsubstantiated complaints from parents.

Policymakers signaled before the start of this session, which ends March 14, that they wanted to address high rates of chronic absenteeism in Indiana schools. But lawmakers have struggled to articulate how they want to address the issue comprehensively.

The Senate bill primarily deals with student absenteeism. It would require schools to meet with parents and offer wraparound services to address elementary students’ absenteeism.

But an amendment by Democratic Rep. Tonya Pfaff in the last House education committee meeting of the 2024 session added protections for school employees facing unsubstantiated complaints of misconduct.

If an allegation were dismissed or found to be unsubstantiated, a principal would have to inform the school employee and the student and their parent of this decision in writing.

Furthermore, principals would have to inform the parent or student making the allegation that a second unsubstantiated complaint within a year could result in the student being moved to another classroom, or the parent being barred from after-school activities for up to six months.

Pfaff’s amendment passed with bipartisan support.

The changes are similar to an amendment in another bill this session that would allow school employees to remove disruptive students from the classroom and prohibit them from returning.

Lawmakers scuttle plan to study older students’ absenteeism

House lawmakers also removed language from SB 282 that would have asked lawmakers to study the issue of absenteeism over the summer. The bill’s author, GOP Sen. Stacy Donato, said the purpose of this study was to find solutions for truancy among older students.

But Rep. Bob Behning, the Republican chair of the House education committee, said House Speaker Todd Huston requested that bills not contain summer study committee language. Legislative leadership could still decide to study the issue further.

Lawmakers also removed nonpublic schools from the provisions of the bill, and added language that parents can ask a representative — like a doctor or therapist — to provide input at an attendance meeting with their student’s school.

SB 282 is moving forward to a full House vote as the 2024 session quickly draws to a close.

Notably, the House committee did not hear Senate Bill 128, which would have required schools to seek approval from their school boards for sex education material, and then publish the information online. The committee’s decision effectively killed the bill.

You can track SB 282 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers drop proposal to allow chaplains in public schools

2024-03-07T17:43:27+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana lawmakers have cut a proposal that would have permitted chaplains to work in public schools — part of a compromise on a bill allowing students to leave school for religious instruction at their parents’ request.

They returned House Bill 1137 to its original form, which requires principals to allow students to attend off-campus religious instruction if parents request it. Indiana law currently leaves the decision to principals’ discretion.

The controversial language in House Bill 1137 would have allowed chaplains to serve as counselors offering only secular support to students, unless the students’ parents gave permission for nonsecular guidance.

Proponents said it would put willing members of the community in schools to counsel students on a volunteer or paid basis. But critics said the proposal would have violated the establishment clause in the First Amendment, which forbids the government from establishing a religion or favoring one religion over another. Some also said that chaplains didn’t necessarily have the training to work in schools.

Multiple changes to the bill prompted it to go to a bipartisan, bicameral conference committee, which cut the language in the final days of the 2024 legislative session as a compromise to pass the bill through both chambers.

House Bill 1137 briefly featured an amendment to recognize excellent civics education, which was later removed by Senate lawmakers. They instead added a provision to allow chaplains to serve in public schools after their bill containing the language, Senate Bill 50, failed to move forward in the House.

Both chambers must now accept the conference committee’s report. If they don’t, the bill dies.

Lawmakers could still insert the language on chaplains into other bills, as several remain in progress in conference committees.

The 2024 session must adjourn by March 14, but could end sooner.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Here are the education bills approved by the 2024 Indiana legislature

2024-03-09T03:00:58+00:00

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Stricter rules on school attendance, reading proficiency, and cellphone use in the classroom will affect Indiana students and schools beginning next year under legislation passed in the General Assembly’s 2024 session.

Lawmakers wrapped the session late Friday, nearly a week earlier than their deadline, after spending hours negotiating bills in bipartisan, bicameral conference committees charged with hashing out versions of bills agreeable to both chambers.

Lawmakers hinted that a dramatic overhaul of school voucher funding may be coming next year, when they take up budget proposals. They took a step in that direction this year by expanding access to Education Savings Accounts — a type of voucher funding for students with disabilities — to the siblings of students who have the accounts.

And while some lawmakers hoped for a session free of controversial social issues, the legislature passed a bill aimed at universities’ diversity practices that sparked anger among students and faculty.

Gov. Eric Holcomb has seven days to sign legislation once it lands on his desk. If he does not sign a bill, it still passes into law. If he vetoes a piece of legislation, the legislature can override the veto with a majority vote in both houses.

Here are the bills that passed the statehouse this year and now await action by the governor:

Bills address reading, cellphone bans, and college tenure

Senate Bill 1 tightens the state’s policy for holding back and remediating young children who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency by third grade, unless they meet one of a few exceptions. Amendments to the bill created a policy for parents to appeal a remediation recommendation.

Addressing students’ declining reading skills was the top priority of the GOP supermajority. While proponents of the bill hope that few students are held back, schools are bracing for more students in third grade classrooms. Advocates for English learners warn that the state could run afoul of federal law by retaining students only for a lack of English proficiency.

Meanwhile, Senate Bill 6, a companion bill, would require the Indiana Department of Education to identify older students who don’t read proficiently.

Senate Bill 185 requires school districts to adopt policies banning communication devices like cellphones from the classroom. The policies must include exceptions for emergencies, health needs, and cellphone use at the direction of a teacher or under an individualized education program.

Senate Bill 202, the most controversial bill of the 2024 session, makes many changes to colleges’ tenure, promotion, and diversity policies.

It would prohibit colleges from offering tenure to or promoting faculty who have failed to expose students to a variety of political or ideological frameworks, and create complaint procedures aimed at professors who have shared political opinions unrelated to their academic discipline. It would also compel colleges to consider “intellectual diversity” in policies alongside cultural diversity. An amendment removed part of the bill that changed the makeup of university boards.

The bill’s author, Sen. Spencer Deery, said it would help more conservative students feel comfortable on university campuses, pointing to Indiana’s declining college-going rate as one measure that they currently do not.

Critics said the bill would stifle classroom discussion and force professors to teach false information in order to comply, and ultimately lead to a brain drain in the state as faculty leave Indiana or refuse to teach here.

Education-related bills significantly changed during session

Several education-related bills passed after going through multiple changes as they moved through the legislature, though some reverted to their original language after negotiations in conference committees. Among them:

House Bill 1002 codifies a definition of antisemitism and prohibits religious discrimination at the state’s schools. The bill passed the House with a definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which the Senate removed. In a compromise, the conference committee kept the definition but left out the contemporary examples of antisemitism that the alliance includes.

House Bill 1137 requires principals to allow a student to leave for off-campus religious instruction. The bill saw many changes throughout session, including a House amendment that would have recognized Indiana students and schools for civic excellence. The Senate removed that amendment and instead added language allowing chaplains to work in public schools. A conference committee removed the chaplains provision, returning the bill to its original form.

Senate Bill 211 establishes an excellence in civics education designation for students and schools. A conference committee removed several House amendments that would have subjected charter schools to open-records law, established an internet safety curriculum, and allowed school employees to remove disruptive students from the classroom.

House Bill 1001 allows siblings of students who have Education Scholarship Accounts — a type of school choice program for students with disabilities — to qualify for their own ESA. The bill, originally intended to modify last year’s law on Career Scholarship Accounts, also allows students to use Career Scholarship Accounts to obtain their driver’s licenses.

Senate Bill 282 establishes truancy prevention policies requiring schools to meet with parents of chronically absent students in kindergarten through sixth grade, and establish plans and wraparound services to improve attendance. The bill also requires school officials to report truant students to the prosecutor’s office, and requires prosecutors to take legal action against parents of students who are habitually truant.

House lawmakers removed a provision to study chronic absenteeism among older students in a summer committee.

They also amended the bill to include a provision that truant students couldn’t participate in extracurricular activities, and one allowing schools to bar parents from campuses for making multiple unsubstantiated claims against teachers. But those changes were removed by a conference committee.

Bills that make smaller changes to education with big impacts

House Bill 1104 lays out requirements for schools’ armed intruder drills, including that students can’t be subject to drills that include sensory components, like simulations of gunfire.

House Bill 1243 enacts numerous education policy changes, including:

Requiring the State Board of Education to establish a new standard Indiana diploma to replace the existing ones by October 2028.
Establishing curriculum requirements for computer science and compelling the Department of Education to approve curriculum for internet safety.
Extending the personal finance curriculum to 8th graders.
Requiring school districts to adopt a policy on habitually truant students participating in extracurricular activities, though the bill doesn’t specify what those policies should be.
Specifying that literacy achievement grants are not subject to collective bargaining.
Creating professional development and curricular resources for mathematics.

House Bill 1380 also includes a number of policy changes:

Prohibiting schools from charging a fee for out-of-district transfer students.
Expanding the Indiana Learns program that gives students up to $1,000 for tutoring beyond 2026.
Requiring that Innovation Network schools receive 100% of their state tuition support dollars, and prohibiting school districts from charging them above a certain amount for goods and services.
Directing the Department of Education to establish pilot programs on student transportation and school facilities.
Requiring universities to publicize information about hazing incidents.
Requiring the Commission on Seclusion and Restraint to meet twice a year and adopt a policy requiring schools to minimize or eliminate the use of time-outs.

Senate Bill 270 would clarify that school districts must close underutilized buildings and make them available to charter schools for $1.

Senate Bill 48 originally would have required colleges to compile information about jobs and pay related to the degrees they offer. But when colleges reported that they already have much of this information, lawmakers amended the bill to require schools to prominently post links to it instead.

Senate Bill 8 would require all high schools to offer the College Core, a certificate earned by completing a set of coursework that’s recognized by all Indiana public colleges. It would also require colleges and universities to explore the possibilities of conferring associate degrees and offering three-year degree programs.

School-related bills that didn’t pass

Several bills passed one chamber of the legislature but didn’t make it through the other.

Senate Bill 128 would’ve required schools to seek school board approval for their sex education curriculum, and publicize the materials, plus information about who teaches the courses and when.

Senate Bill 287 would’ve required schools to teach cursive writing.

Senate Bill 50 would’ve permitted chaplains to serve in public schools as counselors.

Senate Bill 214 would’ve required schools to post links to mental health resources for students, and Senate Bill 141 would’ve required counselors to spend a certain amount of time providing services to students.

House Bill 1073 would’ve required schools to install video cameras in special education classrooms, and allowed parents to review recordings in certain situations. Some provisions of this bill regarding seclusion and restraint were added to House Bill 1380.

House Bill 1304 would’ve created a mastery-based education program, along with a number of other policy changes that were inserted into House Bill 1243.

House Bill 1376 would’ve restricted school referendums to general elections or municipal elections only.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Lawrence schools want to find out why educators love their jobs, but why they are leaving

2024-02-20T21:12:21+00:00

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Could more remote work keep teachers from leaving the field?

If a school can’t find a calculus teacher, could it share with another school down the street?

And, most importantly, why are teachers quitting the profession?

These are the kinds of questions that a new project at Lawrence schools hopes to answer in search of solutions to common “pain points” in education that are driving down teacher retention rates.

Fifteen teachers and administrators, representing each of the district’s four middle and high schools, are participating in the Reimagining the Teacher Role Cohort led by Teach Indy, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit. Cohort members are interviewing their colleagues, identifying issues, and finding solutions to pilot at each school next year.

What these will be is still to be determined, said Sara Marshall, executive director of Teach Indy, but could include proposals to give teachers some of the benefits of remote work, or fill vacant positions in creative ways.

The goal is to raise teacher retention rates that dropped in the wake of the pandemic and have yet to recover. Data from the Indiana Department of Education compiled by the Fairbanks Foundation indicates that statewide teacher retention rates dropped from 84% in 2021 to 77% in 2022, before recovering slightly in 2023 to 80%.

In Marion County, that rate dropped from 70% in 2021 to 66% in 2022, also recovering slightly to 68.5% in 2023.

And, in Lawrence schools, teacher retention dropped from a high of 86% in 2021 to around 77% in 2022 and 76% in 2023.

There are a number of reasons why teachers typically leave the profession, Marshall said, including workload, pay, and a lack of respect. Fewer candidates are entering the profession to replace retirees, she added, and some teachers have left to pursue remote positions.

The project allows teachers from the four schools to brainstorm together on how to reverse these trends, but the solutions they’ll put in place might be unique to each building, said Andrew Harsha, the district’s director of secondary learning. The district doesn’t have money committed to the solutions, but may rely on fundraising or grant funding in the future, according to a representative of Teach Indy.

“We are leaning on our teachers to help come up with solutions, leaning into them for innovation and creativity,” Harsha said.

One of the cohort’s possible solutions could be some flexibility in the workweek, giving teachers a four-day teaching schedule, with the fifth day allotted for remote work or professional development, Marshall said.

The fifth day for students might be supervised by substitutes or community organizations, she said. A similar idea was considered at Indianapolis Public Schools in 2022.

Another solution might be to share hard-to-fill positions, like math and science teachers, between schools, Marshall said.

“I think schools are going to have to think creatively,” Marshall said.

The project, which launched in January, began with teacher teams interviewing their colleagues about their experiences — both positive and negative. Their questions seek to find out what teachers like about teaching, as well as whether they’d ever considered leaving the profession, and if they could pinpoint what might alleviate their stress.

One of the common themes so far is that working with students is a source of joy for teachers, said Rachel Anderson, a Lawrence Central High School math teacher who’s part of the project.

“It’s what gives people energy and makes them feel positive. But sometimes that’s the thing making them more tired, too,” Anderson said.

Anderson said her team’s goal is to interview teachers from a wide range of backgrounds — including those who took nontraditional paths to teaching — in order to learn more about what’s important to them.

As a teacher who took an alternate route to licensure through the state’s Transition to Teaching program, Anderson said she values mentorship, which helped her find her footing as she started teaching. But ultimately, any solutions the cohort comes up with will be informed by her colleagues’ thoughts.

“I have some hopes of what I want, but I know that no program that we implement will be successful without that input,” she said. “This is work we’re trying to do with people, not to people.”

The Lawrence project intends to roll out building-level pilot programs next school year. Teach Indy hopes to work with more districts on future projects.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s what the Indiana AG said about making changes to the ‘Eyes on Education’ tip line

2024-02-09T22:20:17+00:00

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Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office said Friday it will not remove materials from a website it launched earlier this week publicizing complaints about schools’ materials on race, gender and politics.

The office said it would, however, post responses from school districts challenging the validity of those complaints. But in order to dispute the materials, Rokita’s office told districts they had to prove the materials were not used by or made available in their schools.

Rokita’s “Eyes on Education” portal aims to compile and display complaints about “potentially inappropriate” material in schools that are “real examples of socialist indoctrination from classrooms across the state,” along with the purported material.

Districts responded by challenging the veracity of the materials labeled as theirs, saying the site’s characterizations of the content were inaccurate or misleading. Some of the posted material dates back to 2018.

The website’s launch triggered the latest confrontation between the state attorney general and schools over how educators handle controversial social and political topics, a fight also taken up by state lawmakers.

A spokesperson for Rokita’s office said the materials on the portal support the premise that there has been “indoctrination” in Indiana’s schools, even if policies have changed. Others, however, say it could have a chilling effect on teachers and schools.

The portal, which launched Tuesday, names 13 school districts and one university, and includes complaints with links to photos, screenshots, or presentation materials.

Rokita’s office said what’s posted are “exact documents provided to our office” and many were “from teachers directly and were easily verified.” A spokesperson said the office will reach out to those who submitted to the portal as well as schools if necessary. However, a vast majority of the districts on the portal previously told Chalkbeat that they were not asked in advance about the portal materials.

Rokita’s office also said it will conduct investigations to see if schools are breaking any state laws by using those materials. A spokesperson added that the portal is a tool for parents to “stop indoctrination more quickly and can ensure bad history doesn’t repeat itself in districts where such policies are claimed to be retired.”

Districts ask for updates to ‘Eyes on Education’

Multiple districts have asked Rokita for updates or changes. Four districts each shared with Chalkbeat the same email response to their concerns from the Rokita’s office that set a high bar to dispute the posted materials.

“Please provide documentation that the contents are not, or were not, provided to a student, communicated to a student or parent, or part of any curriculum, program, or activity made available to the school community by a teacher, school district, or school corporation,” the email from Corrine L. Youngs, policy director and legislative counsel in Rokita’s office, reads.

It also says that if the materials contain something that is outdated, the district needs to provide documentation that it was repealed or no longer used, as well as the new policy.

But the office will not remove materials in the portal, a spokesperson for Rokita’s office said Friday, adding that the complaints from schools indicated that the material had once been taught, even if it had subsequently been removed or updated.

Having the complaints and the districts’ responses on the portal “will actually help teachers and school administrators because it will expose misinformation that can naturally exist amongst the public,” the spokesperson argued.

As of Friday evening, the portal had been updated for two districts. It now labels a “gender policy” from Clark-Pleasant Community School Corporation as “retired” in 2023 and says a gender support plan from New Prairie United School Corporation was revised in November 2022.

Power of Rokita’s office may leave schools stranded

The spokesperson for Rokita’s office pointed to the previous outcry over critical race theory in schools and said the portal supported Rokita’s position.

“The types of people complaining now are the same ones who said there was no indoctrination going on in Indiana schools at all,” the spokesperson said. “Now these same types are saying – ‘well, the items on the Portal are no LONGER being taught, or we fired that teacher, or we fired that vendor, or we retired that policy.’ They just proved our point and elevated even further the value of the office in education matters.”

A legal theory, critical race theory has become an umbrella term for discussions of race and identity.

And there’s likely little recourse for schools unhappy with what Rokita’s done, one expert said.

The power of the attorney general’s office has increased over the years. Many attorneys general have gone on to run for higher office, which can incentivize partisan actions, said Michael Wolf, acting director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University.

Wolf added that as elected officials, attorneys general have wide latitude to act and little oversight. A governor does not oversee an elected attorney general’s office, for example (Rokita was elected to his office in 2020). And the Indiana Department of Education, which also has no authority over Rokita, said it is not involved with the portal.

Plus, Wolf said the portal could fall under the scope of the attorney general’s responsibility to advise other government officials, like those at the state education department or local prosecutors, who could then take action.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana’s AG launched a tip line for controversial classroom material. It’s already raising concerns about accuracy and privacy.

2024-02-06T22:40:27+00:00

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The Indiana Attorney General has unveiled an online portal for complaints about the teaching of race, gender, and political ideology in schools — an aggressive move that raises concerns about privacy and the veracity of the material made public.

The new website, which was announced Tuesday by state Attorney General Todd Rokita, is called “Eyes on Education” and includes complaints dating back to 2018. The website launched with material already posted, but the included school districts and state department of education didn’t know about it.

It lists 13 school districts around Indiana and the Indiana University School of Medicine with links to photos, screenshots, or presentation materials that the office describes as “potentially inappropriate.” In some cases, the portal also includes the addresses, phone numbers, and emails of people identified in the materials. Schools have characterized these materials as incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate.

Molly Williams, a representative for the Indiana Department of Education, said the agency was not made aware of the portal when it was under construction or when it launched.

The portal represents an escalation of a longstanding fight between Rokita and Indiana school districts over how lessons on race and gender are taught in schools. In establishing and promoting the website, Rokita has taken a similar approach to a controversial tip line started by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin for parents to report “divisive” teaching at their schools.

There appeared to be problems right off the bat.

A majority of the districts listed on the portal told Chalkbeat that they were not contacted by Rokita’s office and were unaware of the portal until Tuesday. A press release from the AG’s office was sent early Tuesday morning, but not publicly posted on the website until hours later.

Rokita’s office did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about how and when submitted complaints are posted publicly; what an investigation and verification by his office into the complaints will entail; whether the office would pursue legal action; and whether the persons identified in the material gave permission for his office to post their contact information online.

After at least one district complained about the portal, Rokita’s office told that district that it would remove inaccurate material.

The ACLU of Indiana said in a Tuesday post on the site formerly known as Twitter that the website is “an effort to intimidate teachers” from discussing issues of racial equity and LGBTQ topics.

“Classroom inclusivity benefits everyone. Classroom censorship does nothing but harm,” the group said.

What the website for ‘potentially inappropriate’ materials shows

The materials posted on the Indiana portal take the form of photos of online quizzes and presentations, flags and lessons in the classroom, and overviews of complaints about districts’ materials.

They cover a range of topics, from copies of school districts’ policies on supporting transgender students, to an email announcing a college presentation for Black students, to a list of sexually sensitive content identified in a school’s required reading.

Most of the materials posted online are undated and many others are from 2020 to 2021, when fury over the teaching of race in K-12 schools peaked in Indiana and nationwide and culminated in a bill that attempted to ban “divisive concepts” from K-12 classrooms.

Metadata for the website indicates the link for the portal, which ends in “education-liberty” was started in 2022.

Rokita, a Republican, has waded into this fight before. In 2021, he released his “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” which took aim at social-emotional learning and critical race theory, terms commonly used as shorthand for broader lessons on gender, sexuality, and race. (A former member of Congress, Rokita served on the U.S. House education committee.)

In a press release, Rokita said his office would investigate complaints submitted to the portal.

“Our kids need to focus on fundamental educational building blocks, NOT ideology that divides kids from their parents and normal society,” Rokita said in the release, which describes the website as a transparency portal for parents and educators.

The portal does not include responses from the 13 school districts and one university. It’s not clear how or if Rokita’s office verified that the submissions are from the school districts that are named.

And while names are redacted in some of the materials, the portal makes other names public.

One entry reviewed by Chalkbeat appears to be a screenshot of an online form submitted to Rokita’s office with concerns about a school’s bathroom policy, with the complainant’s name, address, email address, and phone number visible.

Rokita’s office did not say whether this person or others gave permission for their information to be posted publicly.

What school districts listed on Rokita’s portal say

Chalkbeat contacted all 13 districts and one university listed on the portal — all 11 that responded objected to the information on the portal in some way.

Those 11 districts — Brownsburg, Carmel Clay, Center Grove, Clark-Pleasant, Franklin Community, Hamilton Southeastern, New Prairie, Noblesville, Penn-Harris-Madison, Mooresville, and Martinsville — also said they were not notified in advance about the portal or that they would be included. Several districts also stressed that families can bring their concerns and questions to school leaders, and at least two reached out to Rokita’s office to correct the information.

Some of the strongest words came from the superintendent of The Metropolitan School District of Martinsville, which said the documents on the portal do not reflect what the district teaches students.

“The posting suggests that the District endorses radical gender identity curriculum, which is reckless and inaccurate. Furthermore, the posting lacks context and clarity,” Superintendent Eric Bowlen said in a statement. “We invite Attorney General Rokita and any of our legislators to visit our schools to observe as our students learn from the standards required by the Indiana Department of Education.”

Carmel Clay Schools spokesperson Emily Bauer said that the district “was not previously notified regarding the website or asked to confirm the validity of submitted screenshots.”

Bauer also said several documents “originated from a now-defunct outside special interest group, and others appear to be online quizzes with no additional context provided.” Bauer added that it is “irresponsible to portray these screenshots as curriculum.”

Clark-Pleasant Schools said a hyperlink to a board policy document about transgender students “is outdated, retired, and no longer exists here at CPCSC!”

“We are disappointed in the release of this incorrect information and the fact that no one from the Attorney General’s office reached out to verify this information,” the district said.

The New Prairie United School Corporation said a plan listed on the portal is not in active use by the district, said Superintendent Paul White.

“The support plan was changed after community meetings in which we received input from parents, the community, and our school attorney,” White said in an email. “Parents are informed in ALL instances when a student comes forward to declare transgender status.”

The portal’s materials listed for Noblesville Schools are all old and not in use, said spokesperson Marnie Cooke. The site listed a screenshot of a presentation that the document claims was on white privilege, featuring a link that does not work.

The portal also listed screenshots of assignment details for an English course detailing the meaning of privilege, and a screenshot of an assignment on dominant and subordinated groups of people that the office labeled “CRT” (which is shorthand for critical race theory).

“For example, one document shows someone who was a volunteer community speaker in 2018. He presented content that was not appropriately vetted by us and we apologized to families at the time,” Cooke said in an email. “Another item is from an employee who is no longer with Noblesville Schools and the third example is also not in use.”

The Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation said the “minority scholarship” document listed for the district in the portal is from a one-day conference that the district did not sponsor, host, or plan, and was not a district minority scholarship as implied, according to the district.

Another document portraying an email sent to students about a representative from Goshen College available to speak to Black students was not a “Black Only College Fair” as it was labeled on the portal, Penn-Harris-Madison also countered.

And a third document labeled “diversity activities” was used in 2021 with students who were enrolled in a Preparing for College and Careers course and an Ivy Tech course, the district said. The Penn High School teacher obtained the diversity activities from the course framework provided by Ivy Tech faculty and made adaptations using professional judgment.

“After teaching this lesson and receiving parental/guardian feedback, Penn High School made changes to the courses while also maintaining state standards,” the district said. “The diversity activities shared have not been used at Penn High School since 2021.”

Indiana teachers ‘feeling under surveillance’

Analysts say the website could potentially have a chilling effect on classroom lessons and educators.

John Rogers, director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, said it’s important for teachers to feel comfortable enough to lead their students through historical lessons and discussions about different experiences within a multiracial democracy. But they’re less likely to do so under the threat of being reported to the state.

“It’s very hard to lean into those conversations when you are feeling like you might be attacked, publicly and in bad faith,” Rogers said.

Existing democratic processes allow parents and educators to share concerns with governing bodies that can then make decisions about what should be allowed in schools — building mutual respect and trust, he said.

But the website takes a “name and shame” approach, Rogers said, that ultimately foments conflict for the sake of conflict and heightens a sense of ill-will and mistrust in education.

Christopher Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University, said it’s not clear how the investigations will work and whether they’ll be fair, whether complaints reflect real concerns, and what kind due process is available for individuals accused in the materials, he said.

Posting personal information also creates concerns about doxxing, a term that refers to publishing people’s personally identifiable information without their consent.

Many Republican-led states have adopted measures like the tip line or a parents’ bill of rights, he said, though parents already have the right to view and challenge curriculum, as well as attend school board meetings and run for office.

He said anecdotal evidence suggests the measures have likely negatively impacted teacher recruiting and retention.

“They don’t have the autonomy they expected. They’re feeling under surveillance,” he said. “They’ve likened it to McCarthyism.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana wants to address student behavior. Here’s one school’s approach involving birdhouses.

2024-01-30T17:22:05+00:00

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At first, it’s not clear what birdhouses have to do with student discipline.

A half dozen of them welcome visitors to James Whitcomb Riley Success Academy. Another dozen line the hallways. Plaques in the woodshop reveal that each colorful house was built by a student for a teacher who has made an impact on their lives.

Students come to J.W.R. after running into trouble at their home Perry Township middle schools. Some are facing expulsion. Others are invited to attend as a preventative measure after a string of discipline referrals or excessive absences.

The birdhouses are a hallmark of the school’s service learning program, which sees a small cohort of students every quarter work on philanthropic projects in order to build leadership and cooperation skills during a critical age for development when behavior incidents may spike.

The need for similar programs may grow as lawmakers seek solutions following concerns from teachers across the state and nationwide about student behavior since COVID.

Both in-school and out-of-school suspensions spiked in Indiana in 2022 after a drop in 2021, according to data from the Indiana Department of Education compiled by the Fairbanks Foundation, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit.

In Marion County districts alone, many middle schools had higher rates of discipline incidents than other types of schools within the same district. Southport Middle School in Perry Township, for example, had an in-school suspension rate of 23.3%, or 306 students, over twice that of Southport High School at 9% and 187 students in 2022.

Indiana lawmakers have now taken notice, with bills on disruption, cell phone use, and absenteeism all filed in the Statehouse this year.

House Bill 1262, authored by Rep. Vernon Smith and backed by the Indiana State Teachers Association, originally allowed schools to suspend chronically disruptive and defiant students. Lawmakers intend to amend the bill to instead create a committee to study student discipline.

Smith said he brought the bill after discussions with teachers. Ongoing issues with behavior are also beginning to worsen teacher recruiting and retention, he added.

“You spend so much time on behavior problems that you don’t have time to teach,” Smith said.

In Marion County districts, many middle schools had higher rates of disciplinary incidents than other types of schools within the same district.

The goal of the program at J.W.R., school officials say, is to make a positive impact on students’ behavior that stays with them long after the challenging years of middle school.

“We’re going to spend the time with the student whether it’s now or later,” said Joe Shelburn, the school’s director. “We’d rather do it now, when we can be positive, as opposed to coming up with our best list of consequences further down the line.”

Middle school is a time of development

Advocates say discipline should be done with the intent to teach, not punish.

This may be especially true in middle school.

Students experience rapid physical, mental, and psychological development during the middle grades, said Katie Powell, director for middle level programs at the Association for Middle Level Education. They have new and unique social emotional needs educators should be aware of when it comes to discipline.

“So much of our development as human beings is taking place in early adolescence,” Powell said. “We can have healthier high schoolers and adult citizens if we have healthy and successful middle schoolers.”

They begin to realize that not everyone in their class is their friend, Powell said. But they may not yet have the skills to properly navigate these changing social situations.

“It’s hard to solve systems of equations when your best friend said ‘I’m not your best friend anymore,’” Powell said. “Until students feel safe, until students feel included, they’re not going to see academic growth.”

All the changes of adolescence are in full force in sixth to eighth grade, said Shelburn, when students find themselves in larger schools with more freedom and responsibility. While some misbehavior is expected, it crosses the line when it begins to impact others, he added.

Alternative middle schools like J.W.R. can create positive school communities for students who need them, Powell said.

The J.W.R. program runs quarterly and serves as an alternative to expulsion for many students.

Most students and their parents accept the offer to attend J.W.R., Shelburn said. There’s only one chance to attend — students who get in trouble again complete a separate, virtual program. Students who are on the verge of expulsion participate in the morning class, while the afternoon class includes students with various disciplinary issues.

Throughout the quarter, students work solo and in groups in the woodshop, earning badges as they master tools and skills. While the birdhouses are a signature project, students have also made windchimes for Perry staffers who have lost a loved one.

This year, through grants by the Perry Township Education Foundation, they proposed and executed their own philanthropic projects. Students made funding presentations to the foundation and then purchased materials for their work.

The initial ideas were lofty, like curing cancer, said Shelburn, the school’s director. Teachers helped them set more realistic goals. They fixed drywall and lunchroom seats in elementary schools, filled backpacks with supplies, and volunteered at a district Shop with Cops event.

All of these initiatives serve to put the students in leadership roles, said Shelburn, and lead to a sense of investment in their education, which in turn improves behavior.

“There’s a difference between doing things because they want to and because it’ll make their teachers happy,” he said.

‘Embrace them for who they are’

The semester at J.W.R. ends with student presentations to their parents, teachers, and the larger community on what they’ve learned, which Shelburn said provides a much-needed sense of achievement for students who struggle to get to the finish line.

Speaking at the December graduation, Janmel said she saw the school as a second chance to be a better student. The teachers had helped her understand what to do when she felt angry. They taught her to have goals and work hard.

After nine weeks at J.W.R., Janmel’s mother, Janjai Roberts, said the middle schooler was happier and in better control of her emotions.

“It helps the kids be who they are and be successful,” Roberts said. “That’s what I want for my kids.”

Every student sees growth from the time they first set foot in the school to when they graduate at the end of the semester, but the change is different for every student, said teacher Rodney Claiborne.

Remember to stay calm, he told Janmel as she said goodbye — no running or screaming when things get tough.

J.W.R. teachers and staff often see their graduates again when they visit Perry high schools to reaffirm to students that they’re still in their corner, Shelburn said.

While middle school can present challenges, it’s also an ideal time to address behavior issues before such problems get harder to remedy.

“Rather than try to fix them, we need to embrace them for who they are,” he said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Private school enrollment grew in Indiana this year, but vouchers are growing faster

2024-01-04T17:29:56+00:00

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Private school enrollment in Indiana continued to grow steadily this school year, though the number of students using vouchers grew at a faster rate, new data from the Indiana Department of Education shows.

The number of students in public schools, meanwhile, has remained virtually unchanged since 2020-21, declining by just a fraction of a percentage point each year. Over 1 million Hoosier students attend public schools.

But private school enrollment — 92,000 students this school year — has set another record following Indiana’s expansion last year of Choice Scholarships that made the voucher program available to nearly every Indiana family. The revised Choice Scholarships program raised the income threshold for eligibility and eliminated other requirements. Supporters say the change extends more opportunities to more children and families. Critics say Indiana and other states are increasingly subsidizing relatively wealthy families who can afford private schools without vouchers.

Enrollment at private schools increased by around 4,600 students this year. These schools can be secular or religious, independent or affiliated with a diocese. Enrollment in private schools has grown by around 5% each year over the last three years.

Meanwhile, the state education department approved over 69,000 Choice Scholarship applications during the first round of the program this year. That’s an increase of about 16,000, or 30%, from the over 53,000 applications it approved for the previous year.

This disparity could indicate that many of the families using the vouchers aren’t new to private schools. Critics have said expanding the income requirements for the program would not primarily benefit children living in poverty and attending failing public schools — the stated goal of many voucher programs.

“It validates what we were concerned about once they lifted the income requirements, that this is an entitlement program for the wealthy,” said Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, which advocated against the voucher expansion during the 2023 legislative session.

Directing state funding to private schools also raises issues of accountability for public dollars, and leaves less for public schools that legislators are obligated to fund, Fuentes-Rohwer added.

But school choice supporters say Indiana should be commended for offering families more flexibility. If, for example, a family received a voucher for a student who was already enrolled in private school, they may now be able to afford to send a sibling to private school as well, said Paul DiPerna, vice president of research and innovation at EdChoice, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that advocates for school choice.

“It’s leveling the playing field and the access and opportunity for families, not just from family to family but within families,” DiPerna said.

There’s likely more than one reason private schooling is growing in Indiana, DiPerna said, including families’ preferences for personalized attention and learning. The effects of the state’s choice-friendly laws need closer study, he added.

This year’s data on who uses vouchers and which schools they’re used at will be available in the spring, according to the state education department.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Text with Chalkbeat for updates on the 2024 legislative session in Indiana

2024-01-04T17:28:02+00:00

The 2024 legislative session is about to begin in Indiana, and lawmakers are looking to address literacy, absenteeism, cell phones in schools, and more. And Chalkbeat Indiana has a new way to keep you updated about all that and more.

We’re launching Session Syllabus, a texting service that helps you stay in the know on big education issues and laws moving through the legislature this year.

Over the last two years, Indiana lawmakers have discussed and passed sweeping laws on what students learn and how their teachers teach — and education is once again likely to be at the top of the agenda.

Sign up by submitting your phone number in the form below to get texts about once per week from Chalkbeat with updates on key legislation affecting schools and students. Or you can text the word SESSION to (317) 648-5331 to sign up. You can also text us back with your questions about bills, issues, and the legislative process and we’ll try and track down the answer for you.

We also offer text updates from Indianapolis Public Schools meetings — sign up for those here.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Don’t make me use my teacher voice: An Indy teacher shares a poem on talking to students, parents

2023-12-20T12:00:00+00:00

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“Sit down. No milling around.”

“Stop touching her, leave him alone.”

Those are some of the things you might hear Harshman Middle School English teacher Nicole Cooper say in her “teacher voice.”

But it’s not just students who might be on the receiving end of the voice.

Cooper will use it with administrators, parents, and everyone in between, as she shared in a poem during the Teachers Lounge Story Slam on Nov. 16, co-hosted by Chalkbeat Indiana and Indy Kids Winning. After all, what else would you expect from an English teacher?

Read an excerpt from Cooper’s poem below:

“Clear the halls and get to class. No, baby, I don’t know what we did in class yesterday — that was yesterday. Okay? Did you even check Schoology? I mean, you ask three times a week.

You know what? Don’t make me use my teacher voice.

You all should have your materials. No, I don’t have any pencils for you. Is my name Wal-Mart? Do I look like Target?

You know what? Please, please y’all. Don’t make me use my teacher voice.”

Watch the full video below:

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana legislators may turn to law enforcement to reduce absences. Some schools have other ideas.

2023-12-19T12:00:00+00:00

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As the clock ticked down to the start of the school day at 8:05 a.m, Courtney Smith kept an eye out for the couple of students who were often absent.

Every morning last school year, Smith — the assistant principal at Pleasant Run Elementary in Warren Township schools — would call their parents, sometimes waking them up, to tell them that school was about to start. Eventually, Smith said, they began to expect her call. And in the end, their children’s attendance improved.

“They knew we cared,” she said. “They will show up, maybe late, but they’re still here.”

Pleasant Run is part of an all-hands effort that began last school year at the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township to improve student attendance and curb chronic absenteeism, which has spiked across Indiana and the nation in the wake of the pandemic.

Indiana policymakers have indicated that during the upcoming legislative session they may seek to reinforce existing laws on absenteeism, which can include punitive measures for excessive absences. These allow local prosecutor’s offices to take parents and teens to court, and make students ineligible for drivers’ licenses.

“We just want to make sure it’s a focus again, because anything good we do in the education system, for those kids who aren’t there, they’re not going to have success,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, a Republican.

Yet education officials and experts say family engagement at the school level is more effective at curbing absenteeism. Punitive approaches, they argue, don’t solve the core issues that lead students to miss school.

Data for Marion County from statewide and local agencies show that officials rarely used enforcement measures prior to the pandemic, and in some cases they’ve become even less common since then as officials aim for an approach that doesn’t send families to the justice system.

Nationwide, schools have cited a long list of reasons that absenteeism hasn’t fallen to pre-pandemic levels. These include confusion over when to keep sick kids home; ongoing mental health concerns and students’ own unwillingness to attend class; and greater socioeconomic needs in some areas. Transportation, childcare, and work schedules have also presented obstacles for some families, advocates say.

Warren Township schools can point to proof that its approach is working. Out of all the Marion County school districts, it’s had the biggest drop in what the Indiana Department of Education calculates as chronic absenteeism, from 63.5% of students missing 18 or more days of school due to excused or unexcused absences in 2020-21, to roughly 26% last school year. Pleasant Run Elementary’s rate declined from 37.2% to 15.1%, according to state records.

An attendance sign alerts students and staff of daily statistics in February at the front office of Eastridge Elementary in the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township. The district has prioritized boosting attendance post-pandemic.

What’s made the most difference is a focus on communicating with parents about attendance, school officials said, an effort spearheaded by the district’s new parent liaisons and supported by a new attendance system — all of which require resources, they added.

“We’re not there to attack them with attendance, we’re there to help and support,” Smith said.

Attendance enforcement drops in Marion County

State law provides several enforcement measures for students who are “habitually” absent, or parents of younger children who routinely fail to bring them to school. A “habitual truant” is defined in the law as a student who accrues more than 10 days of unexcused absences in the school year.

School officials must report a child who is habitually absent to the Department of Child Services, which handles cases of educational neglect on behalf of a parent, or juvenile court, which addresses the failure of older students to bring themselves to school.

State law also requires school officials to file affidavits in local courts against parents, who may then be prosecuted.

But even prior to the pandemic, the Marion County prosecutor’s office rarely filed cases against parents, and the current administration has revamped a diversion program to address root causes of absenteeism and keep families out of the court system. Only 29 criminal cases were filed from January 2014 to October 2016, for example, according to data from the office. Two resulted in misdemeanor convictions — resulting in a few days in jail, and in one case a bond of $145. The rest were dismissed.

Schools often refer students who miss around 20 to 30 days of school to the diversion program, said Jake Brosius, the youth programming coordinator with the prosecutor’s office. Brosius — a social worker by trade — calls families to understand why they’re missing school.

Sending families to court does not address the root cause of absenteeism, Brosius said.

“If they attend a court hearing, they can’t go to work that day,” he said. “And a lot of the families we work with are in those kinds of positions where each and every day can be a struggle.”

There were 11 referrals to the diversion program in the 2020-21 school year, then 30 in 2021-22, and 19 last school year. As of Oct. 31 this year, there has been one.

Data across other agencies also show a decline in punitive measures for absenteeism, which some officials say is a result of schools adopting alternative responses.

The Marion Superior Court Probation Department, which receives referrals from schools dealing with older truant students, received 47 referrals in 2021 and 20 in 2022. As of early December of this year, the department had received none. After an investigation into the alleged absences, those referrals are forwarded to the prosecutor’s office for a decision on whether to prosecute.

Marion County Chief Probation Officer Christine Kerl said many school districts are responding in ways that indicate their belief that “the court may not be the best response.”

“I think that does play into why we see so fewer truancy referrals than we did 10 years ago,” she said.

State law even allows school districts to list habitual truants age 15-17 as ineligible for a driver’s license with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Figures from the BMV show that since 2019, that figure peaked in 2020 at 32 students, then fell to 28 in 2021 and seven in 2022, before rising to 14 as of Oct. 31 of this year.

Still, Marion County absenteeism rates remain higher than the statewide average.

Lawmakers and state board of education members have recently raised alarms about these statistics, linking high rates of absenteeism to declining test scores. They’ve also called for more action focused on parents, whether through enforcement or awareness.

“I don’t know what can be done, but there has to be, in my opinion, a way to hold parents of minors accountable for those students not coming to school,” said State Board of Education member William Durham at an October meeting.

Legislative leaders have already confirmed that they’ll pursue a bill related to absenteeism in the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January.

Bray, the Senate president pro tempore, said at a November legislative preview event that lawmakers would look to existing enforcement measures provided by the Department of Child Services and other agencies, rather than create a new system to address absenteeism.

House Speaker Todd Huston added that existing laws needed to be reinforced.

Lawmakers could update state code to give a clearer picture of the reasons that students are absent, said Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, a professor at Indiana University who worked with Warren on improving attendance. She said doing so would shine a light on instances of “school withdrawal,” for example, where students are missing school because of instances like waiting for a repairman because their parents are at work.

Schools could then target their support, she said: A child who has ‘school refusal’ isn’t going to school due to challenges like bullying and anxiety, and needs a different type of intervention than a child experiencing school withdrawal.

How a trophy and stickers can improve student attendance

But there’s a gap between what some officials want and what research says may work best in reducing absenteeism.

Illinois schools that had strong family engagement prior to the pandemic had a chronic absenteeism rate that was 39% less than similar schools with weak engagement, according to a study released in October from the Learning Heroes nonprofit and The New Teacher Project.

Families understand the importance of education and want to send their children to school, said Kate Roelecke, director of strategy and operations at the Marion County Commission on Youth. But they may face obstacles like their work schedules, or a lack of transportation and child care that force older children to be responsible for younger siblings, for example.

Roelecke said the commission hopes to work with lawmakers on solutions that connect families to community resources. She said she’d rather see lawmakers study the issue of absenteeism this summer than address it in a rush during this session.

“We all want the same thing, we want kids to be getting a great education and we know being in school is a key piece of that,” she said. “I don’t think we’re going to accomplish that by putting parents, students, and schools on the defensive.”

At Pleasant Run Elementary, a five-foot trophy towers in Yvette Glenn’s office, waiting to be awarded to the classroom with the best attendance of the week. Glenn is the school’s family engagement liaison — a position funded by tax increases recently approved by voters — and is constantly coming up with creative ways to entice students to school.

Pleasant Run Elementary students who were at school on time the day before earned a "H.O.T." ticket that allowed them to wear pajamas the next day on Dec. 7.

“Our kids really want to be here too. They’re not asking their parents to stay home,” said Smith, the assistant principal.

Warren schools also adopted last year a new district-wide attendance system called RaaWee K12 that automates many aspects of tracking absenteeism. It flags which students need a call home, a letter home, or even a parent meeting after a certain number of days missed.

In the past, letters sent home about attendance were impersonal and made little improvement, Smith said. What’s different now is that calls and letters home come from teachers and staff seeking to understand why a student has been absent, and offering help with finding a solution.

“We’re learning a lot more about our families in a positive way,” Smith said. “Not due to the fact that they’re absent 15 days and we’re saying, ‘hey, where are you?’ We’re hitting that early on, and they’re able to share what their needs are.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Perry school opens a sensory room with space for students to wind down — or amp up

2023-12-13T12:00:00+00:00

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The first thing a student might notice in Burkhart Elementary School’s new sensory room is the light tube. Or maybe the slide. Or the trampoline and crash mat.

There are magnetic tiles on a wall to the right and scooter boards all over the floor.

The room invites play, but it also serves a purpose: To help students calm down — or wake up — and get ready to learn.

“It’s such a cool opportunity, because there’s not a child in the school who couldn’t benefit from it,” said Brooke McDonald, the school’s occupational therapist who supervises the room.

The sensory room at Burkhart opened last week thanks to a $9,000 grant from the Perry Education Foundation. It’s a first for the school and only the second such space in Perry Township elementary schools, said the foundation’s president, Mary Blake.

In addition to funding the project, foundation representatives assembled the furnishings, painted the room teal blue, and dimmed the overhead lights with fabric hangings.

The sensory room at Burkhart Elementary is open to all students who need it for a few minutes at a time.

It’s open to all students who need it for a few minutes at a time, said McDonald, who also trains classroom teachers to determine which students might benefit from a break in the room. Only a few students at a time will use the room.

It will also serve as an important space for students in the Comprehensive Intervention Program, the self-contained special education program. Two of these classrooms opened at Burkhart this year after Perry redrew its attendance boundaries.

What each student needs from the sensory room will vary.

CIP teacher Ailis McCarthy said her students who get overwhelmed with noise and activity benefit from spending a few quiet minutes in the room in the dim light or watching the bubble tower. After that, they’re able to rejoin the group for their regular activities, she said.

Before the sensory room opened, McCarthy’s students would try to take these breaks in her classroom — which can be distracting to others, she said.

“We make sure they have regular time in their schedule to decompress or bring them up, depending on what they need, and that room has enough activity that they could do both,” McCarthy said.

The sensory room will serve as an important space for students in the Comprehensive Intervention Program, the self-contained special education program.

McDonald said some students may use it as a space to calm down at the end of the day, do movement exercises, and watch the bubbles in the light tube. Others may jump on the trampoline or rock on the soft foam spinners to burn some energy and regulate their emotional state ahead of a lesson.

“All of that is good for your body, and they have no idea,” McDonald said. “They just think, ‘I’m playing on the slide.’”

The district hopes to open sensory rooms at each of its elementary schools, said Vickie Carpenter, assistant superintendent for foundational learning.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of Indiana students move on to 4th grade without reading skills, despite state policy

2023-12-05T20:51:34+00:00

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Thousands of Indiana students advanced through elementary school without demonstrating critical reading skills, new data from the Indiana Department of Education shows, as state lawmakers consider requiring more students who struggle with reading to repeat third grade.

It’s the state’s policy to hold back third graders who don’t pass the state reading test — the IREAD-3 — but data shows that retention rates have sharply decreased over the last decade, despite a simultaneous decline in reading scores.

Around 96% of students who did not pass the IREAD3 moved to fourth grade over the last decade, according to a presentation at the State Board of Education meeting on Tuesday.

In 2023, 13,840 third graders — or 18% of all third graders in the state — did not pass the test. Of those, 13,428 moved on to fourth grade and 412 stayed in third grade for another year.

The state allows exemptions to its policy for students who have disabilities, or those who are English learners. Roughly 5,500 students received an exemption in 2023, allowing them to move on to fourth grade despite not passing the test. These students do not take the reading test again, so it’s unclear whether they attained third grade reading skills, education department officials noted.

But the remaining 7,925 students who moved on to fourth grade in 2023 did not have such exemptions; they moved on through a practice known as social promotion, which is allowed under state policy. A 2021 memo from the Department of Education outlines that schools should consider a student’s “overall academic performance” and not just their IREAD-3 score in determining whether they need to repeat a year.

This group of students must take the IREAD-3 in fourth and fifth grades, and receive additional support in literacy, but officials said it’s not clear from the available state data if these students ever reach reading proficiency.

Indiana Education Secretary Katie Jenner noted that some of these students are transient, making it harder to track their data.

Changes to third-grade retention policy likely

Jenner emphasized that schools are not at fault for the drop in retention rates since 2012, when the state policy went into place.

Of the roughly 6,000 students who did not pass the IREAD-3 in 2012, around 4,000 received exemptions, and nearly 2,000 were retained. Just 24 were “socially promoted” to fourth grade without exemptions.

“Schools are following what’s allowable in the state,” Jenner said. “Schools are not breaking the rules on this piece.”

Lawmakers have already indicated that they want to tighten the rules on retention in the next legislative session that begins in January. Reading has been an ongoing focus for the legislature, which this year passed sweeping laws requiring schools and teacher preparation programs to use reading methods based in the science of reading.

Republican state leaders also said they would plan to tackle absenteeism, which Department of Education officials linked to poor reading performance. Absenteeism rates are highest in early elementary grades and in high school, according to state data.

At a November press conference, the Indiana State Teachers Association declined to comment on a potential change to the state’s retention policy until a bill is filed. ISTA President Keith Gambill said class sizes along with the state’s relatively late age for mandatory school entry of 7 years old could affect literacy rates.

“We support efforts to make sure we’re doing all we can to have students reading at grade level,” Gambill said.

Effects of retention are mixed

Along with retention rates, reading scores have shown a steady decline since the 2012-13 school year, when proficiency rates peaked at 91.4%. After dropping from 87.3% to 81.2% from 2019 to 2021, scores have inched up by a fraction of a percentage point each year to 81.9% in 2022-23.

The progress is not enough to meet the state’s goal of 95% of having third graders reading at grade level by 2027, officials noted.

Not reading proficiently by third grade is linked to several concerns, many of which education department officials highlighted on Tuesday. Students who don’t pass the IREAD-3 are unlikely to pass state tests in older grades, Jenner said. They experience ongoing academic challenges and are less likely to graduate.

“When a child is sitting in your classroom and is unable to read, it is mortifying when they’re in ninth grade,” Jenner said. “They’re acting out because they’re embarrassed.”

Studies on retention have shown mixed results, with many finding that retained students go on to have higher test scores.

A recent study of Indiana data from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found that third-grade retention boosted student performance in reading and math immediately, and that the effects persisted into middle school.

Furthermore, the study found that retention did not affect nonacademic factors like attendance and student discipline, which are a common concern when retention policies are discussed.

One of the study’s authors, NaYoung Hwang, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, told Chalkbeat that further studies are needed on the effects of retention on other nonacademic factors, like students’ self-esteem and friendships, and teachers’ expectations.

Hwang said early intervention was key in retention policies, as third grade represents a transition point in students’ learning.

“Up to fourth grade, most students have the opportunity to learn how to read. But then after that, it’s ‘read to learn,’” Hwang said. “Once you become a fourth grader, and you can’t read, it can have really negative consequences on all your learning.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Don’t use pushpins in the classroom and other lessons from teaching middle school

2023-11-29T21:46:55+00:00

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In her very first year of teaching eighth grade, Kali Burks learned three invaluable lessons.

First, if you tell a student who’s trying to evade work that they’re not leaving the classroom unless they’re bleeding, they may call your bluff.

Second, if you use pushpins in your classroom, that same student may use one to pierce their ears and draw blood.

And third — and most importantly — it’s OK to cut students a little slack before it comes to that.

Burks, a teacher in Wayne schools, shared her “teaching fails” at the “Don’t Make Me Use My Teacher Voice” story slam on Nov. 16. The event was presented by Teachers Lounge Indy, in collaboration with Chalkbeat Indiana and Indy Kids Winning.

Those weren’t the only hard-won lessons from her first year. Below is an excerpt from the “series of unfortunate events” that earned Burks the nickname “Firestarter.”

Here’s an excerpt of her story, lightly edited for clarity and length:

“He [the student] had gone through two Chromebooks, two loaner Chromebooks, and after he was forbidden from using any type of technology in our classroom, he would often try to find something else to destroy.

I did not know this fateful day that in the class period before, he had gotten a brand new phone and wanted to see what was inside of it. So he decided to take the back off it, try to get the battery out. Apparently when you pick at a battery long enough, it will start to smoke.

All of a sudden I hear, ‘Ms. Burks? There’s a fire.’

I turn around and this backpack is billowing smoke. I have never been in a fire situation in my life. So when I saw the smoke, I had no idea what to do. I leapt across my room, jumped over the backpack, ran out of my room looking for the fire alarm.”

Watch the full video below.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Record number of Indiana students using private school vouchers this year after expansion

2023-11-15T18:43:25+00:00

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A record number of Indiana students are using Indiana’s near-universal voucher program to attend private schools this year.

The Indiana Department of Education approved 69,271 Choice Scholarship applications during the first round of the program for the 2023-24 school year, as first reported by State Affairs. That’s a roughly 30% increase from the total number of applications — 53,262 — approved for the 2022-23 school year.

This year’s number is also likely to rise after the second application period, which closes in January.

The growth comes after state lawmakers broadened eligibility for the program during the last legislative session to make it available to most Indiana families. Legislators raised the income threshold to 400% of the federal free and reduced-price lunch threshold and removed other requirements like having a sibling who received a Choice Scholarship, or attending an F-rated school.

Proponents of Choice Scholarships have celebrated the expanded access to the program because they say parents should have more flexibility to choose a school for their children. Opponents, meanwhile, have raised transparency issues, and argued that the expansion would effectively increase government benefits for wealthy families, some of whom already send their children to private schools.

Additional data on the program, including information on students’ demographics, family income levels, and previous schools attended will be available in the spring as part of the Choice Annual Report, according to the education department.

The total amount spent on the first round of scholarships this year was not immediately available.

Participation in the program was already increasing rapidly before this academic year. The 2022-23 school year marked the largest increase in the number of Choice Scholarship students since the 2014-15 school year.

Data from the 2022-23 school year showed the average award was $5,854, and that the bulk of the Choice Scholarship awards went to households making under $100,000. The state awarded around $311 million in scholarships last year.

Additionally, the data indicated that around 64% of Choice Scholarship students had never before attended an Indiana public school. White students made up 62% of the program, while Hispanic students made up 19% and Black students made up 9.5%.

In the 2022-23 annual report, the department described the typical Choice Scholarship student as a white, elementary-aged girl who is from a family of around 4.75 people making $81,800 annually, and who has no record of attending an Indiana public school.

A list of schools participating in the voucher program during this school year is available here.

Correction: A previous version of the story misstated the new criteria for the Choice Scholarship program. The income threshold is based on the federal free and reduced-price lunch program.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Election results show Indiana voters mostly supporting school funding referendums

2023-11-08T21:50:59+00:00

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Indiana voters across the state showed support for giving their school districts the green light to use millions of dollars in property tax revenue to hire and retain teachers and fund programs and transportation.

Unofficial election results on Wednesday showed voters largely in support of property tax referendums in seven of the 11 districts that placed one on the ballot. Fort Wayne schools, along with three school districts in Hamilton County, saw strong support for their referendums. Monroe County schools’ referendum led Wednesday by just 108 votes.

Meanwhile, three districts in Lake County, including the School City of Hammond, saw the opposite results from their voters. By Wednesday, Lake Station schools’ referendum was down by only 14 votes.

Property tax referendums have long been a cornerstone of school funding in the state, but local revenue is especially important now as the federal emergency funding that has supported schools throughout COVID begins to sunset. Due to a change in state law this year, certain districts like the School City of Hammond will also need to share any property tax revenue with charter schools.

Indiana allows districts to ask local residents for three kinds of referendums: construction referendums for renovation and building projects; operating referendums for staff, programs, and services; and safety referendums, the newest type of ballot measure that allows schools to make security improvements and hire school resource officers.

This year, 11 districts sought approval from voters for new referendums or renewals of previous referendums. Below are the unofficial results according to the Indiana Election Division website.

Operating referendums

Carmel-Clay Schools, Hamilton County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 67.8% yes and 32.3% no.

Rate: $0.19 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years (renewal)

Annual revenue: $24 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $23 million dedicated to retaining and attracting teachers and staff

Hamilton Southeastern Schools, Hamilton County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 70.1% yes and 29.9% no.

Rate: $0.1995 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years (renewal at a decreased rate)

Annual revenue: $24 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $9 million for attracting and retaining teachers and $5.9 million for maintaining class sizes

Lake Station Community School Corp., Lake County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 49.3% yes and 50.7% no.

Rate: $0.54 per $100 of assessed value for eight years (renewal)

Annual revenue: $1.3 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $466,000 for school bus transportation

Monroe County Community School Corp., Monroe County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 50.5% yes and 49.5% no.

Rate: $0.085 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $8.5 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $6 million for funding low-cost preschool, $1.25 million for eliminating K-12 student fees

Northeast Dubois County School Corp., Dubois County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 60.6% yes and 39.4% no.

Rate: $0.18 per $100 of assessed value for eight years (renewal)

Annual revenue: $703,000

Highlights from the spending plan: $390,000 for academic programming

School City of Hammond, Lake County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 28.7% yes and 71.3% no.

Rate: $0.44 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years (renewal)

Annual revenue: $14.6 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $4.8 million for school bus transportation

School City of Whiting, Lake County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 39.8% yes and 60.2% no.

Rate: $0.17 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $1.1 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $418,000 staff recruitment

West Lafayette Community Schools, Tippecanoe County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 80.5% yes and 19.5% no.

Rate: $0.37 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years (renewal)

Annual revenue: $7 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $4.4 million for teacher and staff compensation for managing class sizes

Sheridan Community School Corp., Boone & Hamilton Counties

With 91% of precincts reporting in Hamilton County, the vote is 81.8% yes and 18.2% no in Hamilton County.

With 91% of precincts reporting in Boone County, the vote is 77.5% yes and 22.5% no.

Rate: $0.25 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years (renewal)

Annual revenue: $1.3 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $896,000 for retaining and attracting teachers and staff

Safety referendums

Bluffton Harrison MSD, Wells County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 42.2% yes and 57.8% no.

Rate: $0.075 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $445,000

Highlights from the spending plan: $254,000 for additional school resource officers

Fort Wayne Community School Corporation, Allen County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 53.3% yes and 46.7% no.

Rate: $0.10 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $12 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $4 million for student advocates

Construction referendums

School City of Hammond, Lake County

With 91% of precincts reporting, the vote is 23.7% yes and 76.3% no.

Rate: $0.4357 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Revenue: $84 million over 25 years

Highlights from the spending plan: Renovations and additions at Hammond Central High School and Morton High School

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

As Indiana’s immigrant population grows, one school offers English lessons to families

2023-11-02T19:56:38+00:00

A book, a pencil, and an English dictionary.

For years, those are the tools Carmen Nolasco used to study English on her own after immigrating to the United States from Mexico.

Occasionally, she said, she offered to teach Spanish in exchange for English lessons.

But she had never formally learned English from a teacher in a classroom until her son’s school invited her to do just that in June.

The program at Enlace Academy — a westside Indianapolis charter school where more than 80% of families speak a language other than English at home — serves students’ parents and family members, teaching them English using the same phonics-focused methods found in the school’s elementary classrooms.

Funded through federal emergency monies and a new $3.3 million state grant, the program is one of only a few in Indiana open to adult English learners at all levels of literacy — including those who don’t have a background in reading and writing in a first language.

The goal for the school is twofold: To help parents learn English, as well as give them the tools to work on literacy skills with their students at home. Parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins are drawn to the classes not just to learn English for themselves, but to connect with their students, teacher Megan Singh said.

Schools can be ideal starting places for engagement programs for immigrant parents, said Katie Brooks, a professor at Butler University’s College of Education, and the best ones will include two-way learning with families as well. While other Indiana schools offered English classes for adults in the past, many of those have been cut back, she added.

A program such as Enlace’s, which is ongoing rather than a one-off event, and involves the school’s teachers, allows for strong relationship-building with families, she said.

“In the cultures we’re serving, collectivism is so important,” Carlota Dall-Holder, Director of Academic Language at the Neighborhood Charter Network, Enlace’s charter operator. “We want to empower families and adults to support this literacy practice, because it’s really going to take a village.”

In the school library on a recent Saturday, alongside a dozen other Enlace family members, Nolasco said the classes have allowed her to better help her third grader with his reading and math, as well as communicate with his teachers and his speech therapist.

For an exercise using an artificial intelligence image generator, Nolasco described her happiness about being in class and learning a new language. The image she chose showed a student cheerfully raising her hand.

“It’s an excellent program for starting a new life,” she said.

Carmen Nolasco works on an assignment during Family English at Enlace Academy.

Teaching parents to teach their children

Family English, as it’s known to participants, is the brainchild of teacher Megan Singh, who came to Enlace in 2022 with a professional background in adult English education. Classes began last fall at the school, which is in its 11th year.

While working with adults is her passion, Singh said working in an elementary classroom put her in the midst of Indiana’s push to improve literacy through the science of reading. She teaches first and second graders throughout the week, and leads their families through similar literacy lessons on Saturday mornings.

Children are welcome and child care is provided, though many choose to stay with their parents. It’s one of the ways the school tries to remove barriers to attending weekly classes, Singh said, though others like work schedules and transportation remain. Between 25 and 40 people attend each week.

“With adult education, it’s not required,” she said. “Adults are choosing to come every week.”

The families that braved the cold and rainy weather on Oct. 28 began class by filling out letter prompts to their teachers in a nod to the school’s recent parent-teacher conferences: What are you doing well in English class? What do you need help with?

Singh and her co-teacher Ally Hall then turned the focus to phonics in a way that would feel familiar to an elementary student. First the class listened to and wrote down letter sounds — noting the differences in English and Spanish — before moving on to syllables, words, and sentences.

They worked on the endings -am and -an, using their fingers to write out words like fan, can, and yam in the air – a teaching strategy called skywriting.

In one exercise, Family English Class students worked in pairs, with one student reading descriptions and another writing and illustrating them.

Some adults can be reluctant to participate in skywriting or other hallmarks of elementary education such as coloring, Singh said. But most come around, especially after the teachers explain the science behind multisensory learning found in methods like Orton-Gillingham.

Singh primarily taught in English, while the students contributed translations in Spanish, French, and Haitian Creole to the words that the class was working on. Hall and two classroom assistants also moved throughout the rows, helping students write out the words they heard: Ham, can, man, van.

“Easy,” said Carmen Nolasco’s third grader, Emmanuel, from the back of the library, where he followed along with the assignment. He was ready for sentences.

Teacher Megan Singh leads students through a multisensory exercise on words ending with -an and -am.

School officials hope classes will improve student performance

By teaching their parents, the school hopes to better support students at home, and in turn, improve their academic performance.

Indiana expects 95% of all third grade students to pass the state reading test by 2027. But the statewide rate has stalled at around 82% for the past three years, after dropping 5 percentage points after the pandemic.

Proficiency rates among English learner students statewide dropped 8.5 percentage points from 2021 to 2022, and remained virtually unchanged this year at 64%, prompting alarm from education officials. Around 39% of Enlace students tested proficient in 2023, up one percentage point from the previous year, but down 33 points from before the pandemic.

“We’re not going to get an exemption because our school is 80% multilingual,” said Dall-Holder, the academic language director.

Like all Indiana schools, Enlace must teach reading through methods based in the science of reading under a new state law. But some lessons need to be modified to teach the school’s unique student population, Dall-Holder said.

For example, during a phonics lesson, a teacher might cover the picture of the word on a flashcard in order to help the student focus on sounding out the word, she said. But after the student reads the word, the teacher might reveal the picture to help reinforce the meaning.

“We have to evaluate: If this is what the science of reading is, but language acquisition says this, how do we provide the two so we’re giving students access to both?” she said. “It’s a national problem. It’s not being taken into consideration and it needs to be.”

Immigration creates greater literacy needs

More literacy classes for adults are needed in Indiana as the state sees a growing and changing immigrant population.

Districts like Perry Township have said they expect record numbers of new immigrant students this year, many of whom experienced disruption in their formal education due to political turmoil, natural disasters, or the pandemic. Perry started a program this year focused on helping students with limited English proficiency prepare for the workforce.

Adults, too, need more English language development than before as workforce needs shift from labor to customer service, Singh said.

Though there’s plenty of demand to expand the Saturday English program and open it to the broader community, Enlace officials said they intend to keep it open only to students’ families. One reason is that the school doesn’t have the funding and space to run a whole adult education program, Singh said.

While adult English language classes are available, there’s less support for programs that serve students who aren’t literate in their native language.

The school used federal emergency funding to start the program, and will now turn to a $3.3 million NextGen School Improvement Grant from the Indiana Department of Education to continue and expand it. That expansion would likely be through partnerships with other schools and organizations that could offer their own similar programs.

But funding aside, limiting the program to family members keeps it tightly focused.

“It’s cool to get to know parents and children,” Singh said. “Integrating learning for the student and their family has been very enjoyable.”

As the adult students worked through the listening exercise on the last Saturday of October, Singh demonstrated some of the movements she uses to teach letter sounds to her elementary students.

For V: Teeth over your lips, and then vibrate. For E: Put your thumb and forefinger below the chin to frame the smile that comes with saying the letter. “I” is scratching your nose, like an itch.

“Vowels are difficult in English,” she said to the class.

One student wanted to know: For English speakers too?

“Yes,” she said. “They’re always changing.”

Family English takes place in the Enlace Academy library on Saturdays.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Perry Township teachers will receive performance stipends through new grant funding

2023-10-27T16:07:59+00:00

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Perry Township schools will receive over $6 million in federal grant funding over three years to help hire and retain teachers, and to support efforts to improve literacy.

It’s the only district in Indiana and one of 29 nationwide to receive a Teacher and School Leader (TSL) grant from the U.S. Department of Education this year. The funds are aimed at increasing teacher compensation, retention, and diversity, according to the department, in part by helping districts create performance-based compensation models.

The bulk of the total funding — over $5 million — will go to performance-based pay and stipends for Perry teachers, while the remainder will fund two more literacy coaches at the district. The district will receive $2.5 million from the TSL grant in fiscal 2023.

Under the grant, the district will develop a formula to award teachers these bonuses. For every teacher, $1,000 will go into a fund, which will then be distributed according to teacher effectiveness, officials said. The district hopes to retain its master teachers, who model teaching and lead professional development, with the bonuses.

While the district already employs a literacy coach for elementary school students, one of the new coaches will focus on training teachers on reading skills for older students, officials said. Perry, which has a large population of English learner and immigrant students, has recently seen more new immigrant students enroll who can’t read fluently in English or another language, Southport High School principal Amy Boone said at a Thursday press conference.

As Indiana pushes to implement new literacy strategies tied to the science of reading, Perry officials said they hope to adapt some of those strategies to older students as well. In its grant application, the district said it hopes to grow overall student achievement in math and literacy by three percentage points per year, and narrow achievement gaps among Black and Hispanic students by 10%.

Another new coach will focus on literacy data for all students.

“It’s difficult for them to be successful if they lack the foundational ability to interact with the text,” said Jeff Spencer, the district’s assistant superintendent for K-12 services.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Perry schools will offer pay raises to attract and retain bus drivers

2023-10-26T21:18:16+00:00

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Perry Township Schools is raising wages for new and current bus drivers as the district continues to face staffing strains, even though it redrew some school enrollment boundaries earlier this year to try to ease the problem.

With a recruitment event coming up Saturday, the Perry school board this week approved a 5% pay increase for all current drivers that will be retroactive to the start of the school year. Additionally, drivers who have been with the district since at least since March will be eligible for a $500 retention bonus if they stay until January 2024.

Starting pay for new drivers will rise 2.5% to $23.57 per hour.

All other support staff, like cafeteria and custodial workers, will also get the same pay rate increases. Administrators, meanwhile, will receive a 4% base pay increase.

Like districts across the country, Perry faced struggles throughout the pandemic to keep its bus routes staffed. Ahead of this school year, Perry redrew elementary school enrollment boundaries to shorten and consolidate bus routes and ensure each route had its own regular driver in place, rather than a substitute. All the routes still have a regular driver, said district spokesperson Elizabeth Choi.

The change has improved the district’s busing issues, Choi said. But buses sometimes still arrive late because of staffing problems.

For example, on Monday, the first day after the district’s two-week fall break, a large number of drivers were absent, Choi said. In cases like that, the district will first turn to substitute drivers to fill the routes, then to licensed office staff and mechanics.

If there’s still a need, the district sends drivers back to cover additional routes — though this can mean some students arrive well after the school day has begun.

“Lack of drivers has a domino effect on the rest of the school day for our students,” said Board President Emily Hartman in a district press release, calling the pay increases a “necessary decision.”

Since January, 25 bus drivers have left the district, including 10 who retired, said Choi. The district has an 80% driver retention rate, she said.

The district is hosting a recruitment event on Saturday that will allow would-be drivers to test drive a bus, talk to current drivers, and ask questions. The event will take place at Jeremiah Gray Elementary from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Students’ mental health needs are growing. Here’s how one district is asking taxpayers to help.

2023-10-17T11:00:00+00:00

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After nine guns were found at Fort Wayne schools during the 2022-23 school year, a group of community members approached district leadership with an urgent request: Make schools safer.

Together with the district, a new safety committee made up of law enforcement, mental health professionals, and teachers compiled a list of recommendations to do so. Campuses needed technology updates and more school resource officers. But the group also recommended hiring additional staff to support students’ well-being.

Now, they’re asking voters to support the efforts by approving a property tax increase earmarked for school safety in the November election. At a rate of $0.10 per $100 of assessed value, the safety referendum would generate up to $12 million annually for eight years toward mental health staff and school resource officers, security improvements, and a program that teaches students nonviolence.

If passed, the referendum would create dozens of new positions at Fort Wayne schools working in tandem to address two major safety concerns schools are facing nationwide: An increase in gun violence and the number of weapons found at schools, as well ongoing strains on students’ mental health as a result of the pandemic.

Indiana schools have long relied on property tax increases to fund operations and construction. But in 2019, lawmakers also made it possible for districts to improve safety and security using tax dollars.

Only two districts have asked voters to approve safety referendums since 2019, and just one — Carmel schools — has been successful. Schools generally asked voters for fewer tax increases in the immediate aftermath of COVID, but the number has slowly risen since.

A tax referendum was a logical avenue to secure the funding needed for the committee’s recommendations, said Matt Schiebel, the district’s executive director of safety and community partnerships.

“Technology and security measures are important, but the well-being of students is as much or even more important to improving safety,” Schiebel said.

Referendum funding focuses on mental health staff

Fort Wayne schools, along with Bluffton Harrison schools in Wells County, are seeking to pass safety referendums this year in Indiana.

Bluffton Harrison schools intends to spend just over half of its estimated $445,000 in annual revenue from its referendum on additional school resource officers, and another one-quarter on student mental health supports.

Fort Wayne plans to use two-thirds of its total proposed funding for student mental health supports, like therapists, third-party counseling services, and positions known as student advocates, according to its spending plan.

Another one-quarter of the funding is planned for technology, including over $1 million next year for a weapons detection system. And the remainder is earmarked for more security personnel, including 12 additional school resource officers.

The average Fort Wayne taxpayer would pay a maximum of $76 more annually, though the bill would be less next year as the district intends to use only around $7 million of the available funds, Schiebel said.

Schiebel said the district has already leveraged other funding sources for safety, like its facilities referendum for building improvements, emergency funding for student mental health positions, as well as $100,000 from the state-funded Indiana Secured School Safety grant for a school resource officer. It also partners with the Fort Wayne Police Department and the Allen County Sheriff’s Office to place school resource officers in its middle schools.

But a safety referendum would offer more.

“Safety has always been a priority and we have always used any means necessary to do all we can,” Schiebel said.

The largest proposed expenditure — over $4 million — would go to hiring student advocates, adults who monitor hallways, parking lots, and bathrooms. They also may be responsible for de-escalating situations, but not disciplining students.

Their most important task is building positive relationships with students by serving as another adult to turn to when conflict arises, Schiebel said.

The district has already piloted the role at South Side High School through the use of federal emergency funding, which is now coming to an end, Schiebel said. Through referendum funds, the district hopes to sustainably expand the program and place two student advocates in each of its high schools, as well as one in each elementary and middle school, or 56 total.

They would join other new staff, including 18 new mental health therapists slated to serve middle and high schools.

Data indicates that students need these mental health supports more than ever, with nearly half of all Indiana students reporting feeling persistently sad or hopeless in 2021.

“Being in-person gives students the opportunity to learn social skills, to cope with people with varying viewpoints,” Schiebel said. “Our kids were isolated for 18 months. When students came back, we had to re-learn those skills.”

Expanding a student-led nonviolence program

The advocates and therapists would also work alongside students through a program known as the Peacemaker Academy, which trains high schoolers in the principles of nonviolence espoused by Martin Luther King Jr.

The district hopes to use a share of the referendum funds to expand the program, which is operated by the faith-based nonprofit Alive Fort Wayne. The pilot program has focused on South Side High School students, but the additional funding would allow the nonprofit to place coordinators in each of the five schools as well as hire a director.

Angelo Mante, executive director of Alive Fort Wayne, said the goal of the program is to teach students King’s principles of nonviolence to help them identify and address issues at their schools.

One project involved students beautifying the campus to improve school culture. Another student initiative keeps a “Peace Count” — tallying the number of days that the school has gone without seeing a fight between students. For every 10 days without a fight, students earn an extra minute for their passing period between classes.

Mante said that the combined efforts at South Side High School — of the Peacemakers, student advocates, and other security measures — have already led to a 40% reduction in violent incidents compared to this time last year, as well as more collective awareness of violence.

Students have earned their extra passing period minute twice this year compared to just once by October of last year.

“It’s highly beneficial to have all of these pieces working together,” Mante said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

A teachers union wanted to bargain over pay. Its president ended up barred from the classroom.

2023-10-16T11:00:00+00:00

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What started as an Indiana district’s proposal to retain teachers has led to allegations of unfair labor practices, public anger at school board members, and officials’ decision to bar the teachers union president from the classroom.

In May, Richmond schools announced one-time bonuses for teachers in an effort to staunch turnover rates of more than 25% in some buildings. All teachers in good standing would receive supplemental payments of $525. The district targeted additional money at mid-career teachers whose compensation hadn’t increased in line with their experience.

But the Richmond Education Association argued that the plan affected compensation, and thus would need to be discussed during the fall bargaining season that began Sept. 15, per Indiana law. It filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the district.

In the months that followed, the union said the district retaliated by disinviting its representatives from a back-to-school event before eventually placing president and longtime educator Kelley McDermott on leave and threatening to cancel her teaching contract. Union representatives also say teachers have been instructed to inform the superintendent if they want to speak to school board members.

The situation in Richmond is unfolding against a long history of the winnowing of teachers’ collective bargaining rights in Indiana, in addition to an ongoing shortage of educators in certain fields and classroom subjects. Over roughly the past decade, the number of people entering the teaching profession has dipped in Indiana, while the number of people leaving it has risen, the state reported last year; enrollment also fell over the same period. And across the nation, more teachers than usual left the profession after the 2021-22 school year, a Chalkbeat analysis showed.

A state law enacted this year and sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Raatz, a Richmond Republican, nixed a requirement for school districts to discuss changes to working conditions with union representatives at monthly meetings. Advocates said the change would reduce red tape — observers say it has hurt teacher morale. (Raatz did not respond to a request for comment.)

Representatives of Richmond schools did not respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for comment on the situation. Both the district and the union have said they want to keep classrooms staffed by experienced teachers — but they remain at an impasse on the best way to do so as bargaining officially begins.

What must school districts negotiate with teachers unions?

Lawmakers stripped Indiana teachers of the right to collectively bargain over working conditions like class sizes and schedules under a 2011 law. The topics that teachers can bargain over during the fall bargaining window are salaries, wages, and benefits, including pay increases.

That put Richmond’s compensation plan squarely in the union’s territory, representatives said.

The district’s plan delineated the amount teachers would receive in one-time supplemental pay on top of the $525 bonus based on their current salary, their years of experience, and their education. For example, a teacher with eight years of teaching experience and a bachelor’s degree whose base salary is $44,000 would receive a supplemental payment of $4,750.

But the union said that passing this plan to boost the pay of around 60% of teachers left less district funding to negotiate raises for the remaining teachers when bargaining began in the fall. Moreover, the board approved the plan without talking to the union, representatives said.

“We’re not opposed to fixing this problem,” McDermott said to the board. “What we are opposed to is stripping the association of its collective bargaining rights, which are legally protected.”

Board members argued that Indiana law also gave them the flexibility to offer supplemental pay in order to retain teachers, or to reduce the difference between minimum and average salaries in the district, without input from the Richmond Education Association.

“It has been a problem without a solution for a very long time,” board President Nicole Stults said at the May board meeting. “This does provide us with a solution that addresses the immediate bleed, so to speak, the immediate retention issue that we have.”

District representatives said offering supplemental pay was critical in order to stop losing teachers to neighboring districts. Data indicated that Richmond teachers have to work for 13 years in order to make the starting salary of a neighboring district.

“The consistency that students see is important, those relationships that students build with their teachers is critical to academic success, so the retention of teachers is critical to their academic success,” board member Pete Zaleski said in May.

‘This will lead to educators leaving the profession’

A September board meeting drew a large crowd of union members and supporters outraged over how the district has handled the pay issue and McDermott’s teaching contract.

By keeping McDermott out of the classroom, the district has left her students without a consistent teacher, speakers said — the opposite of its stated goal.

“Look at how many teachers are leaving and how many teaching openings there are each year. Please think this through and return the teacher to her teaching position, where she is needed to teach the youth of Richmond,” one speaker said. “Make this again a place to be proud to teach, not a temporary step along the way.”

McDermott could not be reached for comment. She remains on administrative leave after the district announced it would consider canceling her teaching contract, according to union Vice President Jay Lee.

Lee said that talks with the district have never been so contentious in the past.

The union opted to wait to begin bargaining until after Oct. 2, when schools will tally up how many students they’re educating in the fall semester — an event known as Count Day — in order to understand how much funding would be available.

“This is a Band-Aid,” Lee said of the district’s pay plan.

In a video posted to the district’s YouTube channel after the September board meeting, Richmond board president Stults said neither the district nor the board could comment on the personnel situation regarding McDermott. She said that apart from that issue, “relationships among the board, administration, and teachers are quite positive and stronger than they have been in recent years.”

She cited positive feedback from teachers regarding the supplemental pay, as well as a series of meetings throughout the year between district employees and upper administration.

Finally, she said the district has tried to implement the new law ending monthly discussions between administrators and union members positively, “allowing for a more focused approach to building level issues.”

Jennifer Smith-Margraf, vice president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, said it’s not clear why Richmond schools did not do what it did in previous years and wait for the bargaining season to discuss compensation this year.

But the cumulative effect of the unilateral changes to pay and the new law that lets districts avoid discussing working conditions with unions have made the situation worse, she said.

“The two main reasons people leave education are low pay and benefits, and not having their voices heard,” she said. “In the long run, this will lead to educators leaving the profession.”

It’s not clear if lawmakers will make further changes next session — but Smith-Margraf said the union supports the right to bargaining and discussion.

“Places that do both bargaining and discussion are doing a much better job of retaining educators,” Smith-Margraf said. “Where there is a clear indication that my voice doesn’t matter causes people to leave and go other places.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Voter guide: These Indiana school districts are seeking tax increases in the November elections

2023-10-11T17:28:13+00:00

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This story has been updated with information about Sheridan schools’ referendum.

Smaller class sizes. School buses. Low-cost preschool.

These are some of the things that eleven Indiana districts are hoping to fund via property tax increases that voters will consider in the November election.

That includes three districts in Hamilton County, which has long been ranked as Indiana’s wealthiest county, as well as another three districts in Lake County — the second most populous county in the state behind Marion County.

Local tax increases are a mainstay of school funding in Indiana, and schools rely on them to pay teacher salaries and offer an array of programming and transportation services.

But they can be controversial. In 2021, legislators mandated changes to ballot language that emphasized the percentage by which school property taxes would increase from the base, not from what voters were currently paying. Some school leaders have said the change gives voters an exaggerated picture of how much their taxes will change.

Still, districts have not shied away from the funding measures: The number of Indiana school districts seeking tax increases has rebounded after dropping in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic.

This year, the funding requests come as schools face a fiscal cliff due to the upcoming end of emergency federal funding. And due to a new state law, school districts in Marion, St. Joseph, Vanderburg, and Lake counties will also have to proportionally share revenue from operating referendums with charter schools. That applies to three districts this year.

School districts can also seek construction referendums to pay for building and renovation projects, as well as safety referendums to pay for additional school resource officers, security improvements, and other staff.

The only construction referendum on the ballot this year is from the school city of Hammond, which is also seeking an operating referendum. The $84 million construction referendum is partially earmarked for renovating and expanding the district’s two high schools, according to the district’s ballot language.

Early voting is underway and the referendums need a simple majority to pass.

Here are the school districts seeking approval from voters in the November election for new tax increases or extensions of past rates.

Operating referendums

Carmel-Clay Schools, Hamilton County

Rate: $0.19 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Annual revenue: $24 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $23 million dedicated to retaining and attracting teachers and staff

Hamilton Southeastern Schools, Hamilton County

Rate: $0.1995 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Annual revenue: $24 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $9 million for attracting and retaining teachers and $5.9 million for maintaining class sizes

Lake Station Community School Corporation, Lake County

Rate: $0.54 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $1.3 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $466,000 for school bus transportation

Monroe County Community School Corporation, Monroe County

Rate: $0.085 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $8.5 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $6 million for funding low-cost preschool, $1.25 million for eliminating K-12 student fees

Northeast Dubois County School Corporation, Dubois County

Rate: $0.18 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $703,000

Highlights from the spending plan: $390,000 for academic programming

School City of Hammond, Lake County

Rate: $0.44 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $14.6 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $4.8 million for school bus transportation

School City of Whiting, Lake County

Rate: $0.17 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $1.1 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $418,000 staff recruitment

West Lafayette Community Schools, Tippecanoe County

Rate: $0.37 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $7 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $4.4 million for teacher and staff compensation for managing class sizes

Sheridan Community School Corporation, Boone & Hamilton Counties

Rate: $0.25 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $1.3 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $896,000 for retaining and attracting teachers and staff

Safety referendums

Bluffton Harrison MSD, Wells County

Rate: $0.075 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $445,000

Highlights from the spending plan: $254,000 for additional school resource officers

Fort Wayne Community School Corporation, Allen County

Rate: $0.10 cents per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Annual revenue: $12 million

Highlights from the spending plan: $4 million for student advocates

Construction referendums

School City of Hammond, Lake County

Rate: $0.4357 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Revenue: $84 million over 25 years

Highlights from the spending plan: Renovations and additions at Hammond Central High School and Morton High School

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana education officials: Poor attendance is hurting academics

2023-10-04T20:18:26+00:00

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If all the Indiana students who miss the most school showed up on one day, they would fill around 3,000 buses.

That’s how an Indiana State Board of Education presentation painted the stark picture of the state’s chronic absenteeism rate, the proportion of students who miss 18 or more days in a school year.

While chronic absenteeism in Indiana has improved this year after worsening during COVID, the rate remains 8 percentage points higher than before the pandemic. And citing the greater absenteeism rates for Black and Hispanic students, as well as those learning English or living in poverty, state board members sought to draw a link between absenteeism and lower test scores for those groups.

“It could absolutely be a root cause,” said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

Nationwide, schools have struggled to bring attendance rates back up to prepandemic levels, as families continue to deal with economic hardships, housing instability, and illness, along with students who refuse to attend school.

Indiana state board members acknowledged that after the pandemic, there are more reasons that students might miss school. Still, they focused attention on the correlation between absenteeism and academic performance: Student groups that have recorded the biggest declines in English language arts and math scores since the pandemic have also had higher rates of chronic absenteeism, according to the presentation.

“When you’re not there and present every day, you’re not going to get the same quality of education,” said board member Pat Mapes, who pointed to the same link for specific student groups during an August presentation of state reading test scores.

Absenteeism rates are highest in kindergarten and high school.

Nearly one-third of all Black students were considered chronically absent in 2022-23, compared with 19% in 2018-19. The rate for Hispanic students surged to 24% in 2022-23, from around 13% in 2018-19.

The rate for Asian students doubled in that time frame, from 6% to 12%. For white students, it rose to 16% from 9%.

Absenteeism for English learners — whose academic performance has continued to decline even as other groups’ performance has stabilized — has also doubled since 2018-19.

Board members said parents must be held accountable for getting students to school every day. Board member Greg Gastineau suggested a campaign to spotlight the importance of attendance, adding that more families are taking vacations during the school year.

Meanwhile, the Indiana Department of Education plans to track attendance as one of the indicators in an “early warning system” it’s developing for students who are not on track to graduate.

While the board presentation focused on the absenteeism rate, members also discussed the daily attendance rate, which is calculated in two different ways in Indiana.

The “school focused” calculation divides the number of days that students attended by the total number of days in a year, according to the presentation. By that calculation, the bulk of all Indiana schools have a 90% or greater attendance rate.

With the launch of its new school accountability dashboard this year, the state also began to calculate the percentage of students in each school who have a 94% or better attendance rate. The presentation said that attending school less than that leads to negative academic impacts.

Only 3 in 5 Indiana students met the 94% target last year, meaning they missed fewer than 10 days. The other 40% — or over 400,000 students statewide — missed more.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Out with letter grades, in with report cards: Indiana schools have a new measure of quality

2023-09-26T11:00:00+00:00

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Gone are the days of a single grade serving as a measure of an Indiana school’s quality. Under a new state law, schools are instead getting what amounts to a report card.

Beginning Oct. 15, each school must post on its website a school performance report from the Indiana Department of Education that shows how its students are doing on academic and other measures.

What’s included will vary by the grade levels the school serves. Elementary schools, which are defined as schools serving K-8 grades, will include:

Pass rates for the 3rd grade literacy test, the IREAD
Pass rates for the state test, the ILEARN
Chronic absenteeism rates
Per-student funding.

High schools’ report cards, meanwhile, will include the following:

Average composite SAT score.
Graduation rate and non-waiver graduation rate.
Per-student funding.
Percentage of students who enrolled in and passed any of the following: an Advanced Placement exam, International Baccalaureate exam, dual credit course, or Cambridge International exam.

Several metrics will also be compared across schools serving the same grade bands.

The change marks the beginning of the end for the state’s previous evaluation metric — A-F grades. They’ve been effectively suspended since 2018 as Indiana shifted to a new state test and later grappled with the pandemic.

Technically, the requirement for A-F school grades is still on the books. Yet under the new law, the state will again issue “null” grades for each school for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, as it has since 2018.

The school performance reports will cover the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. For subsequent years, the Indiana education department is charged with coming up with new recommendations for accountability to present to lawmakers by Dec. 1, 2024.

The data for the new report cards will come from the Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS) dashboard, which the state developed this year with the aim of making it easier for parents to access information about their schools.

Many of the data points required by the new report cards are already available on each school’s GPS profile — with the notable exception of per-student funding.

Schools will receive their reports and instructions to embed them on their websites in the coming weeks, according to an education department memo.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

A path to the workforce and a pipeline of workers: Companies go to high schools for career training

2023-09-20T11:00:00+00:00

Every now and then, Ayden Corbett has to explain to surprised homeowners what he’s doing in their front yard.

Since the second semester of his senior year of high school, he has responded to field calls as an employee of the largest underground utility locating company in North America — the Indianapolis-based U.S. Infrastructure Company (USIC). The white truck and multicolored flags marking the location of water, power, and telecommunications lines usually give it away.

“You learn how to work with people,” he said.

Corbett graduated in 2022 from a unique program at the Hinds Career Center in Elwood that trains high schoolers for the little-known underground utility locating industry. As demand for the profession skyrocketed during the work-from-home boom of the pandemic, USIC representatives approached the career center about creating a high school graduation pathway that would lead to a diploma, an industry certification, and a job offer.

While still uncommon in Indiana, partnerships between schools and private companies that lead students directly into employment in highly specific trades are growing — the Hinds Center program is the newest among four that have been started statewide.

“Their goal is to have trained employees ready to enter the field; ours as a career center is to give students the workforce and soft skills to be employable in whatever they choose,” said Jim Pearson, director of the Hinds center.

And creating more of these programs is a top priority for state education officials, who have been charged under a new state law with reworking high school requirements to encourage more students to work and earn credentials before they graduate.

It’s part of an effort to counter Indiana’s declining college going rates by connecting high school students to in-demand and high-paying jobs without the need for postsecondary education.

Ayden Corbett, a 2022 graduate of the underground utility locating program, stands with his company truck.

“Young people are really wanting a variety of options for leading to viable, successful futures. That’s not necessarily a four-year degree,” said Rachel Rosen, senior research associate at the Center for Effective Career and Technical Education at MRDC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

‘Employable in whatever they choose’

The underground utility graduation track at the Hinds Center is a slower version of the standard company training program, hosted inside a former sewing classroom that USIC equipped with a virtual reality system and a wall showing the typical utility connections on a home. The company also provides the two instructors, said Darrin Haynes, senior manager of career and technical education at USIC.

Students study the underground utility maps of Indiana cities like Westfield, where new home construction is booming, and learn to use the equipment that allows them to detect underground utility lines both through virtual reality and in the field. They spend part of the day at the center for career training, but also take traditional academic courses at their home high schools.

USIC has hired 14 of the 16 graduates of the Elwood program over two years, and fielded calls from its competitors looking to hire students as well, Haynes said. As of this year, students will also earn college credit at Indiana Tech upon completing the pathway.

One of the main draws of the track is the opportunity to start working during senior year, said Jacob Wright, another 2022 grad. Students who are at least 18 years old are paid the same rate as new hires to respond to calls to 811, the service that companies and homeowners are supposed to call before digging projects, according to Haynes.

“You get a job out of high school, a (company) truck second semester, and you get paid to take calls,” said Wright.

A hallway inside the Hinds Career Center in Elwood, Indiana, shows the 15 different career technical education paths offered to students.

Programs should connect to college and career

Several other local graduation pathways in Indiana offer students direct links to local companies, including the RV construction pathway at Wa-Nee Community schools, and a now-defunct aviation sheet metal pathway at Decatur schools.

The latter operated for a year before the pandemic created challenges for teaching and recruiting students, said Michael Gehrich, director of aviation at Vincennes University, which worked with Decatur schools on the pathway.

Like the utility locating program, the aviation pathway sought to expose students to a local industry that’s in need of workers, with a lower barrier to entry than existing dual credit aviation programs that require additional college education, Gehrich said.

Other similar programs can be found in New York City’s P-TECH schools, said Rosen, the researcher, which are six-year schools that partnered with companies to allow students to graduate with STEM skills, a high school diploma, and an associate’s degree.

Where vocational schools of the past contributed to inequity by directing low-income and students of color into low-wage jobs, modern career training can give students a window into their options, Rosen said.

“CTE in high school provides students an opportunity to explore what they don’t want to do as much as what they do want to do,” Rosen said. “We may see a failure because the student did not want to go into that field, but higher-resourced students have more opportunity to explore and make mistakes. If they wait till college to explore what they don’t like, there can be a real cost to doing that.”

The goal should be preparing students for a career with mobility, Rosen said.

Haynes said underground utility locating offers that mobility. Graduates can work for municipalities instead, move into management and training roles at USIC, or request to be relocated to another state.

The pathway opens a new option in a community where the college-going rate has dropped, said Haynes.

Darrin Haynes, senior manager of career and technical education at USIC, shows a training wall inside the Hinds Career Center classroom.

State data shows the rate for Madison County dropped 16 percentage points from 2015-2020, mirroring the state’s drop of 12 points in that time period.

Though no students have yet changed their minds about the senior-level course, Pearson said one advantage of the career center is that it has the flexibility to redirect students to one of its other career paths.

Plans to expand in Indiana and other states

Pearson said the Hinds center is open to working with other companies to develop local graduation pathways and meet workforce needs — but that they would need to work closely with educators on curriculum and standards.

The career center would aim to stay away from low-skill, low-pay tracks, but wouldn’t outright reject retail pathways, for example, if they led into supervision and management positions, Pearson said.

Haynes said that other companies interested in creating their own pipeline programs at local high schools need to commit to an upfront investment with a slow return. In addition to a workforce pipeline, one major benefit to USIC is that graduates have more time to absorb the training, and begin working with more experience, often making fewer mistakes than other new hires.

Haynes said the company isn’t working with students who are using Indiana’s new career scholarship accounts, which give students money to take career training outside of their schools. Those students could apply for a job with the company and take the training there, he siad.

A mural in Elwood is dedicated to Red Gold Tomatoes, a major manufacturer and employer in town.

The company plans to continue recruiting in high schools. Haynes said USIC has replicated the high school training program in Oklahoma and New York, and hopes to grow it further throughout Indiana and other states.

“Most of our graduates have moved out, have a place of their own. They start their lives in a way that we all dream of when we’re teenagers,” said Haynes. “We’re putting them on a pathway to do that.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Under new science of reading law, the future of a once-popular literacy program is murky

2023-09-19T11:00:00+00:00

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A reading intervention once hailed as a “phenomenal success” for Indiana’s first graders may be one of the first phased out from schools this year as the state pushes to align elementary literacy instruction with the science of reading.

Reading Recovery, an intervention which pairs first graders with trained teachers for 30 minutes of one-on-one reading help each week, was used to instruct thousands of Indiana students beginning in the 1990s and found champions at Purdue University.

But its status going forward is murky as Indiana joins other states in banning one of its core teaching methods, known as three-cueing. The program has already met skepticism in its home state of Ohio, which has also banned the practice.

Mirroring the “reading wars” that are causing districts nationwide to rethink literacy instruction, educators in Indiana disagree over whether there’s a place for the program in Indiana schools. One district says it will add science of reading-focused training in addition to existing Reading Recovery programs.

The final call will come from the Indiana Department of Education, which is in the midst of a curricular review process to create a list of approved materials.

Education leaders are hoping for clarity in the guidance and flexibility to make local decisions as they prepare to adopt new curriculum and retrain their staff. It’s a potentially contentious process after decades of highly charged opinions about — and experience with — reading instruction.

“You’re training on three levels — beliefs, knowledge, and skill. It’s a lot simpler to help people develop new skills, rather than change what they believe,” said Anne Olson, curriculum director at Wayne schools.

Meanwhile, researchers say it’s critical for schools and teachers to quickly get on board with programs based in the science of how people learn to read as Indiana faces stagnating literacy rates. What makes today’s push for literacy different is its grounding in decades-old brain science research, said Karen Betz, assistant professor of literacy at Marian University in Indianapolis.

“The problem with education is that we tend to get on bandwagons,” Betz said. “The science of reading isn’t a bandwagon.”

The beginning and end of Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is based in part on the three-cueing model that asks students to infer words based on context clues — a teaching method now banned in Indiana. The program came to the U.S. from New Zealand in the 1980s, with a base at Ohio State University. (The Reading Recovery Council of North America did not return a request for an interview.)

Betz, who taught in Ohio schools for 18 years, said Reading Recovery was one of the first one-on-one interventions at a time when teachers were teaching primarily to the whole class. Research on reading science had yet to percolate into classrooms, she said, and many teachers were grateful for any extra help for their struggling readers.

“If it sounded like how you might teach reading, we gravitated towards it,” Betz said.

In practice, the program gave children texts that weren’t decodable, she said. It asked them to memorize sight words and figure out other words based on pictures on the page, rather than focus on sounding out the word in front of them.

“I wouldn’t give them a text that says ‘see’ if they didn’t know ‘ee’ for example,” she said of an approach grounded in the science of reading.

Still, studies throughout the years showed that the program improved reading test scores in the short term. In Indiana, Purdue University’s Center for Literacy Education and Research became a training center for Reading Recovery, and the program reached 24,000 children in 166 of around 400 school districts in Indiana by 2000, according to a Purdue News Service article.

But the program’s ascent masked issues.

For one, Reading Recovery was expensive, said Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, because it relied on individual tutoring. Many programs in Indiana ended in the early 2000s after state and federal funding dried up.

Over time, experts also found evidence that its benefits didn’t last long. In 2022, research showed that the boost in student performance measured among first graders who participated in Reading Recovery faded by third and fourth grade. In fact, students who were enrolled in Reading Recovery performed worse than those who never received the program.

“The theory is that students were not building the background in decoding and phonics,” Churchill said. “The skills from Reading Recovery were not sticking.”

This year, both Ohio and Indiana joined an aggressive nationwide push to teach reading through research-backed methods known as the science of reading, which relies on five pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. A new Indiana law, enacted this year, gives schools until the 2024-25 school year to adopt curriculum aligned with those teaching methods, and bans methods based on three-cueing.

That raises questions about the intervention in Indiana districts that still use it, like Vigo schools — the 10th largest district in Indiana — where teachers have used the intervention with over 5,000 students over two decades.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat, representatives said the district will be adding training that’s aligned with the science of reading in addition to Reading Recovery.

“New materials and strategies will be implemented as our Title I teachers continue to focus support on our early reading interventions in the coming years. We look forward to seeing even greater gains as we develop stronger reading skills yielding success all the way to greater graduation rates,” a statement said.

The district employs 25 Title I/Reading Recovery teachers who provide the intervention to first graders, as well as other interventions in older grades. Their salaries are paid with Title I grant money.

The program has been well-received: In 2019, the Vigo County school board recognized Reading Recovery teachers, and in the same year, the district linked Reading Recovery to its higher-than-average literacy scores as measured by the state’s IREAD test for third graders.

Around 91% of Vigo’s third graders tested proficient in reading in 2019. But like in many other districts, scores dropped after the pandemic to as low as 81% in 2022, before a slight recovery this year to 84%.

It’s not clear how many other districts use Reading Recovery or similar interventions — the state department of education does not collect information on local curriculum. Betz, the Marian University professor, said it’s more common in Indiana schools to find Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention, which has faced similar criticisms for teaching cueing. (Representatives of Fountas and Pinnell also did not respond to a request for comment.)

A Purdue representative said the university ended its affiliation with Reading Recovery in 2013.

The university has recently relaunched its literacy center to also focus on the English language, said the center’s director, Christy Wessel-Powell.

It’s one of the state’s colleges using a grant from the Lilly Endowment to align its courses and professional development to the science of reading, Wessel-Powell said.

‘The key is teacher autonomy’

What exactly comes next — and whether Reading Recovery has a future in schools — is still being debated.

The Indiana Department of Education said the list of recommended reading curriculum that it’s required to compile by the new state law is not yet available.

Reading Recovery has evolved from its inception, said Karen Wohlwend, professor of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University, adding that many reading specialists incorporate phonics and word recognition in their daily lessons.

“There is no simple formula for reading instruction, no one-size-fits-all approach. It takes a skilled and responsive teacher (the heart of RR) who can teach strategies matched to learners’ unique needs,” Wohlwend said.

Wessel-Powell of Purdue said educators have long agreed on the importance of the science of reading’s five key elements, although the names of the programs and emphasis on each skill has changed over the years.

But one-on-one or small group models — like the kind used in Reading Recovery — that incorporate the science of reading can still offer important support to students, she said.

“The thing I would hate as a researcher to see is decision-making taken away from teachers, to limit the options they have for what programs they can use,” she said. “No one program gives kids everything they need. The key is teacher autonomy and the ability to have a variety of tools.”

Wayne Township schools never adopted Reading Recovery wholesale. But Olson, the district’s curriculum director, said that a group of Reading Recovery trainers led small group interventions at the district in the early 2000s, and that this strategy led to progress in students’ reading scores.

Wayne began adopting phonics and phonemic awareness-based curriculum around 2019, which Olson said aligns well with the state’s new mandate. District teachers haven’t just studied the curriculum; they’ve also learned about the reasoning behind it through books, online courses, and other professional development.

“Our efforts have gone into helping people understand what’s happening in the brain as people learn to read,” she said. “It doesn’t stay in the world of theory, it moves into practical application.”

What’s needed next is clarity on the science of reading requirements from the state, she said, along with enough flexibility to meet the needs of students who might be multilingual, or from diverse cultural backgrounds, for example.

Betz said she hopes that under the new state law, teachers and schools get more funding and support to implement the programs that work.

“We know the science of not only reading, but the science of teaching reading,” Betz said. “You need to give teachers the tools to deliver the instruction, because you can’t wait any longer.”

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Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Career-focused graduation pathway for English learners takes root in Perry Township

2023-09-07T19:10:06+00:00

For over a decade, Southport High School teacher Amy Peddie has led classes of students who are English language learners through the intricacies of getting ready for college, like filling out applications, finding financial aid, and writing personal essays.

This year, she’s teaching a class with a new emphasis: Getting ready for a career by writing cover letters, resumes, and professional emails. In a recent exercise, students contacted companies they were unfamiliar with to ask about job and training opportunities.

“One student said, ‘I thought this was an [English learner] class, but this feels like a work class,’” Peddie said.

Peddie’s course is part of a new graduation pathway for students who are learning to speak and read in English, where students can train for the workforce during high school and graduate with a job and a diploma in hand. It’s the first local graduation pathway in the state to specifically cater to English learner students who have limited English proficiency.

This pathway is part of a growing emphasis in Indiana and nationwide on preparing students for jobs without the necessity of a two- or four-year degree, as college-going rates have declined from several years ago and skilled trades face a worker shortage.

In Indiana, lawmakers have pushed to “reinvent high school” to make it more relevant to in-demand careers.

At Perry schools, which educate around 4,600 English learner students, the second largest population in the state, the pathway also gives students another way to meet Indiana’s graduation requirements and local hiring needs. Like the college-going class, it aims to help newly arrived students navigate a potentially unfamiliar process.

“If your choice is college, great, but if not, that’s not something to look down on,” said Southport Principal Amy Boone. “We want to have options and opportunities.”

Southport has around 600 students receiving English language services, Boone said, and district officials say they’re expecting a record enrollment this year of students who have recently relocated to the United States from other countries. In Indiana, this population grew 52% from 2017 to 2022.

The population is not only growing, but changing, Boone said: More students have arrived in recent years with less experience in formal education, both as a result of the pandemic and international conflict.

But once they enroll, they’re still required to meet Indiana graduation requirements that include demonstrating postsecondary skills. Students with extenuating circumstances could be granted a waiver, but this approach will be limited going forward under a state law passed this year.

If English learners are missing reading and writing skills in their first languages, a traditional career and technical education course may be inaccessible, even with the aid of translation, Boone said.

The new graduation pathway provides students who enrolled in U.S. schools in seventh grade or later a way to meet graduation requirements through classes on business math and personal financial responsibility, as well as internships and mock interviews. It’s also meant to help students develop their English proficiency through speech and English as a New Language classes.

In addition to being the first such local pathway for graduation in Indiana, Perry’s track for English learners is one of just two in the state that equips students with general career skills, rather than focusing on a specific trade or industry.

This year, an initial section of students piloting the pathway has already discussed what they hope to do after high school — answers that included working as barbers or cosmetologists.

Peddie said she hopes to take them on field trips to visit local salons and see that work up close. But she’d also like to introduce them to other industries, like manufacturing, where local companies are actively hiring.

Boone said the key to the program is to balance student interests with community needs.

Local staffing companies that already place the parents of Southport students in jobs are working with Perry schools on the new pathway.

The district itself could employ students to work on campus beautification projects, and then hire them after graduation knowing they have the required skills, Boone said. Southport High School, for example, recently hired a current student to work in the cafeteria.

“There’s been a pendulum shift,” Boone said. “We pushed for a long time on college, but there’s value in the trades, too.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Free books for Hoosiers 5 and under are coming soon, thanks to Dolly Parton

2023-08-24T20:18:20+00:00

Reading birth to five — what a way to improve Indiana’s stagnating literacy rates.

The state kicked off Thursday an expansion of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which aims to provide free books on a monthly basis to young children in all 92 Indiana counties.

Founded in 1995 by singer and philanthropist Dolly Parton, the Imagination Library mails age-appropriate books to all children 5 and under regardless of their family’s income.

It’s currently available in around half of all Indiana counties, and local Imagination Library programs have been covering the costs of providing books. But starting Sept. 1, those programs will pay for just half the costs, while a state match covers the rest. The Indiana State Library will coordinate the program and provide the funding to partner organizations who want to expand the program to new areas of the state.

The expansion is funded by a $6 million appropriation over Indiana’s biennial budget cycle — $2 million in the first year and $4 million in the second year.

Making the program available to more children was a priority of Gov. Eric Holcomb during the last legislative session. It’s part of a suite of initiatives aimed at improving literacy rates among young children as state reading scores have stagnated.

“I learned from a very young age that reading is the key to further education and opportunity ahead, long-term,” Holcomb said in a statement. “The very ability to read can transport children and adults alike to places they have never been and open doors they never knew existed.”

The Imagination Library has provided over 200 million free books in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and Ireland, according to a press release from the organization. It announced a $1.6 million partnership with Illinois in June.

“It takes a lot of great people working together to make this possible, and I want to thank Governor Holcomb, the Indiana General Assembly, State Librarian Jake Speer and all our Local Community Partners across the state who helped make this dream a reality,” Dolly Parton said in a statement.

Hoosier families can enroll their children in an existing local program or sign up to be notified of when it expands at imaginationlibrary.com.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana law on student names and pronouns leaves tough decisions to families and schools

2023-08-24T18:49:26+00:00

Uncertainty, a growing patchwork of policies, and virtual silence from state leaders have marked the rollout of an Indiana law requiring schools to disclose students’ requests to use new names and pronouns to their parents.

Under HEA 1608, which took effect for this school year, schools must notify at least one parent in writing if their student requests to change their name, pronoun, title, or other identifying word.

But there’s little guidance in the law or from state agencies about various issues, including how districts should notify parents. That vagueness has left students and educators on their own to figure things out.

At least one district is going beyond the law by requiring parental permission to use students’ new names — a mandate that was dropped from the original legislative proposal over concerns it might sow conflict within families. But leaders of another district who oppose the law said it has spurred them to enhance protections from harassment for students who identify as LGBTQIA+.

Different policies could leave parents unhappy regardless of what’s tried. For example, some parents might argue their districts aren’t doing enough to ensure they know about students’ requests, said Andy Downs, director emeritus of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics. Yet others, he said, might believe their districts are going overboard if they send letters, schedule meetings, and repeatedly follow up with families.

With transgender rights firmly in focus on the national political scene, local school leaders searching for the right approach could spark an uproar at already contentious school board meetings.

Still, some advocates do see a silver lining in the fragmented way the law is being carried out: a chance to shape, or even challenge, how it’s applied in their local schools.

“The right thing to do is to fight the mandate,” said Barbara Dennis, a volunteer with Kaleidoscope, a Bloomington-based and youth-led LGBTQ advocacy group whose members have discussed ways to subvert the law. “But we also need to survive the moment.”

What the new law on students’ pronouns does

HEA 1608 was one of several laws Indiana legislators passed this year aimed at restricting how and when transgender youth could transition socially and medically. Proponents say it gives parents more information about their children at school — part of an argument for increased parental oversight in education that has swept conservative states.

“We’re going to fight for the right of parents to handle the upbringing of their children,” said Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita at a recent press conference in reference to such laws.

But opponents of the new law said outing transgender students to their parents could put some at risk of physical harm or homelessness if their families aren’t supportive. (The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana challenged HEA 1608 in court by focusing on another aspect of the law that prohibits teaching human sexuality in grades K-3.)

The law does not prescribe details like what a written notification to parents about their students’ name requests should contain, nor whether schools are required to send follow-up notices.

By contrast, another law passed this year on student surveys specifies that schools should send parents two notifications before they can administer certain surveys, that the notifications can be electronic, and that each should summarize the content of the survey in question.

The Indiana Department of Education does not plan to issue guidance on how schools should implement HEA 1608. A spokesperson said implementing the law “comes down to a local decision by the school districts.”

The department did provide guidance on a dozen or so other laws from the 2023 legislative session.

Rep. Michelle Davis, a Whiteland Republican and author of the law on student pronouns, declined to comment on how she intended it to be enforced, citing the ongoing litigation.

Downs said that some laws are written to offer as many details as possible in order to remove any doubt about compliance, while others offer leeway to the people who have to implement them.

If there are enough complaints about the law’s lack of clarity, legislators will likely take notice, Downs said.

“They may pay an awful lot of attention if constituents say they weren’t informed properly,” he said. “They may say, ‘Ok you had your chance, schools, to do this properly and you did not. So now we will.’”

Downs said that ideally, legislators would see how HEA 1608 affects schools and students, before considering whether to expand it. He also noted that some issues fade from the public eye over time, and that schools sometimes keep procedures on the books without enforcing them.

But given the emotionally charged debate around the topic, Downs said it’s most likely that legislators will revisit HEA 1608 soon.

Becoming ‘better parents for LGBTQ kids’

Speaking at a Monroe County school board meeting Tuesday night, a student told board members that they considered submitting a name change request every day in order to “maliciously comply” with the law — but reconsidered after realizing the burden it would create for teachers.

“The school board should be the ones fighting for us students,” the student said. “I shouldn’t have to fight for the right to my name.”

Dennis, the Kaleidoscope volunteer, also said it’s ultimately up to school districts to file lawsuits challenging the enforcement of the law. Complying puts youth at risk, and damages schools’ ability to support students.

“A main tactic in bullying is pointing at kids and telling them who they are,” Dennis said. “Under this law, educators will be forced to enact bullying.”

The student at the Monroe meeting addressed a board that previously criticized the law in strong terms. In March, board members approved a resolution condemning HEA 1608 and stating that the district would work on a policy that prohibits the bullying or harassment of LGBTQIA+ students.

In an August statement, the district described the law as “Trojan horse legislation,” but said its schools will comply and notify parents. It will also communicate the new requirement to students and families, according to the statement.

Work on an anti-harassment policy will continue through a series of community engagement meetings this fall, the district said. Monroe district leaders also said in its August statement they’re “confident that the new state legislation does not prevent the important work related to our local resolution to support more fully our LGBTQIA+ population. As a matter of fact, with legislation, such as Indiana HEA 1608, this work is more important than ever.”

Other districts have already announced their approaches for notifying parents. Many are designating one person at each school to notify families of their students’ requests, or having their counseling staff do the job. Some are relying on their student information portals; others are sending written notifications encouraging parents to ask questions.

Hamilton Southeastern schools — which last year elected a slate of candidates running on a parental rights platform — has gone a step beyond the law and will require approval from a parent or guardian before the district will use a student’s requested name.

“Hamilton Southeastern Schools has no desire to make student name changes to which a parent objects,” a statement from the district said, adding that federal and state law require parents and schools “to work collaboratively.”

The student members of Kaleidoscope have brainstormed other ways to push back against the law without violating it, like by using class nicknames, placards, or last names instead of students’ legal first names. But some of these approaches wouldn’t allow students to publicly claim their own identity, said Dennis.

Working under the confines of the law, districts could also interpret the mandate to “notify” parents to mean setting up a conference between schools and parents to discuss their students’ requests and how best to support them.

“If the goal is to be better parents, maybe we can take this as an educational moment to become better parents for LGBTQ kids, and foster areas where kids feel safer,” she said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana students’ reading scores have barely changed in three years, new IREAD results show

2023-08-16T19:21:56+00:00

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Indiana students’ reading scores have been virtually unchanged for three years, according to new test data, underscoring fears about students’ struggles to recover from the pandemic

More than four out of five third graders — just under 82% — passed the Indiana reading exam, the IREAD, in 2023. Yet that’s approximately the same rate as in 2021 and 2022, and several percentage points below the passing rate from 2019, when 87.3% of all students passed the test.

The results, released by the state on Wednesday, tell a similar story to scores released last month from the statewide assessment for grades 3-8, the ILEARN. Both exams showed student performance has stagnated in reading over the last three years.

The IREAD scores come as the state undertakes an overhaul of literacy instruction to implement the science of reading — a body of research that emphasizes five pillars of literacy that help students decode words — in an effort to improve students’ reading skills.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said at Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting that the increase in IREAD scores of 0.7 percentage points since 2021 is not insignificant.

“If we increase that small amount, year over year, it will be years and years and thousands and thousands of kids,” Jenner said. “So, you’re going to hear it over and over, the sense of urgency that we feel in supporting our schools and supporting our parents and families who we need at the table with us in order to make sure all kids can read.”

Nearly 15,000 third graders didn’t pass the exam and will need additional support to meet reading standards, per the Indiana Department of Education.

IREAD scores for most student groups changed by less than one percentage point this year, with a few notable exceptions.

Black students’ scores appear to be recovering faster than many other groups, with their proficiency rates rising by 1.5 percentage points from 2022 to 2023. Scores for students in special education also rose by 2 percentage points.

Scores for Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students — a group of around 86 students total — rose 7.5 points in 2023. The group is the only student demographic or socioeconomic category to have recovered to pre-pandemic proficiency rates.

No student groups posted precipitous drops this year, though scores for both Hispanic and American Indian students declined by just under one percentage point each.

Last year, English learners’ IREAD proficiency rates dropped 8.5 percentage points from 2021, prompting Department of Education officials to raise the alarm about their performance. The group’s scores showed virtually no change this year, and remain around 20 percentage points below their non-English learner peers.

Charity Flores, the state education department’s chief academic officer, told Chalkbeat that schools will need to reflect on and discuss their IREAD data, especially regarding English learners. This process includes program evaluations and in-depth collaboration between general education teachers and English language instructors regarding the science of reading.

“That can unify some of those conversations that happen locally between educators to make sure whether they’re students in the general education classroom, or receiving specific services in another classroom, they’re using the same strategies in both of those environments,” Flores said.

Look up scores for your school in the table below.

In Indianapolis Public Schools, the state’s largest district, 60.6% of students tested proficient this year, a decline of 2.2 percentage points from last year. The district had rolled out its own tutoring programs to focus on math and reading skills in 2022, including offering free virtual tutoring for all students.

That decline reinforces the need for continued investments in literacy by IPS, said district spokesperson Marc Ransford. Those include in “curriculum, educator training, and professional development programs,” he said.

Science of reading push informs curriculum, teaching shifts

The state has this year pushed to align its curriculum and teacher training methods to the science of reading.

As part of that effort, a pilot program placed literacy instructional coaches in 54 schools during the 2022-2023 school year, in order to help teachers train on reading science principles.

The pass rate among those schools was 71.8% — approximately a 1.8 percentage point increase from 2022.

One of the first districts to adopt the instructional coaching model, Anderson Community Schools, showed a 1.4 point increase in proficiency rates over 2022; however, there were fewer students tested in 2023. (That was due to a drop in student enrollment, said Brad Meadows, director of district and community engagement for the district.)

Meadows said the district was “very encouraged by the higher pass rates this year” and that it expects scores to continue rising in future years.

Anderson Schools has literacy instructional coaches at all its elementary schools. The coaches focus on working with students in kindergarten to second grade, but are also helping to bring the science of reading to all elementary school students, Meadows said.

The state education department said 200 schools have opted to work with those literacy coaches via the Indiana Literacy Cadre for this academic year. For the 2024-25 academic year, Jenner said all schools with an IREAD passing rate of 70% or lower will join the cadre. By 2025, she said the goal is to have 600 schools in the cadre that receive support from coaches.

The department is also partnering with the Center for Vibrant Schools at Marian University to offer a new course for teachers across the state to receive science of reading instruction, announced Wednesday.

These different efforts to improve literacy instruction follow recently released rules for teacher prep programs that would require new teachers to be capable of implementing science of reading practices by 2025. Jenner said the department and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education will communicate their expectations on this requirement to college and university leadership across the state.

Chalkbeat reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey contributed to this article.

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana teacher helps her school implement the science of reading ‘one bite at a time’

2023-08-15T19:52:35+00:00

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Indiana is in the midst of an enormous undertaking to improve literacy rates. The approach: Align state standards, curriculum, and teacher training programs with practices rooted in the science of reading, which emphasizes phonics to help students decode words.

Literacy coach Mika Frame has a memorable mantra for accomplishing big goals.

“My current principal always tells me, ‘Eat an elephant one bite at a time,’” she said. “Through this saying, he always encourages me to seek change in our staff by taking small steps, as opposed to expecting my teachers to change all at once or in drastic measures.”

A K-2 literacy coach at Rose Hamilton Elementary School in Centerville, Frame is part of the first cohort of educators that trained in reading science practices as part of the Indiana Literacy Cadre. Now she co-teaches, analyzes student data to see who needs more help, and leads her colleagues through the state’s new requirements.

Frame told Chalkbeat about her work as Indiana looks to bring more literacy coaches like her to its schools.

What drew you to a career in education?

My favorite part of high school was when I was a cadet teacher and worked with elementary students. I still love working with children today. I enjoy the energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity of young learners. Witnessing the progress and achievements of students, seeing them overcome challenges, and helping them reach their potential brings me a deep sense of satisfaction.

What does your typical day look like?

My typical day at Rose Hamilton includes working alongside teachers in their classrooms. Co-teaching is my favorite aspect of working with my colleagues. An additional responsibility I have most days involves disaggregating learning data. This data often presents patterns and helps teachers identify subgroups of students who need additional interventions. Each month, I also lead professional learning community meetings and offer new ideas and strategies to our teachers. Finally, coordinating testing is an important part of my position; I help ensure testing protocols are executed with fidelity and testing deadlines are met.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

My favorite lessons to teach are phonics lessons. Phonics plays a vital role in children’s literacy development by providing them with the tools to decode words, read fluently, and comprehend written materials effectively. It sets the stage for their future academic success. Phonics empowers children to read independently and with confidence. When children can decode words accurately, they can read books and other written materials on their own. This opens up a world of knowledge and imagination. I love seeing children’s eyes light up when they start sounding out words.

When did you first learn about the ideas of reading science? How have you been able to apply those recently with fellow educators or students?

I first learned in depth about the science of reading when I was accepted into the Literacy Cadre program. In the Summer of 2022, I attended a weeklong training that dove into the science of reading. I have been able to apply these strategies by leading professional learning community meetings. During this time, I’ve encouraged teachers in the building to present to one another about the science of reading instructional practices they are doing in their classrooms.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I grew up in Modoc, Indiana. My community was rural and consisted of approximately 160 people. I graduated with only 18 students in my class, and that included a few foreign exchange students. It was a close-knit community in which everyone knew each other. This background helps me understand that every single child matters, and no matter the size of the district, helping all students succeed academically and helping them reach their full potential is the ultimate goal in education.

Literacy coach Mika Frame helps her colleagues with the state’s new requirements on the science of reading.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

My current principal always tells me, “Eat an elephant one bite at a time.” Through this saying, he always encourages me to seek change in our staff by taking small steps, as opposed to expecting my teachers to change all at once or in drastic measures. I have used this advice frequently as our school has been going through new initiatives in the last year. Our next step this coming school year is to look into a new phonics program. We are slowly looking into the programs we are using and making small changes, if needed. Again, small steps that lead to changes are important!

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

This past year I read “Shifting the Balance” by Jan Miller Burkins and Kari Yates with my colleagues in the literacy cohort. It really helped me understand the aspects of science of reading. After reading the book, my superintendent was kind enough to buy a set for my teachers, and I led a book study at Rose Hamilton. It was great to meet after school with the teachers and reflect on each chapter, as well as what we do or possibly could do better.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

National group revises grade for Indiana’s largest teacher prep program on reading instruction

2023-08-03T21:52:24+00:00

A group that produced a report on the quality of reading instruction programs at teachers colleges nationwide has revised its score for Ball State University from a failing grade to an A.

The university’s Teachers College, the largest teacher preparation program in Indiana, is one of 45 programs that asked the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) for a revised score after the council issued a report showing that thousands of teachers attended preparation programs that taught poor reading methods.

The report caused a stir in Indiana and other states that have pushed to apply instruction strategies backed by the science of reading in elementary schools in order to improve students’ literacy rates. It gave around 260 of the 710 programs reviewed failing grades.

A spokesperson for the council said that so far, NCTQ has decided to give 24 schools across the country new, higher grades to reflect that they do teach the principles of the science of reading. While most were revised by a single letter grade, nine programs (including Ball State) jumped from F to A grades. Another five are still awaiting review.

The council anticipates that it will publish the new scores by mid-August.

The additional material Ball State submitted to NCTQ included descriptions of its course time, the spokesperson said, which contributed to its higher score. The review gave programs scores for how well they taught the five pillars of literacy: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. It gauged whether they taught methods that aren’t backed by research.

The council had based its previous grade on incomplete material obtained through a public records request, said Jackie Sydnor, an associate professor and chair of Ball State’s Department of Elementary Education. NCTQ has previously received criticism for using incomplete data in its analysis of teacher training programs.

What NCTQ received was primarily course outlines, which included objectives, grading scales, and university policies, but not calendars, reading materials, and assignments, Sydnor said, all of which better illustrated the principles of the science of reading. The council was also missing syllabi from two elementary education courses, she added.

“We knew that we taught all of these things, but it was disheartening to hear it reported that we weren’t,” Sydnor said.

The council said that it offered schools opportunities to correct their scores before they were public, but it’s not clear if these requests reached the Teachers College.

Two other universities in Indiana also requested new scores from the council.

Anderson University’s score will remain an A, according to a council spokesperson, while Huntington University’s D grade is still under review.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

COVID aid ends, science of reading, vouchers: 5 things to watch as Indiana’s school year begins

2023-07-25T11:00:00+00:00

The first Indiana school districts head back to school this week amid a spate of new laws and policies that will affect what happens in the classroom.

Recovering from the pandemic’s effects on student performance remains a top priority for schools, as state testing scores indicate that learning has stagnated. But new laws will also expand schools’ focus beyond postsecondary education, and more toward career exploration.

For younger students, Indiana is prioritizing reading instruction through new laws requiring curriculum and teacher training based on the science of reading, an approach to literacy that emphasizes phonics, fluency, and other principles.. Meanwhile, for middle and high schoolers, preparation for postsecondary life is the priority, with new funds earmarked for workforce training.

Public schools are also grappling with the potential impacts of an expanded voucher program, as well as laws aimed at students’ identities and school library books.

Here are five things to watch for as the school year begins.

New standards and approaches to reading

Fresh off the latest statewide testing results showing a decline in students’ reading proficiency, Indiana is continuing a push to make sure schools teach reading through evidence-based practices known as the science of reading. Several new laws and policies will shape how students learn to read this year.

Districts will be evaluating their reading curriculum materials this year to ensure they’re in line with the science of reading practices. They must adopt an approved curriculum by the 2024-25 school year.

Literacy coaches will be coming to schools where fewer than 70% of students passed the state reading assessment, as well as schools that opt in to the Indiana Department of Education’s initiative to place more of these coaches in schools.

Meanwhile, new standards in four core subjects adopted in June will also streamline what students must learn in each grade level. Officials hope this move will allow teachers to focus on the most essential skills in their lessons.

A push toward college and career

While literacy is the emphasis for younger students, middle and high schoolers will see several new initiatives aimed at preparing them for postsecondary training.

All high school seniors will have to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid next spring due to a new law meant to increase Indiana’s college-going rate.

High schoolers will also have access to the state’s new career scholarship accounts, which provide grants for workforce training that they can use outside of traditional high school programs. As part of that new law, students will also attend career fairs throughout the year.

Eligible middle school students, meanwhile, will be automatically enrolled in the 21st Century Scholars program, which covers tuition and fees at an in-state college or university.

A near-universal choice program

Indiana opened its private school voucher program to nearly all students during this year’s legislative session, offering public funding for students to attend private schools and potentially leading to major changes in the state’s enrollment landscape.

It’s not immediately clear how many more students will participate in the program, or whether new participants will primarily be students who are already enrolled in private schools. But declines in enrollment at public schools could create instability in district budgets and affect the students who remain.

The approaching end of ESSER spending

Districts are facing final deadlines to commit the second and third rounds of federal COVID funding — known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER — in September 2023 and September 2024, respectively.

With Indiana no longer allowed to charge families for textbooks and devices, some districts could use federal funds to provide these course materials. Conversely, districts that relied on federal funding for long-term costs like staffing may face a crunch as they figure out how to fold those positions into their budgets.

The state education department’s spending tracker shows that the state has reimbursed schools for around 84% of ESSER II dollars and 46% of ESSER III dollars as of July 17, though these figures don’t represent schools’ expenditures in real time.

The effects of laws aimed at students’ identity

The Indiana legislature this year passed several laws that seek to control how sex and gender are discussed and dealt with in schools.

Among them is a requirement for schools to notify parents if their children request to change their names or pronouns, passed over LGBTQ advocates’ concerns that it could put youth at risk at home. The law also bans sex education lessons in preschool to third grade.

Districts will also grapple with a law that requires them to publish their library catalogs and create procedures for parents and others to request the removal of books. Supporters of the law said it was meant to keep obscene material out of kids’ hands, while librarians said such material isn’t in their libraries to begin with.

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Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

After a slow start, some Indiana schools begin to hire adjunct teachers

2023-07-24T11:00:00+00:00

Indiana lawmakers cleared the way last year for school districts to issue their own permits and hire adjunct teachers for hard-to-fill teaching positions.

After some hesitation, school districts have now begun to turn to adjunct teachers, who aren’t licensed by the state and instead need to have four years of relevant experience and pass a background check before stepping into the classroom.

While the Indiana Department of Education did not provide data on how many adjunct teachers are working in Indiana schools, a statewide job board for teachers recently showed four districts and one charter school seeking adjuncts.

There are 1,720 job listings for teachers statewide, down slightly from around 1,800 before the start of the 2022-23 school year.

Earlier this month, the Perry Township school board approved a proposal to hire an adjunct teacher for the district’s Insurance Careers Pathway – a career and technical education course of study for high schoolers that allows students to enter the insurance field upon graduation.

The first of three classes in the insurance careers pathway was taught by the district’s business teachers, said Jane Pollard, the district’s assistant superintendent for career preparation.

But because Perry doesn’t have anyone on staff with the credentials to teach the next course and only one section will be offered at each high school, “it made sense to consider a licensed industry professional” for the role, Pollard said.

The teacher will be authorized directly by the school board upon hire, and then teach one period at each of Perry’s two high schools, according to the district. Perry does not have any other adjunct teachers.

The neighboring Center Grove school district is also hiring an adjunct teacher for a Chinese language teaching position. But the district already has a candidate in mind — the current Chinese language teacher, who holds a Canadian teaching license and needed additional time to take the state teaching exam, said Stacy Conrad, the district’s executive director of communications.

“The high school is using the adjunct option to give her time to get licensed and still be able to continue to offer Chinese to students,” Conrad said in an email.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

A veterinarian turned teacher looks forward to students’ ‘aha’ moments

2023-07-18T17:22:37+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free monthly newsletter How I Teach to get inspiration, news, and advice for — and from — educators.

It’s not unusual to find students in Christy Herr’s classes gardening, canning salsa, or weighing steers. As an agriscience educator, Herr wants her students to experience what it’s like to work with plants and animals.

“I look at my lesson plans for the day and wonder if I would want to be a student in my class,” said Herr, who spent 27 years as a food animal veterinarian before becoming a teacher.

After five years of teaching at Hagerstown High School in Hagerstown, Indiana, Herr was recognized by Ivy Tech Community College this month as the statewide winner of Ivy Tech’s top honor for dual-credit faculty.

Her professional background allows her Hagerstown students to earn postsecondary credentials through Ivy Tech and offers them a look at potential vocations in animal science. It’s the kind of career experience that has become a priority for Indiana as the state considers how to graduate more high school students who are ready for the workforce.

“The realization that dual-credit classes could put my students ahead academically and financially once they left Hagerstown High School was enough motivation for me to do it,” said Herr, who spoke recently with Chalkbeat.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I spent 27 years working with all types of livestock as a food animal veterinarian. The physical stressors of the job had taken a toll on my shoulders and hands. My body was telling me it was time to find something else to do.

At about the same time, the agriscience teacher position at HHS came open mid-year. The school contacted me, wondering if I would be willing to sub until the end of the semester. I took a leave of absence from the clinic and gave teaching a try. The students were great, and I really enjoyed the classroom environment.

After looking into what it would take to transition my veterinary degree to teaching, I decided to make a career change. That was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made in my life. I truly mourned the loss of the great veterinarians, the office staff. and the clients I got to work with every day. That caught me by surprise.

The opportunity to work with students and show them how their worlds are touched by agriculture was exciting. It still is. I am hooked and so thankful for a second career that I enjoy, that is rewarding and allows me to promote agriculture.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach or activity to lead, and why?

My favorite lessons to teach happen when my old career and new career collide. The cardiovascular unit in [the course] Advanced Life Science: Animals would be an example. I can use disease processes in animals to help the students understand how the heart works and the function of the different parts of that system. When we dissect the heart, the students can finally put it all together, touching and seeing what we have been covering in class. It is great to see all of the ‘aha’ moments that take place.

How is a dual-credit course different from a standard high school course? What are the benefits?

I really like that I can give the students a taste of what college classes look like. They’re getting a college course experience but from the comfort of their home high school and alongside a smaller cohort of students. Differences from a standard high school course would include accepting very few excuses for late work, bigger penalties for any work turned in late, and increased academic rigor. I expect higher quality work from the students who are earning college credit.

The Chemistry 101 year-end final was a beast and took the students several hours to complete. I tried to get them to understand that in a university setting, they could very well take a second final exam like that in a different course on the same day during finals week. Being introduced to situations like that is a huge benefit of the dual-credit experience.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received on teaching, and how have you put it into practice?

I had several teachers tell me that building relationships with the students is important and will drive the learning that takes place in my classroom. They were 100% correct. The attendance question each day has allowed me to connect with each student a little more as the year moves along. My favorite is asking each student to write down the title of a song they are likely to play on repeat. Each Friday, I play one of those songs, and the class tries to figure out which classmate picked that song. This has been a great way to relate with the students and add a few new songs to my playlist.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

East Central High School [in St. Leon, Indiana] provided me with a great education and experience. All of my teachers were top-notch, but I was always drawn to the science classes. Mr. Tucker, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Crabil were always so excited about the material and provided great hands-on opportunities. My goal is to do the same. I look at my lesson plans for the day and wonder if I would want to be a student in my class.

Tell us about any summer plans or what you’re looking forward to next year!

My goal this summer is to rest, read a few books, and practice hiking up and down hills. In October, my family will be heading to the Grand Canyon to hike from rim to rim in one day. Hopefully, there will not be a news story about rescuing an old teacher from the bottom of the canyon!

As far as the next school year goes, I am just looking forward to seeing the students again. We will be incubating eggs, weighing steers, canning salsa, and planting gardens within the first few months. That is all exciting to me.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

2023 ILEARN scores: See test results from your school

2023-07-12T13:05:44+00:00

ILEARN scores for 2023 were released Wednesday, with Indiana students doing slightly better than last year on their overall scores.

In 2023, about 30.6% of students in grades 3-8 statewide scored proficient or better in both the English and math sections of the ILEARN state test — only a fraction of a percentage point above the 30.2% last year.

By subject, 40.7% of students were proficient in English, and 40.9% were proficient in math. That’s a drop of half a percentage point in English and a 1.5 percentage point increase over last year in math.

See how students at your school did on the ILEARN test using the table below:

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

2023 ILEARN scores show Indiana students improving in math, but stagnating in reading

2023-07-12T13:00:00+00:00

Indiana’s statewide testing scores stagnated this year as students faced an uneven academic recovery, with gains in math proficiency and declines in English.

Around 30.6% of students in grades 3-8 statewide scored proficient or better in both the English and math sections of the ILEARN state test — only a fraction of a percentage point above the 30.2% last year.

Even though overall math scores rose 1.5 percentage points over last year, English scores dropped half a percentage point despite a statewide effort to boost literacy. In 2023, 40.7% of students were proficient in English, and 40.9% were proficient in math.

Reading proficiency rates have dropped back to 2021 levels after gains in 2022, with several student groups showing a percentage-point decline this year.

Overall scores still remain far below pre-pandemic levels: In 2019, around 37% of students scored proficient in both English and math. Around 48% of students scored proficient in at least one of the sections.

“When we set our standards in 2019, compared to the data we’re seeing now, we’re still about 6% below where we were in 2019,” said Charity Flores, chief academic officer at the Indiana Department of Education.

The department acknowledged in a presentation to the State Board of Education that more targeted support is needed in English, especially for English learner students and middle schoolers. Seventh grade English scores dropped nearly 3 percentage points.

The state launched several initiatives in the last year to improve reading skills, including increasing funding for English learners.

New laws also require schools and teacher preparation programs to align their literacy instruction with research-backed methods known collectively as the science of reading. The state also recently reduced the number of standards required of students in order to allow teachers to focus on the most essential skills.

Students will take a brand-new statewide test by 2025-26, as the department undertakes a redesign of the assessment.

The goal of the redesign is to make the results clearer to families and teachers with more frequent data, Flores said, as well as to shorten the final assessment. Students will take informal, check-in assessment throughout the year.

2023 ILEARN results by school and student group

Some student groups showed signs of improvement on the 2023 ILEARN. For the second year in a row, Black students posted at least a percentage point increase in both math and English.

Sixth graders posted a 2.8 percentage-point increase in math proficiency and a 1.8 percentage-point increase in English.

Additionally, around 53% of third graders scored proficient or better in math, making them once again the only grade where more than half of students were proficient in either subject. Those students have only known school during the pandemic.

At Indianapolis Public Schools, proficiency rates for English stayed flat from last year, while math scores climbed 1.6 percentage points. Overall, 14.8% of students were proficient in both math and English.

Meanwhile, Brownsburg schools in neighboring Hendricks County had the highest percentage of students who tested proficient, 63.4%.

Below, look up scores at your school.

Academic recovery is stabilizing for most students

At a Wednesday State Board of Education meeting, Department of Education officials also presented the results of a multiyear study on the impact of the pandemic on students’ academics.

This year’s analysis showed that nearly all students are stabilizing in both English and math, with no further declines. But students are not accelerating their learning at the rates needed to return to their pre-pandemic performance, according to the presentation.

Notably, English performance among English learner students is still declining.

Flores said the data indicates that the education system is returning to a pre-pandemic normal, but specific student groups — including English learners, middle schoolers, and students who were below proficiency before the pandemic — have yet to recover.

“Specific conversations and concerted efforts are needed to best support their learning,” she said.

SAT scores also show a decline

In addition to scores for students in grades 3-8, the Department of Education on Wednesday released SAT proficiency rates for Indiana juniors, who take the test as a graduation requirement.

The percentage of students who tested as college ready declined in both math, and reading and writing from last year.

Around 31% of juniors met the benchmark in the spring compared with 33% in 2022, the first year the test was required.

In reading and writing, around 50% of students met the benchmark this year, compared with 52% in 2023.

The department is also considering new graduation requirements to align with Indiana’s push for more work-based learning, though it’s unclear whether the SAT requirement would be affected.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana families will no longer be charged textbooks fees. Here’s what to expect.

2023-07-05T11:00:00+00:00

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For years, a small district of 1,100 students just east of Indianapolis aimed to ditch the fees that had created barriers for students and burdens for their families.

But officials at Charles A. Beard Memorial schools knew if they took on the costs, they’d have to sustain them long term, said Superintendent Jediah Behny. So they started small — first eliminating entrance fees for students to school sports events — before eventually dropping the fees for textbooks and materials in 2020.

“We wanted to eliminate the likelihood that some kids were getting something that others weren’t,” Behny said.

Beginning this school year, after a law passed in the 2023 legislative session, all Indiana schools will be required to follow the district’s example and stop charging families for curricular materials, including textbooks, iPads, and Chromebooks.

The change, championed by Gov. Eric Holcomb, is meant to lighten the load on Hoosier families, who reported paying hundreds of dollars every year for their students’ course materials. Indiana had been among the last handful of states that still allowed schools to charge these fees.

The law provides $160 million for curricular materials, but a per-student amount has yet to be determined, Indiana Department of Education officials said. The department will calculate this number by dividing the total amount that all schools report for curriculum costs by how many students are enrolled at each public school, and how many qualify based on socioeconomic status at each private school.

Education advocates agree the change benefits families, but say the state must support schools with the financial burden.

With a new school year rapidly approaching, they say more guidance is needed on how much schools will receive to make purchasing decisions and also on what counts as curricular materials under the new law, which broadly includes books, computer software, digital content, and hardware that will be consumed by a student over the course of a year.

Only time will tell if the total allocation is sufficient, said Denny Costerison of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials. It’ll be up to the General Assembly to increase the funding if necessary, which likely won’t happen until the next biennial budget session in 2025.

Schools will receive funding as a lump sum in December, according to an FAQ issued by the department.

“Textbooks don’t get cheaper, they get more expensive,” said Terry Spradlin of the Indiana School Boards Association. He noted that when Indiana first considered dropping textbook fees in the 1990s, the cost estimate was around $100 million.

The state already covers the cost of textbooks for students who qualify for free and reduced priced meals at a cost of around $39 million per year.

For all students, a per-pupil figure of about $162 would likely cover most districts’ elementary and middle school costs, said Spradlin, but fall far short of the costs for high school courses. Spradlin said that example amount came from an IDOE memo, but the department didn’t confirm.

Any excess from the lower grades could be used to pay for secondary school courses, but schools may also need to turn to their education fund dollars to cover shortages, he said. Federal emergency dollars are also an option, albeit one that expires in September 2024.

It’s important to remember that general funds must also cover the bulk of schools’ operating and personnel costs, said Keith Gambill of the Indiana State Teachers Association.

“You need to be able to provide the funding they need to operate and make sure those programs are fully realized without jeopardizing important items, which includes salaries,” Gambill said. “That’s where things can get tricky, especially for schools on a leaner budget.”

According to the FAQ, curricular materials include materials in advanced placement, dual credit, and career technical education courses, but not dual enrollment courses. Schools are allowed to charge families for lost or damaged items, and can offer insurance for technology.

Some additional guidance might be needed for items like parking passes and student identification cards, said Spradlin, as well as for co-curricular programs. Performing arts, for example, can include a variety of costs for instruments and their upkeep, as well as attire and transportation to school events.

If the course is required, or if students receive a grade for it, then it’s likely considered a course that schools can’t charge for, said Costerison. The education department’s FAQ directs schools to consult with their legal counsel for further questions about what counts as curricular material.

Charles A. Beard Memorial schools will be able to offer fee-free music programs to students this year after building a stock of instruments over the last several years, said Behny, the superintendent.

He said the new law will provide the final nudge for the district to drop the last of its fees for its cooperative programs, but added that the new funding alone may not be enough for districts just starting to eliminate fees.

Covering textbook fees cost his district around $87,000 in the first year of the program. This year, they spent around $110,000 to cover fees for 1,100 students, money saved through attrition and watching supply costs.

“It was much easier to do than I thought it would be,” he said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana has new requirements for teaching reading. Will teachers be prepared to meet them?

2023-06-21T16:54:47+00:00

Update, Aug. 15: Since this article published, the National Council on Teacher Quality revised Ball State University’s grade from an F to an A. Read more here.

Before Indiana students can learn how to read, their teachers have to learn how to teach reading.

But how that’s done may soon change at teacher preparation programs across the state, as Indiana joins a national push to adopt reading practices shown to improve literacy

By 2025, new teachers will be required to demonstrate their proficiency in the science of reading — a term for a wide body of research that emphasizes phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and phonemic awareness in reading instruction. And programs risk losing their right to call themselves “accredited” if their curriculums aren’t based in reading science by 2024.

Helping Indiana colleges make that mandatory transition is a $25 million fund from the Lilly Endowment Inc. earmarked to help incorporate the science of reading into teacher preparation programs. Several programs said they’re already using planning grants from the endowment to make sure their courses adhere to the new standards.

Just how far they have to go is uncertain.

A new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality — known as NCTQ — found an uneven landscape of reading instruction at Indiana colleges.

Yet at least two of the eight teacher preparation programs at Indiana universities that received failing grades from NCTQ, Indiana University Bloomington and Ball State, dispute the group’s conclusion that they aren’t sufficiently preparing teachers to use the science of reading.

When did Indiana adopt the science of reading?

Though science of reading has become the norm at some schools, a statewide push began last August, with an $85 million donation from the Lilly Endowment to train more teachers and literacy coaches.

A law passed during the most recent legislative session also requires districts, teachers, and teacher prep programs to get on board with science of reading research.

All of these changes are meant to help more Indiana students learn to read: Only around one-third of Hoosier fourth graders were proficient in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress last year, a result that’s similar to the national average.

Karen Betz is the assistant professor of literacy at Marian University, which received top marks for its reading instruction program from the NCTQ this year after aligning its curriculum with the science of reading in 2017.

She said it’s long been clear to psychologists and neuroscientists that reading science helps more children learn to read. But some teacher preparation programs must still figure out how to translate that research into pedagogy.

Furthermore, some teachers have told her they’re familiar with the principles of reading science, but aren’t allowed by their school districts to implement such strategies in their classrooms.

“Institutions are holding onto theories of how kids learn to read instead of putting into practice how kids actually learn to read,” said Betz.

During the so-called “Reading Wars,” detractors cast the science of reading as boring and sterile compared to an emphasis on letting children choose and read books on their own, said Jeanette Mancilla-Martinez of Vanderbilt University, who’s conducting a review of the reading curriculum at Indiana University Bloomington’s teacher preparation program through a Lilly grant.

But learning to read is a cognitively demanding skill that requires explicit instruction, Mancilla-Martinez said, and some children need more support than others.

“The idea that you have books around the house, you don’t need these boring phonics skills, you’ll learn naturally — that may happen for a small percentage of children, but that’s not good enough,” Mancilla-Martinez said.

Do Indiana teachers learn the science of reading?

For its report released last week, NCTQ evaluated whether aspiring teachers learned the five principles championed by reading science, as well as whether the schools’ curriculum included outdated or disproven practices, like the three-cueing model.

Of the 18 programs evaluated in Indiana, just four earned an A or better, and eight earned an F. The report found at least five programs teach disproven practices, and only seven offered instruction on teaching reading to English language learners.

The results are “troubling,” said Justin Ohlemiller of advocacy Stand for Children Indiana, an education advocacy group, especially when combined with the state’s low national reading scores.

“If we’re going to address the literacy crisis in our state, it’s going to take a significant change in approach from those who are responsible for training our educators of the future,” Ohlemiller said in a statement.

On a positive note, 12 programs offered some instruction on teaching reading to struggling readers, like students who have dyslexia, according to the report.

Marian University’s Klipsch Educators College was the only program in Indiana — and one of just 48 in the country — to earn an A+ rating in the report.

Meanwhile, the teacher prep programs at Indiana University Bloomington and Ball State University — one of the largest teacher prep programs in the country — pushed back on their F grades in NCTQ’s report.

Representatives of Ball State’s Teachers College said the report relied on incomplete course materials obtained through public records requests, a complaint that echoes critiques of previous NCTQ reports. The council countered that it provided an opportunity for colleges to provide additional material in January.

“We have always included the components and prepared our candidates in what is now termed the science of reading,” said Jackie Sydnor, associate professor and assistant chair for Ball State’s Department of Elementary Education.

Sydnor pointed to other indicators of the quality of Ball State’s program, such as its accreditation from the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, as well as students’ higher-than-average pass rates on the state teaching exam.

Still, the college is using a $100,000 planning grant from the Lilly Endowment to conduct an analysis of its reading instruction programs, she said.

Indiana University Bloomington also received a $100,000 grant from Lilly to evaluate its existing programs for science of reading alignment, said Jeff Anderson, associate dean for undergraduate education. He said the school’s faculty believes they are teaching the science of reading, as evidenced by candidates’ performance on licensing exams.

“Our goal as a teacher prep program is to ensure our candidates graduate with the skill and expertise to be effective teachers,” Anderson said. “Clearly, the ability to learn to read is core to being successful in P-12.”

Under new state laws, the Indiana Department of Education is required to conduct a review of accredited teacher preparation programs beginning in 2024. Those who don’t have a curriculum based on the science of reading by then may be put on an improvement plan by the state, or face losing their accredited status.

How do teachers use the science of reading?

Even with a seal of approval from the NCTQ, Marian University’s Klipsch Educators College is looking to do more work with the science of reading. The college has received both a $75,000 planning grant and a $750,000 implementation grant from the Lilly Endowment to align their alternative teacher licensure and graduate programs to reading science.

The college intends to roll out Indiana’s first ever master’s program in reading science in May 2024.

Betz, the literacy professor, said a core part of the Klipsch program is the work that preservice teachers do in schools alongside their professors, who evaluate their lesson plans and step in to demonstrate effective teaching.

Higher education institutions have a responsibility to graduate teachers who are ready, rather than graduating those who will need to backtrack once they’re on the job, she said.

“That’s time lost,” Betz said.

In the same way that learning to read helps a child overcome future academic challenges, learning to teach reading effectively gives a new teacher the tools to shepherd students through their struggles, said Sally Busby, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Evansville’s School of Education. The school received an A rating from the NCTQ.

It’s using a $75,000 planning grant from the Lilly Endowment in part to create a council of literacy coaches from southern Indiana who can provide input on what’s needed in schools.

Of the competing approaches to reading instruction, Busby said teachers can find opportunities for students to enjoy books, while still devoting instructional time to decoding the language of the books they love.

“We were so desperate to make sure kids loved books, and thought the love of books would get them through the struggle of reading,” Busby said. “But you can’t enjoy reading until you can read.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the organization providing grants for science of reading. It is the Lilly Endowment Inc.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana cuts number of academic standards with a new statewide test coming soon

2023-06-07T15:47:39+00:00

Knowledge is power — but knowledge of idioms is no longer required for Hoosier students.

That’s because the Indiana state school board on Wednesday approved a major cut to the number of state academic standards in order to prioritize what students must know in every grade level.

The goal of trimming back the standards — mandated by a 2022 state law — is to help prepare more students who are ready for college and career when they graduate. The Indiana Department of Education will next work on creating a new version of the statewide assessment, the ILEARN, that matches the revised standards and may include informal “checkpoint” tests throughout the year.

Department officials, working with focus groups, were charged with cutting 25% of standards, and then designating one-third of the remaining standards as “essential.”

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner

The changes, which the board approved in a 9-2 vote, affect four core academic areas: language arts, math, social studies, and science. They go into effect for the 2023-24 school year.

The reduced standards received a mostly warm welcome from members of the board and the public, who said the move would allow teachers to focus on the most important skills.

“We’ve been wrestling with the myriad of standards that sometimes can be a mile wide and an inch deep,” said Steve Baker, principal at Bluffton High School in northwest Indiana. “This enormity of standards has overwhelmed my teachers … to guess which ones were the most important, and which ones we have to eliminate.”

But some board members said the cuts didn’t go far enough, especially in the earliest grades.

“We have to be more prescriptive about what we want our kids to know,” said board member Pat Mapes, who voted against the slimmed-down standards.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said across all grade levels, the board’s review reduced the number of standards by more than what the law required. Kindergarten standards were reduced by 35%, while high school standards were reduced by 29%.

For example, the number of language arts standards for third grade — a critical year for literacy — has been nearly halved from 62 to 34. Many of the standards cut are those that students should have covered in previous years, such as recognizing alphabetical order or the parts of a sentence.

The review also merged three sections on reading literature, nonfiction, and vocabulary into a single new section on reading comprehension, with standards on idioms and using reference materials like dictionaries left on the cutting room floor.

Along with pruning the standards, state officials also approved new STEM standards, as well as updates to standards in early learning, health, and fine arts.

Jenner said the department will now turn its attention to aligning the statewide assessment in math and reading — the ILEARN — to the new standards. That process must be complete by March 2025.

One proposal for the revised test from the department would create short “checkpoint” tests throughout the year. These scores would be reported only to teachers and students and their parents, with an opportunity for students to retake the assessments if needed. Schools would still give a final, summative assessment at the end of the year for statewide reporting purposes.

“What we currently do is just kind of an autopsy,” said Mapes of the current state test. “It’s too late, and those kids move on to the next grade.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana school districts may have to turn over underused buildings to charters. Here’s what to know.

2023-02-24T20:31:23+00:00

Indiana’s 2023 legislative session is under way, and state legislators have introduced more than 100 new education bills and bills impacting schools and students. For the latest Indiana education news, sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free newsletter here.

Legislation that would allow charter schools to acquire underused traditional public school buildings that are still serving students heads to the Senate floor after passing out of committee along party lines on Wednesday.

The bill makes it easier for charter schools to take advantage of the so-called $1 law, which currently requires school districts to offer unused, closed school buildings to charter schools or state educational institutions for the sale or annual lease price of $1.

Sen. Linda Rogers, a Republican from Granger who wrote the bill, has said in hearings that the intent of the bill was to clarify the existing $1 law, which a judge characterized as ambiguous in a recent ruling in favor of Carmel schools. But critics of the law, which has faced opposition from Democratic lawmakers and could have a significant impact on Indianapolis Public Schools, say it spurs the forced turnover of buildings to charter schools.

The initial version of the bill would have forced districts with declining student populations to shutter school buildings operating at less than 60% capacity.

But after Republicans on the Education and Career Development Committee amended the bill, the legislation now states that school districts “may” close such schools, placing the responsibility on charter schools to identify underused buildings and first work with the district to try to acquire one.

But Senate Bill 391 still allows charters to petition the Indiana Department of Education if those negotiations do not work, ultimately allowing the attorney general to enforce the sale or lease of the building. The bill also expands the $1 law to allow education nonprofits to acquire buildings.

The bill offers districts some reprieve by requiring charter schools that no longer have a use for an acquired district building to offer it back to the school district.

Rogers declined to comment this week when contacted about the bill by Chalkbeat.

The bill passed 8-4 out of committee. It will head to the House if it passes the Senate by Tuesday, but further amendments could still change the bill.

Here’s what we know about Senate Bill 391, inspired by questions from our readers.

How does the bill define an underutilized school?

The bill defines an “underutilized” school building as one where student enrollment has averaged less than 60% of the building’s capacity for the current school year and the previous two school years.

If the building’s capacity is unknown, then its capacity is determined by the average maximum full-time enrollment in any of the last 25 years.

The bill only applies to school districts where enrollment has dropped by at least 10% within the past five years. The district must also have more than one school building serving the same grade levels as the one that is subject to closure.

And schools can only close if there is another suitable building with “sufficient capacity” to take students from the closing school that is no more than 20 minutes away.

School districts could also keep buildings open if they demonstrate that they are being used for alternative education, administrative offices, or storage. In order for districts to use this provision, at least 30% of the building must be used for alternative education, and at least 50% must be used for offices or storage.

What would this bill mean for IPS?

The bill could have huge implications for Indianapolis Public Schools, which had an average utilization rate of 60% for its buildings in the 2021-22 school year, according to a facility condition analysis.

Paul Miller Elementary School 114 is one of six buildings that IPS will close at the end of this school year. Charter schools have expressed interested in occupying some of these buildings.

Sen. Andrea Hunley, an Indianapolis Democrat and former IPS principal, authored a failed amendment to the bill on Wednesday that would exempt districts like IPS where charter or innovation schools already occupy 10% of school buildings.

“Collaboration is already happening in Marion County in unique ways,” Hunley previously told Chalkbeat. “I’m perplexed by trying to create a solution on the state level when this is a very localized issue.”

Hunley’s amendment was one of several that Democrats on the Education and Career Development Committee tried but failed to pass.

What’s the difference between an underused building and a school with small class sizes?

Unless lawmakers amend the bill, it might not be possible to distinguish between a school that’s “underutilized” and one that has purposefully small class sizes. The latter is often a selling point for families who choose charter and private schools.

And it’s possible that a school is “underutilized” but using all of the space, critics said.

What happens to kids who attend a school that’s declared underused?

The bill says a building can only be closed if there is an available school within 20 minutes that can serve the same grades, meaning district students would likely go there if they didn’t attend the new charter school.

But the bill does not say whether the 20 minutes of travel would be via car, public transit, biking, or walking.

Would the law apply to charter schools?

Neither the $1 building law nor the new bill to expand it apply to charter schools. Without changes to the legislation, charter schools would not have to report and turn over their underused buildings.

How does the law apply to a building with debt?

Generally, under the existing law, the school district remains responsible for any debt attached to the building before it was leased, while the charter school is responsible for any expenses to the building during the term of the lease. Co-located schools share expenses.

Expanding the law to cover underused buildings, rather than just vacant ones, could in theory create situations in which districts carry capital debt for buildings they are leasing to charters.

When can a district sell a building for market value?

Typically, a district can sell a building for market value if it offers the facility to charter operators and gets no takers.

Indianapolis Public Schools recently sold the John Marshall building under this provision to create a community hub.

Can a charter school make a profit off of a building acquired for $1?

Current law states that if a charter sells the building to a third party, it must pay the district the amount by which the property’s value increased, minus any adjustments made to the property that may have increased its value.

The amended bill advanced by the committee would require charters to first offer an acquired building back to the school district before selling it. If a school district declines the building, the charter may sell it.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers to discuss bill similar to Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law Monday

2023-02-16T22:35:29+00:00

Indiana House lawmakers are scheduled to hold their first discussion Monday of a bill that closely resembles a Florida law banning the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in early grades.

The House Committee on Education will take up House Bill 1608 Monday at 8 a.m., per an agenda posted online.

The two-page bill is one of several proposals from legislators this session that address how schools must handle controversial social issues involving race and sex. It prohibits school staff and contractors from teaching lessons that “study, explore, or inform students” about topics like gender roles, stereotypes, and identity, as well as sexual orientation, in kindergarten through third grade.

It’s similar to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education statute that gained national attention last year as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Author Rep. Michelle Davis, a Whiteland Republican, previously described her bill in a statement as common-sense legislation.

“The goal of this bill is to empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children,” Davis’ statement said.

The education committee usually meets on Wednesdays, but lawmakers are facing a crunch to hear bills in committee before reading deadlines during the last week of February.

Rep. Bob Behning, the GOP chairman of the education committee, did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the bill, or whether his committee will meet again on Wednesday.

The ACLU of Indiana has called for a rally at the statehouse Monday morning to oppose the bill.

“This bill sends a dangerous message to these already vulnerable youth that they are a threat to public discourse,” the organization said in a Thursday post.

With deadlines to move legislation looming, Senate lawmakers this week also scheduled a discussion for this week about a bill that would ban certain topics on race and racism from the classroom.

But the bill was unexpectedly pulled from Wednesday’s committee agenda shortly after a rally by groups who oppose such legislation.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana senators nix discussion on latest bill restricting classroom topics

2023-02-15T21:44:56+00:00

Indiana senators were scheduled to discuss Wednesday the latest bill to ban certain topics on race and racism from K-12 classrooms, but pulled the bill from the agenda shortly beforehand.

The abrupt change in plans by the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development came after a Tuesday rally by groups opposed to such legislation.

Senate Bill 386 seeks to prohibit schools from teaching that a group of people is inherently superior or inferior to another, or that they deserve adverse or unequal treatment, based on a long list of characteristics: age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin.

The bill is similar to failed legislation from last year that was part of a spate of such proposals in statehouses nationwide. Indiana’s GOP-controlled legislature quashed the proposal after widespread criticism, despite expectations that the state would join other red states in passing laws often ascribed to a backlash against critical race theory.

The 2022 version of the proposal differed slightly from this year’s bill. It sought to prohibit the teaching of seven concepts related to race, including that students should feel discomfort or guilt on the basis of their identity.

Though the Indiana legislature is considering a number of other bills related to how schools can approach topics like identity in schools, SB 386 was the first to be scheduled for a hearing. It’s unclear if lawmakers will return to the bill in next week’s education committee meeting — the last opportunity for bills to be heard in committee before reading deadlines the following week.

This year’s bill drew condemnation Tuesday from a coalition of groups, including the Indiana State Teachers Association, the Indianapolis NAACP, the Indianapolis Urban League, and others.

Those groups were also key to defeating last year’s legislation, House Bill 1134. They called the new bill unnecessary and “ignorant.”

The coalition also drew attention to an amendment to the bill that was circulated but not posted online that sought to change the bill to focus only on race and color.

“The legislation is in a different package with a new bow, a harmless sounding name, but nevertheless, it is as harmful as prior legislation, even more so because it targets race,” said Gwen Kelley of the Indianapolis NAACP.

Wednesday was the first scheduled hearing for this year’s bill on the topic.

In a statement on why the bill was dropped from the agenda, author Sen. Jeff Raatz, a Richmond Republican and chair of the Senate education committee, said he would “continue having conversations” about making classrooms a place where all children could learn and thrive.

Raatz’s statement did not address whether the bill would return for next week’s hearing. Raatz’s office did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment about the amendment.

The legislature is considering several other bills that would affect how schools can discuss topics like sexual orientation and gender identity in K-12 classrooms. Those bills are also still awaiting a hearing.

Chalkbeat Indiana Bureau Chief MJ Slaby contributed to this story.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Legislation would require Indiana districts to share property tax revenue with charters

2023-02-14T21:45:12+00:00

A long-awaited bill to require Indiana school districts to share property tax dollars with charter schools has attracted attention and scrutiny from groups that disagree about which schools should benefit from public funding.

The proposal is the latest sign that lawmakers might direct more public dollars to support school choice this budget session. Proponents characterize this strategy as funding students instead of systems, while opponents argue it leaves fewer resources for the nearly one million students in Indiana’s traditional public schools.

Under current state law, charters do not receive a portion of the funding that districts can collect from property taxes, and can’t put their own referendums to raise operating revenue to voters.

Senate Bill 398, authored by Republican Sen. Linda Rogers of Granger, would require districts to share some of that tax revenue, though Rogers made changes that significantly pare down the scope of the proposal.

Beginning in 2024, districts would need to share any revenue from local property taxes earmarked for operating expenses that’s above the average they received from 2021 to 2023 with charter schools in the same or contiguous counties.

Rogers’ bill would require charter schools to hold public hearings on their budgets, and to set up operations funds to receive referendum dollars, which would only be available for a list of qualified expenses related to buildings, transportation, and technology.

The Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy committee did not vote on the bill Tuesday. Rogers said she would be open to meeting with the members of the public who came to testify to discuss the bill further. House lawmakers are considering a similar bill.

“To me, it’s simply unacceptable that a student who chooses a different public school than the one they are geographically assigned to should receive thousands less in education funding annually,” she said during Tuesday’s hearing.

Charter supporters argued during the hearing that the current local tax system leaves them with less. Furthermore, it means that parents who send their children to charter schools don’t benefit from the property tax dollars that they might pay.

But opponents of the bill said it would be inappropriate to direct more public money to schools that don’t have measures of accountability like publicly elected school boards. They also said charter schools have access to funding sources that are unavailable to traditional public schools — such as federal and state grants, philanthropic support, and assistance from the city of Indianapolis, for example.

One such source of funds, the state Charter and Innovation Network School Grant Program, provides grants of $1,250 per charter student, lawmakers noted. Meanwhile, two federally funded grants are earmarked for charter schools’ expansion and facilities.

“If a taxpayer is not satisfied with how their tax dollars are being spent, they have an opportunity to provide input at school board meetings, or through the voting process,” David Marcotte, executive director of the Indiana Urban Schools Association, told lawmakers Tuesday. “The prospect of losing these funds to charter schools … will be a burden on many school districts in my association.”

IPS superintendent opposes ‘zero sum’ funding

The legislature has repeatedly presented “zero sum” strategies that move money from one group of students with high needs to another, Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said at the hearing.

Johnson said that under the bill, the district would expect to receive around $2 million less in funding annually. She also noted that charter schools with small populations — a selling point for families — often have a higher per-pupil cost than other schools.

Independent charter schools received around $7,326 less than IPS in per-pupil funding in 2019, according to a report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education. Statewide, that gap is around $3,800, according to testimony from Kristin Grimme, senior vice president of strategy at The Mind Trust, a group that supports charter schools in Indianapolis.

But IPS was the first district in the state to share its latest 2018 operating referendum money with the Innovation Network charters considered part of the district, giving $500 per pupil to those charters.

The district has also noted that it pays more than $40 million in in-kind services to support charters within its Innovation Network.

IPS also covers facilities and transportation costs for 15 of its 24 Innovation charters, most of which comes from the district’s operating fund, Johnson noted on Tuesday.

Still, charter school leaders and pro-charter organizations have argued that a meaningful disparity exists.

In Indianapolis, the IPS school board’s decision last month to delay a vote on a new operating referendum came after high-profile lobbying from the charter school community that charters should benefit more from the referendum. The latest IPS referendum pitched by district officials would have shared more of the additional revenue with Innovation charters than the district initially offered, but none with independent charters.

Other proposals for funding on the table

The legislature is considering several other proposals that would affect local funding and resources for schools.

House Bill 1498 would place a one-time cap of 5% on operating referendum revenue for 2024.

Meanwhile, Senate Bill 391 would compel districts to make their underused school buildings available to charter schools. The bill is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Education and Career Development Committee Wednesday.

Other proposals would direct more state money to vouchers and similar programs. One such bill seeks to open the state’s Education Savings Accounts to more families, allowing them to use state tuition support dollars to attend private schools.

And House Republicans’ signature education bill this session would create career scholarship accounts for students to be used for job training with organizations other than their high schools. House Bill 1002 will be heard by the Ways and Means Committee Wednesday.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Sex ed in Indiana isn’t required. Here’s what it looks like in schools that teach it.

2023-02-13T16:38:43+00:00

The assignment started out easy. Two students acted out a conversation between a teacher and a student about homework help.

Then it got trickier.

The students needed to apply the same principles of communicating and listening effectively to a conversation between two romantic partners about having sex for the first time. And they had to use all the knowledge about healthy relationships, preventing pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases that their weeklong sex education class had just covered.

There were no wallflowers or shrinking violets in Haileigh Huggins’ class at Irvington Community Middle School, as nearly every hand shot up for a chance to perform the skit. But there was some giggling.

“This can feel a little awkward. A little weird,” Huggins told the students after they quieted down. “But the more we practice difficult conversations, the better we get. Remember: The only person who can make a decision about your body is you.”

Sex ed that covers birth control, pregnancy, and consent isn’t required in schools in Indiana.

Lawmakers and advocates have tried to change that, especially in light of the state’s abortion ban and statistics showing a decline in the number of students who receive sex ed at school or at home. But such efforts — including two bills on sex ed in the current legislative session — face an uphill battle as disputes about how schools should address complex social topics play out in Indiana and nationwide.

Despite evidence linking sex ed to improved behavioral outcomes, like delaying sex, Indiana is one of 21 states that does not require the course in schools.

It mandates only that schools teach lessons on HIV and AIDS, and expects schools that do teach sex ed to emphasize abstinence. Past bills to expand what schools need to cover have not been called for discussion, and other legislation this year instead seeks to place limits on classroom conversations about topics like sexual orientation.

Without statewide sex ed requirements, Indiana students might receive an incomplete education depending on where they go to school, experts say.

“When young people are given the information they need, they’re able to make really good decisions for themselves. They can ask questions, feel affirmed in who they are as individuals,” said Alison Macklin, director of policy and advocacy at SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. “Their experience will be vastly different from kids who didn’t get that education.”

Access to sex education in Indiana varies

Huggins had worked with many of the students in the class before, which helped put the teens at ease.

As an educator with LifeSmart Youth, a nonprofit organization that contracts with schools to offer sex ed, she taught their fifth grade course on puberty and the basics of reproduction. The curriculum begins with elementary school lessons on bullying, then turns to talks on healthy relationships that emphasize abstinence per Indiana law, but include all methods of contraception.

Now in seventh grade, the students had spent the week talking about different birth control methods and their effectiveness at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Their last day for the class was spent learning to communicate, first through familiar scenarios like asking for homework help and listening to the response. Then they applied the same principles of expressing their opinion and respecting their partner’s reaction to a mock conversation about safe sex.

One student read prompts — “What does safer sex mean to you? What else do we need to talk about?” — while another ad-libbed responses — “I think condoms would be a safer choice.”

The students performing the skit didn’t falter, and their classmates remained quiet and attentive. If the assignment was a little awkward, it was also an incredibly important example, Huggins said.

“You’re allowing us to hear these conversations,” Huggins told them.

But data indicates that fewer of these kinds of conversations are happening around the state.

Around 65% of students in 2015 said that their parents talked to them about sex, compared to 55% in 2021, according to the Indiana Department of Health’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Additionally, the share of middle schools that taught students about the efficacy of condoms has dropped in that time period from 58% to 41%.

LifeSmart CEO Tammie Carter said the organization has a waiting list of schools interested in the program. However, she noted that it has also seen districts drop the program in the wake of legislation that would restrict classroom conversations about “divisive concepts.”

This year, lawmakers are again considering a bill that would prohibit teachers from raising certain topics on race and discrimination, as well as another that would ban discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity from K-12 schools.

It’s not clear how many schools in the state include a sex ed curriculum.

But students in schools that do offer sex ed are likely to have better behavior outcomes in the near- and long-term, said Macklin of SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, including choosing to delay sexual activity or use contraception.

An ideal sex ed curriculum would be aligned to recommendations from pediatricians, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and experts in child development, Macklin said. It would be structured as a K-12 framework, beginning in the early grades with topics like not touching others without permission.

It would also change the state’s requirement for schools to emphasize abstinence — one of the few requirements for schools that offer sex ed.

Bills to teach sex ed face challenges

Two bills in the Indiana House seek to expand what the state requires of a sex ed course, though neither would make the lessons mandatory in schools. Since 2018, Indiana has required schools to give parents a chance to opt students out of the lessons, which would not change under the bills.

House Bill 1066, authored by Rep. Sue Errington — a Democrat who at one time worked for Planned Parenthood and has brought the similar legislation forward in past years — and House Bill 1566, authored by Republican Elizabeth Rowray, would each require schools that do offer sex ed to provide medically accurate, age-appropriate sexual health education. That education would have to be applicable to all students regardless of gender, sexual orientation, and whether they’re sexually active.

The bills specify that schools that opt to provide sex ed must offer it to students once in fifth grade, twice in middle school, and twice in high school. And they emphasize teaching abstinence as the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and disease, but not to the exclusion of other methods of contraception.

Rowray, who supported the state’s ban on most abortions that passed last summer, said she sees education as key to reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in Indiana.

“It’s important for everyone regardless of identities to understand the ramifications of having sex and how it can impact you from a physical, mental, and emotional standpoint,” Rowray said. “Having the facts will dispel the myths.”

Rowray previously served as the director of a crisis pregnancy center — an organization that dissuades clients from having abortions — that offered sex ed to local schools. In this role, Rowray said she heard students repeat a number of inaccuracies about sex and pregnancy — like that they couldn’t get pregnant in a hot tub, or if it was their first time.

But one comment from a student stuck with her, Rowray said: A teenage girl wrote that until taking a sex ed class, she didn’t know she could say no to having sex with her boyfriend.

Around 17% of female students reported being forced to have sex they didn’t want to in 2021, compared to 15% in 2015, according to the state’s youth behavior survey.

“You might give consent one, 10 or 50 times, but you can choose to revoke that consent and say, this is not a healthy choice for me at this time,” Rowray said.

Rowray said she’s not sure if her bill has support from her statehouse colleagues. Neither bill has thus far had a hearing in the House Education Committee, like similar bills in the recent past.

She added that she hopes Indiana makes sex ed in all schools mandatory.

Educator training crucial for sex ed

In addition to curriculum, Macklin said it’s important for sex ed legislation to consider how to train educators in the topic.

It’s not uncommon for schools to turn to outside groups like LifeSmart, which sends in trained educators. But if classroom teachers are expected to teach the curriculum, they need to know how to create a safe environment for all young people, regardless of their personal or family background, Macklin added.

The Indiana bills from Errington and Rowray would allow school employees or contractors to teach sex ed, as long as they have “knowledge of the most recent medically accurate research on human sexuality, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases.”

Before Huggins closed out her lesson, her students wanted to know if she had “the talk” in school. Huggins said she had indeed received the puberty talk in fifth grade, but not the follow-up lesson on reproduction.

Did she laugh?

“Of course,” she said.

Huggins added in an interview that shepherding a classroom of teenagers through discomfort was part of her training. Laughter, when it happens, isn’t punished.

“This is funny stuff. It’s important, it’s normal, it’s natural,” Huggins said. “And if we’re comfortable, we’ll all learn better.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How Indiana parents can use the state’s new school quality ‘GPS’ dashboard

2023-02-09T18:09:38+00:00

Why does math growth matter? How do 3rd grade reading scores correlate with college enrollment? And what does either one have to do with work ethic?

Those are the kinds of questions that Indiana’s new school quality dashboard hopes to answer.

Mandated by the Indiana General Assembly, the Graduates Prepared to Succeed (or “GPS”) Dashboard launched in December with landing pages for each public and private school and district that show how students fare in K-12 and beyond. The Indiana Department of Education plans to add more data in the future to cover topics like college readiness and teacher demographics.

Its rollout comes amid questions about whether the state will abandon its current school quality metric — the A-F school grading system — which has been in limbo since the 2018-19 school year. Such a move would likely have support from education advocates who support a more comprehensive way of measuring school performance, rather than one based heavily on testing.

But the dashboard is also meant to make things easier for families who have long asked for less jargon and more convenience when it comes to evaluating their children’s schools, said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

Helping families access and understand education data

Before the dashboard, parents might have had to search for data across several state agencies to compile a full picture of their child’s school, Jenner said. Now, test results previously available from the education department are presented alongside postsecondary outcomes data from sources like the Commission of Higher Education and the Department of Workforce Development.

The dashboard opens by explaining how each grade level connects to the state’s goal of preparing students for the future, and what characteristics define a successful student.

Parents can then search for a school, district, or charter network to find its landing page. The district-level pages include information for all grade levels, while school-level pages contain metrics specific to those grades, like reading test results in elementary schools or enrollment in the 21st Century Scholars program in middle schools.

But what’s most important in the sea of data? Jenner said that for elementary schools, parents might want to pay attention to reading results. For later grades, parents might be interested in the share of students who have taken dual credit courses, or who have filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, she said.

Each indicator has an “explore” button that breaks down the data into student subgroups, giving results for English learners, high-ability students, and students by socioeconomic status. The explore tab also explains what each metric means, and offers questions about them.

Jenner said she hopes that parents use the dashboard to find what’s working well at their school, or at others, in order to advocate for best practices or choose the best school for their child.

“If a parent sees that wow — that school over there has most of their students in special education reading … I’m pumped about that,” Jenner said. “It makes me want to inquire more, or it makes me want to celebrate my school.”

Education groups have applauded the focus on a more holistic view of schools.

Kim Graham, director of organizing and partnership at EmpowerED families, said any initiative that provides more information to families is useful. Now, she said, the department must make parents aware that it exists.

Dawn McGrath, executive director of IN*SOURCE, which advocates for families of students with disabilities, said the dashboard is helpful for identifying what questions to ask — not necessarily for giving all the answers.

“With a little work, a parent can gauge if the school is engaged in equitable practices of identifying students for special needs in proportion to the ethnicity and socioeconomic status of the school community,” McGrath said by email.

What does it mean for A-F grades?

The new dashboard has led some policymakers to question whether Indiana still needs its other measures of school performance, like the annual performance report and the A-F grading system.

Rep. Bob Behning, the chair of the House Education Committee, has introduced a bill that would eliminate the school corporation annual performance report, which districts are required to produce every year with information on student enrollment and performance.

But lawmakers seem less likely to eliminate the A-F school grading system this year, even though it has effectively been suspended since 2018 as the state transitioned to a new testing system and later grappled with COVID. Another bill would suspend the grades again for the 2022-23 school year.

The department asked the legislature to suspend the grades for another year as the dashboard rolls out, Behning said at a committee hearing Wednesday, with the goal of evaluating how the grades will be used moving forward.

The dashboard and the A-F grades serve different purposes, said Graham of EmpowerED Families. The grades are based on a standardized set of data, while the dashboard offers a clearer look at students’ growth over time, she added.

But a single grade for a school may be misleading, said McGrath of IN*SOURCE.

For example, a school with an A grade may have a low population of students receiving special education services, and thus have less experience integrating students with individualized education plans into general education classrooms, she said.

Future updates may include extracurriculars

McGrath said that the education department’s Office of Special Education already uses an oversight system known as the Results Driven Accountability system to gauge practices that are important to special education. Some of its measurements could be added to the GPS dashboard, she noted.

The education department is planning seven more updates to the dashboard this year, Jenner said, although that currently doesn’t include adding discipline data.

One possible update is demographic information for a school’s teachers. Other improvements will include a space for schools to share their mission statements and offer more information about the courses and extracurriculars they offer — something Jenner said is increasingly important to parents.

“If a parent has a child that they’re trying to keep engaged, it could be as simple as having that class or co-curricular and having that teacher to light that fire of purpose,” she said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana bill would compel school districts to shutter underused buildings, offer them to charters

2023-02-08T21:57:40+00:00

A bill in the Indiana Senate would significantly expand a state law that requires school districts to make their empty buildings available to charter schools.

While existing state law compels districts to make vacant or unused buildings available to sell or lease to charter schools for $1, Senate Bill 391 would clarify that the law also applies to an “underutilized” building.

It would require districts to compile an annual report of the buildings it uses for instruction to determine if any are underused, which the bill would define as occupied at less than 60% capacity. Underutilized buildings would be closed, and charter schools would be notified, unless the district could prove it uses a building for other qualified purposes.

The proposal would also allow charter schools or the state Department of Education to request a review at any time of whether a school building should be closed. And districts that don’t comply with the law would be subject to a funding penalty, losing 3% of their state tuition support for 12 months.

Bill author Sen. Linda Rogers (R-Granger) said the purpose of the bill was to provide more clarity to the existing laws that govern school building closures.

The state has recently seen several high-profile cases of charter schools accusing public school districts of unfairly holding onto buildings that they say should be offered under the $1 law. In one example, a judge ruled last month that Carmel Clay Schools in Hamilton County did not violate the law by closing an elementary school and refusing to offer it to the Hillsdale College-supported Valor Classical Academy. The judge cited the “ambiguity” of existing law.

“Taxpayers paid for that building to be used for public education,” Rogers said. “All too often, buildings are being kept open to use for storage or offices, when there are much less expensive options available.”

The bill applies only to districts where enrollment has dropped by at least 10% over five years and where there is another suitable building serving the same grades located within 20 minutes of the targeted building.

It provides exceptions for buildings being used for alternative programs, storage, or office space, but districts must meet certain requirements, like using at least half of the building for storage and exploring other potentially less expensive options that would serve the purpose.

The bill would turn authority over building closures — which currently rests with the Attorney General’s office — to the Department of Education.

If passed, the bill likely would immediately affect districts like Indianapolis Public Schools, which is in the midst of a plan to restructure its use of underutilized buildings. A district facility condition report found that the district’s average utilization rate is 60%, with some schools operating far below capacity.

The bill heard mixed public testimony at the Senate Education and Career Development Committee Wednesday, serving as a proxy in the long-standing fight between charter and traditional public school advocates.

Many speakers said the expansion of the law would impact a local school board’s authority to decide what to do with its buildings. One district requested an amendment that would exempt districts if a school building is being used for a nonprofit educational program, like a Boys & Girls Club.

Jerell Blakeley of the Indiana State Teachers Association objected to a provision that would allow charter schools to request reviews of school buildings.

“There is nothing to deter an interested party from tying up the school board for months in bad faith,” Blakeley said. “There are no penalties for trying to take a building without merit.”

But charter supporters said charter schools don’t have access to property tax funding as traditional districts do, and thus can’t accommodate growing interest in their programs. The legislature also is considering bills this year that would compel districts to share property tax dollars with charters.

“This funding disparity forces charter schools to pay for their facilities amongst other expenses out of the tuition support dollars used to educate their students,” said Molly Collins of the Institute for Quality Education, a nonprofit organization that advocates for charter education.

Lawmakers did not vote on the proposal, but Rogers said she would consider some of the testimony in making any changes ahead of next week’s hearing.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

‘The right thing to do:’ Indiana considers in-state tuition for students without legal U.S. residency

2023-02-01T23:35:57+00:00

Hoosiers without legal U.S. residency may become eligible for in-state college tuition rates through a bipartisan bill currently under consideration by the legislature.

The students have had to pay out-of-state tuition instead of paying the lower in-state rates due to a 2011 law, and despite past efforts to change the policy.

This has left Indiana as just one of a few states that requires students lacking legal residency status to pay out-of-state tuition rates — often at a cost of many times the in-state rates — leaving college out of reach.

But lawmakers are trying once again to change that with Senate Bill 135, which would make students eligible for in-state rates if they have attended Indiana schools for four years and either graduated or received the equivalent of a high diploma.

The bipartisan bill would also require students to file an affidavit with their college stating that they will apply to legalize their immigration status as soon as the option is available.

The bill is authored by Republican Sens. Blake Doriot of Goshen and Linda Rogers of Granger, and Sen. David Niezgodski, a Democrat from South Bend.

Doriot said the bill would put Indiana in line with other states that make in-state tuition accessible to more students, like those who were brought to the United States as children, but who don’t qualify for temporary resident status as offered in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA recipients are currently eligible for in-state tuition at some Indiana public colleges, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

Doriot added that many of his constituents have lived in Indiana for a long time despite not having legal resident status, and that the cost of college leads students to give up on higher education.

Given its critical need for workers, the state should help students who want to go to college, Doriot said.

“This problem has come to us… not from what the state of Indiana has done, but what the federal government has failed to do. We haven’t been able to get together and find a clean pathway to citizenship,” Doriot said. “And we are addressing children, young adults, who want to further themselves and they’re here, and they can’t go home.”

“The bottom line is, this is just the right thing to do,” Niezgodski added.

SB 135 had its first hearing Wednesday to public support from community groups and higher education systems, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, Indiana Latino Institute, Stand For Children Indiana, and Ball State University.

Sen. J.D. Ford, a Democrat from Carmel, noted that at Purdue University, for example, in-state students paid around $10,000 per year in tuition, versus $28,800 for out-of-state students.

Rachel Santos, director of education policy at the Indiana Latino Institute, said Indiana is now just one of two states barring students without legal residency from accessing the less expensive in-state tuition rate. She added that the state’s Latino population is growing in large part due to immigration.

“This is not a handout. This is asking for a fair chance at earning an education,” Santos told lawmakers.

There were no amendments or votes on Wednesday. Chair Sen. Jeff Raatz said the committee would take up the matter next week.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana’s plan to ‘reinvent high school’ moves forward with grants of up to $5,000 for job training

2023-02-01T21:32:56+00:00

A proposal to bring more job training to Indiana high school students moved forward Wednesday over the objections of Democratic lawmakers who said the bill still had too many unanswered questions about its scope and funding.

The bill, which House Republicans have said will “reinvent high school” by allowing students to meet graduation requirements through career experience, gives students state-funded scholarship accounts to spend on workforce training outside their schools.

The voucher-like proposal saw a few tweaks Wednesday as author Rep. Chuck Goodrich, R-Noblesville, added a price range of $2,500 to $5,000 to the accounts, to be determined by the Department of Education and the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet.

New language also specifies that schools can host joint career fairs to meet the provisions of the bill, and requires all schools to offer a career awareness class for all students, regardless of whether they use the scholarship accounts, by July 2024.

The bill passed the House Education Committee by a vote of 8-4 and now moves to the House Ways and Means Committee, which will determine the cost of the program. If passed, accounts would be available for the 2023-24 school year, and the education department would be tasked with creating new diploma requirements by December 2024.

Though there was no testimony Wednesday, community organizations in past hearings have expressed support for more career development for students, along with reservations about the additional work the bill might create for schools.

Democrats on the education committee said the bill was moving forward with too many unanswered questions, including how the funding would be doled out between schools, students, career training providers, and any intermediaries between those entities.

They proposed a number of amendments to limit the scope of the bill — including one to make the proposal a pilot program in only a few schools around the state, and another to study the idea further in a summer committee — but most were shot down on party lines.

They also questioned whether the bill’s proposal to allow students to use funds from the 21st Century Scholarship Grant, which are currently earmarked for college tuition, for postsecondary career training would lead to fewer students from low-income families earning college degrees. Republicans on the committee denied this suggestion.

Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, added that the scope of the bill was enormous, and would affect private schools and state agencies while creating a parallel education system.

“They talk about not being ready for prime time; this bill isn’t ready for soap opera time,” DeLaney said in the committee hearing.

The committee also rejected an amendment to provide more funding to school counseling departments, which DeLaney argued would be burdened with implementing the program.

The committee did accept an amendment from Democratic Rep. Vernon Smith of Gary to offer schools funding for career fairs.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana advances plan to expand school choice program to more students

2023-01-25T22:01:02+00:00

A bill that would expand school choice in Indiana and divert funds from public schools advanced on Wednesday with major changes.

Senate lawmakers enlarged the pool of students who could receive state money to attend private schools, but backed away from an initial proposal that would have opened the state’s Education Scholarship Accounts to all students regardless of family income or education needs.

Sen. Brian Buchanan amended his bill on Wednesday to limit the accounts to families meeting the program’s current income requirements. His changes also would reserve half of the total appropriation for students who receive special education services — the group the accounts currently serve.

The amended legislation passed the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development by a vote of 8-5, with GOP Sen. Jean Leising joining the four Democrats on the committee in opposition. It now heads to the appropriations committee.

The bill could become one of the more notable education policy legacies of Indiana’s 2023 legislative session. Proponents say it puts more control in parents’ hands over their children’s education.

“Any time you can give more choice and more options for parents, I believe it’s better,” said the bill’s author, Buchanan, in committee hearings last week.

Meanwhile, critics assail the program for siphoning off funds from state education and public schools.

“This is not about parent choice, this is about diverting and divesting money away from public schools,” said Sen. Fady Qaddoura, a Democrat.

Other concerns from opposition lawmakers included expanding a relatively new program to all families without data to gauge its effectiveness.

Created in 2021, the scholarship accounts currently are open only to students who receive special education services and whose families who don’t exceed certain limits on household income, allowing them to use state funding to attend private schools.

Buchanan’s bill would remove special education requirements, opening the choice program to families with a household income up to 300% of the federal poverty level. It would also raise the grant that a student would receive from 90% to 100% of the state tuition dollars earmarked for their public school.

The total cost of the proposal hasn’t been revealed, and that cost will determine the number of students who could participate. Buchanan said the appropriations committee would make that determination, but that he would support a $10 million appropriation, equal to its current budget.

Though just 143 students participate in the education scholarship program in 2022-23, interest is likely to increase as more people become aware of it, according to the bill’s fiscal note. Senate Bill 305 will make more families whose students attend private schools eligible for state support, potentially increasing the total cost to the state, according to the note.

The education scholarship accounts are separate from the Choice Scholarship program, which is open to most students from low- and moderate-income families in Indiana. That program served around 44,000 students last year, at a cost of about $240 million.

The expansion of the education scholarship accounts is not the only voucher or voucher-like program that lawmakers are considering this session. Another would create career scholarship accounts, giving students state grants to spend on job training with organizations outside their schools.

Career scholarship accounts would not come out of tuition support dollars for schools, though they would render schools ineligible for career and technical education dollars for each student who opts for a scholarship account instead.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana students may need to learn how to open bank accounts, take out loans in order to graduate

2023-01-25T20:25:32+00:00

A proposal to require all Hoosier high schoolers to take a personal finance course is moving forward, amid a spate of legislation aimed at improving students’ financial literacy.

Senate Bill 35 — one of five bills that would make personal finance a graduation requirement — mandates that schools offer a stand-alone course on topics like opening a bank account, applying for loans, and filling out tax returns. High schoolers would be required to take the class beginning with the Class of 2028.

The bill, authored by GOP Sen. Mike Gaskill, unanimously passed out of the Senate Education and Career Development committee Wednesday.

The vote puts Indiana on track to join several other states that have recently adopted financial literacy graduation requirements. However, some lawmakers and others questioned if the bill would create an additional burden for schools, or if the principles of financial literacy could instead be incorporated into other courses.

A total of 17 other states, including Michigan and Ohio, now require such a course for graduation, according to a report from Next Gen Personal Finance. The report also found that nationwide, schools where a majority of students are students of color — as well as those where most students receive federally subsidized meals — were far less likely to have a guaranteed personal finance course than whiter and wealthier school districts.

A mandate for such courses isn’t entirely new to schools in the state. Around 11% of Indiana students are currently enrolled in schools that require a semester-long course dedicated to personal finance, according to Next Gen Personal Finance’s report.

Another Indiana bill would allow students to meet a current graduation requirement to take Algebra II by taking a personal finance course instead.

Testimony from a committee hearing on the bill last week highlighted the necessity of such a course.

“Who’s to know what financial influences may challenge our students in the year 2030?” said Bob Taylor of the Indiana Association of School Superintendents. “To have a solid foundation of financial literacy is going to be critical for them to continue to be lifelong, articulate, intelligent consumers.”

A financial literacy bill has been expected since the Interim Study Committee on Education recommended the measure last fall. At that time, Democratic Sen. Shelli Yoder expressed some concern that math teachers would be tasked with teaching financial literacy while also trying to help students recover from pandemic-era academic setbacks.

Other lawmakers have asked if the bill would create an undue burden for schools.

Gaskill said that the Indiana Department of Education could decide to adjust another mandate to make room for this requirement, but that personal finance is important enough to merit its own class.

A one-semester course that exclusively covers personal finance is the ideal format, J.W. Fansler of the Indiana Council for Economic Education said, because it allows schools to reach all students just as they may be starting their first jobs.

Integrating personal finance into existing courses is possible, but presents issues, he said. Incorporating it into an economics course conflates two separate subjects, for example, while adding it to math classes might be tricky with high schoolers on different math tracks.

The class should cover budgeting, including tracking expenses like car and house payments, insurance costs, and utility bills, Fansler said. To teach this, some schools have turned to “reality stores,” in which students choose an occupation and learn how much they’ll make on average, and then spend their projected paychecks on both necessities and discretionary costs.

“A lot of students are surprised at how much things cost,” Fansler said of their reaction to personal finance education. “They think: I’m going to make $15 an hour — but wait — $15 an hour doesn’t go as far as I thought it would.”

Overall, creating a personal finance graduation requirement is good for Indiana students, and the state as a whole, Fansler said.

“Financial stress is one of the top stressors. If they can decrease that, it’s going to make their job performance improve, their relationships better,” he said. “If they’re job prepared, they’ve learned about discipline, it’s going to make their lives better.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the number of states that require financial literacy as of 2023, as well as the link to the most recent Next Gen Personal Finance report.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers will again consider a bill to ban certain topics on race and sex from classrooms

2023-01-20T19:07:52+00:00

Indiana lawmakers will again consider a bill to ban certain topics related to race and racism from classroom discussions, after similar legislation last year stirred national backlash and ultimately failed to pass.

This year’s bill, introduced by GOP Rep. Shane Lindauer, includes a list of seven concepts that educators would be forbidden from promoting, including that individuals are inherently consciously or unconsciously racist or sexist, or that they should feel “discomfort, guilt, or anguish” on the basis of their race or sex.

House Bill 1338 also reaches into the higher education sphere by prohibiting state educational institutions from requiring students to take gender or sexual diversity training, or racial and sexual bias training.

The bill is another indication that some members of the GOP supermajority want to tackle how schools address hot-button social issues this session, despite some lawmakers’ calls to focus on school funding in the biennial budget and not divisive cultural topics.

Reflecting broader political disputes, Republican lawmakers have also filed a series of bills focused on minors’ gender identity, including two that would prohibit the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools. Other bills would compel educators to report if a student requests to change their name, pronouns, attire, or what restroom they use.

But so far, conversations about expanding school choice and voucher-like programs have dominated the first meetings of the House and Senate education committees.

Lindauer’s bill specifies that parents must be notified if a survey that their student takes would be shared with a school district’s third-party vendor.

His bill has been referred to the House Education Committee.

The bill has a much narrower focus than last year’s legislation, which in an early draft would have created curriculum review committees and required teachers to post their learning material online. The language in Lindauer’s bill also differs slightly from last year’s proposal, which included a broader list of protected characteristics, like ethnicity, religion, color, and national origin.

Last year’s House bill, along with its companion in the Senate, met with strong opposition from a coalition of teachers, parents, and community groups, who said the bills would silence conversations about history in classrooms.

Supporters of the legislation from last year said the proposals gave parents more control over what their children were learning via the curriculum portals.

Indiana’s contentious debate in 2022 was part of the national furor over whether K-12 schools were teaching critical race theory, a graduate-level legal theory focused on institutional racial bias.

The bill ultimately died in the Senate after passing the House.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills would ban teaching of gender identity, sexual orientation

2023-01-20T16:47:43+00:00

This story has been updated to include a bill filed in the Indiana Senate and a statement from Rep. Michelle Davis.

Bills to ban the teaching of gender identity, gender roles, and sexual orientation in schools have been filed by GOP lawmakers in the Indiana legislature.

House Bill 1608, introduced by Rep. Michelle Davis, would prohibit all Indiana schools and their third-party vendors from providing any instruction in kindergarten through third grades with the intent to “study, explore, or inform” students about six topics: gender fluidity, gender roles, gender stereotypes, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

Another bill, filed in the Senate by Sen. Gary Byrne, would go a step further and ban the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in all K-12 grades. Senate Bill 413 would also require schools to disclose to parents if their student is permitted to use a bathroom not designated for their biological sex.

Such bills have been anticipated since Rep. Bob Behning, chair of the House Education Committee, said in December that Indiana might follow the lead of Florida, which last year enacted similar legislation called the Parental Rights in Education Act that’s frequently referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Separate legislation introduced by another Republican legislator, Rep. Jake Teshka, would prohibit schools from encouraging the use of a pronoun, name, or nickname to identify a student or school employee that’s “inconsistent with the … individual’s sex.”

These and other bills indicate that Indiana lawmakers might continue or even expand on efforts from last year to control how teachers and schools address controversial cultural and social issues. Davis was the architect of last year’s state ban on transgender girls playing in girls’ youth sports; she called it a means of maintaining fair competition in female sports. A lawsuit challenging that ban was recently dismissed.

In 2022, amid a surge in Republican efforts nationwide to regulate teaching materials and classroom discussions, Indiana lawmakers debated but ultimately failed to pass a bill that aimed to restrict how teachers talk about race and racism with students.

The Indiana General Assembly is also considering several other bills focused on minors’ gender identity, including one that would require school employees to report if a student requests to change their name, pronouns, or attire. Davis has also introduced one of the bills this year that seeks to ban medical professionals from providing gender transitioning or puberty-blocking procedures to minors.

The bill from Davis that’s similar to the “Don’t Say Gay” law appears to be missing some components of the Florida statute, including the option for parents to sue a school district for violating the law. But Byrne’s bill in the Senate, which also covers parental consent for giving students certain health surveys, does create a pathway to filing a lawsuit.

Davis called her bill “commonsense legislation to support parents’ fundamental rights” in a statement.

“The goal of this bill is to empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children,” Davis said in a statement.

It’s not clear whether such proposals will receive support from the broader Indiana Republican caucus. So far this year, GOP lawmakers have focused on expanding school choice and a voucher-like proposal about job training in high schools.

Teshka’s bill would ban schools from encouraging the use of names or pronouns that are inconsistent with an individual’s sex, but it does include an exception if a student’s parent makes the request in writing with documentation from the student’s health care provider.

The ACLU of Indiana has referred to the bills as a “slate of hate.”

“A number of these bills represent a coordinated, hate-driven campaign to push trans people out of public life,” Katie Blair, ACLU of Indiana Advocacy and Public Policy Director, said in a statement. “LGBTQ people belong everywhere, including in our state and we will not stand for these attack bills.”

The bill from Davis banning the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in early grades, as well as Teshka’s bill, have been referred to the House Committee on Education, which doesn’t yet have its next meeting scheduled. Both bills were posted online the week after the Jan. 12 filing deadline for House bills.

Byrne’s bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana’s Milken educator demystifies ‘new math’ and shows students ‘fractions aren’t scary’

2023-01-19T17:29:53+00:00

Fourth grade math teacher Angela Fowler knew well that “new math” frustrated some of her students’ families.

They were confused by the new method of teaching, one that bears little resemblance to how they were taught the subject decades earlier.

Her solution was to host a math night for parents and guardians at Grassy Creek Elementary in Johnson County. There, she gave them the tools and vocabulary they needed to help their children with math concepts at home.

This kind of engagement recently earned Fowler the prestigious Milken Educator Award, which recognizes the accomplishments and potential of early- to mid-career teachers nationwide.

The $25,000 award highlighted Fowler’s work in improving students’ mastery of math skills through small-group instruction and after-school tutoring. It also recognized her extracurricular efforts, such as leading professional development sessions for her colleagues and organizing the schools’ Girls On the Run Club — a program that emphasizes physical activity and self-confidence for girls.

Angela Fowler accepts her award from officials from her school district, the Indiana Department of Education, and the Milken Family Foundation.

Fowler recently spoke to Chalkbeat Indiana about the teachers who inspired her, how she finds “magic in collaboration,” and why she loves to demystify fractions for her students.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

First of all, teaching is in my blood! My mother, aunts, uncle, and sister were or are teachers. As a kid, I can only remember wanting to be a teacher. Also, during my own education, I had many phenomenal teachers who helped mold me into the person I am today. These teachers were present in my life by teaching me academics inside the classroom, but were also there outside of the classroom as athletic and academic coaches. I was inspired by these teachers, and I want to be a transforming teacher to as many students as possible just like they were for me!

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

Some of the best advice I have received is that as an educator, you can’t do it all by yourself. In one classroom of 25 students, the diversity of students is so great in regards to academic skills, traumatic experiences, maturity, social skills, abilities, medical needs, culture, language, socioeconomic status, family dynamic, etc. that it is truly impossible to get every child what they need every day on your own. This can be a very defeating feeling, and I am sure that it leads many to change professions. Once you realize that you can’t do it all by yourself, you begin to work with colleagues, and that is where the magic of collaboration lives. You must lean on others and work with others to serve students to the best of our ability each day.

Tell us about the Girls on the Run club and the math night you host.

I had heard of the organization, Girls on the Run, before at other schools and then came to be good friends with some people on the board of the program. After talking with them more about the program, I knew that the students at my school needed this amazing opportunity! I had noticed a decrease in many important life skills in students after the years that the pandemic affected education as we knew it. This program allowed for these life skills to be focused on along with physical activity. It has truly been so wonderful to bring this program to Grassy Creek girls!

Having a math night for parents and guardians is something that I started up this year at my school. I noticed that as my math instruction has changed to a more conceptual approach, parents and guardians were struggling to relate and help their children expand their math knowledge at home using the same vocabulary and techniques to understand the math. There seems to be a lack of understanding with parents and families with the “new math” they are hearing their students talk about, and I wanted to do something to mitigate as much frustration and negative perception of this approach to math as possible. Many parents and guardians do not understand why we have moved to a more conceptual approach, and that is only because they were not taught in this manner and have not been shown the benefits. This night was truly created to help inform parents. We are planning to make this an annual event.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

Over the years I have come to love teaching about fractions. I think that I have grown to love it so much because for many people, the word, “fractions” makes them cringe. I want to be the teacher that demystifies fractions for kids and helps fractions come to life. Fractions aren’t scary at all, and I want kids to come to know and truly understand the concept.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I was very blessed to receive an education from many wonderful teachers growing up. These teachers were not only figures in the classroom, but they were actively involved in the school community as well. School was a positive place for me where I felt supported and loved. This led me to have a great perception of school. I want to be one of those supportive teachers who students want to come to school to see and learn from. I want to be a positive role model in their life and foster strong relationships with students. That is what I center my work on.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana plan to create student career scholarships draws questions about funding and flexibility

2023-01-18T23:36:17+00:00

Indiana lawmakers provided some answers Wednesday about a draft plan supporters say would help more students find career pathways, although concerns remain about how flexible the career-preparation proposal would be for students and the negative impact it might have on schools’ current programs.

The voucher-like plan, outlined in House Bill 1002, is the result of a recent Republican push that lawmakers say would “reinvent” high school by providing more job training to students in order to address skills gaps and employee shortages.

The legislation would create career scholarship accounts to pay for students in grades 10-12 to take apprenticeships directly from employers. It would also change graduation requirements, and allow students to use money from a state program that supports free college on job training instead.

During a House Education Committee discussion about the bill, lawmakers and members of the public focused on how much the proposal would cost the state, how it would impact schools’ career and technical education programs, and whether students would be paid for their apprenticeship work or be allowed to change career pathways while using the accounts.

Rep. Chuck Goodrich, the bill’s author, and Rep. Bob Behning, the committee chairman, said there are still details about the accounts that lawmakers have to determine. They also said the Indiana Department of Education and the Governors’ Workforce Cabinet, which would jointly administer the program, would also play a role in how the program would work.

The bill’s supporters said the exact amount of funding for the career scholarship accounts would be left up to state lawmakers in charge of writing the biennial budget. And the state education department would determine how much students would receive for specific courses or programs.

However, the career scholarship accounts would not be funded from the tuition support dollars that are the primary source of state funding for traditional public schools, Goodrich said. The state’s education savings accounts, by contrast, provide a portion of those tuition support dollars to families for outside special education services.

Behning said he hopes between 5,000 and 10,000 students take up the scholarships in the first year of the program. Rep. Ed DeLaney, a Democrat, said that if each student were awarded a $5,000 grant, for example, the state would need up to $50 million annually to cover the cost.

Students could opt to use their scholarship funds at their schools, or at outside employers, for training and apprenticeships that align with their post-graduation plans. Courses and career tracks supported by the scholarships would be first approved by the education department.

However, schools would lose the career and technical education funding they receive for each student opting for a career scholarship account. Goodrich said this provision would stop schools from being able to “double dip” from state funding.

Some worried that the proposed scholarship accounts would siphon money from career and technical education programs that schools already offer, leading to fewer school offerings for students — especially in small and rural districts.

John Hurley, a career technical educator at South Spencer High School in Rockport, said his courses generate around $77,000 in funding annually, which often does not fully cover salaries and equipment maintenance. He added that his school already works with community employers to provide career opportunities to students — but that under the bill, he’d have to compete with those same employers for students.

“Smaller school corporations in Indiana work with extremely thin margins to maintain any programs,” Hurley said. “A loss of any funding would begin to weaken a program’s ability to be supported or even exist.”

Behning countered that many established career and technical education centers could become providers and intermediaries under the career scholarship program. He also noted that the proposal would incentivize schools to help students earn professional credentials, because each school would receive a $500 grant for doing so.

Rep. Becky Cash, a Republican, added that not every school district is able to offer every kind of career pathway for interested students.

“This brings equity and equality to the state in that every student would have an opportunity to participate in something like this,” Cash said.

DeLaney also asked if the bill provided additional support for schools, since they would be responsible for setting up career fairs and facilitating introductions to employers. Goodrich countered that the bill would actually reduce the pressure on schools, because it would outsource some career counseling and guidance to businesses.

It’s not clear yet if students would be paid for their on-the-job training or work under the bill. They would not be obligated to work for an employer that provided them training after the students graduate, according to Behning.

During public testimony, Rachel Burke, president of the Indiana Parent Teacher Association, told lawmakers that parents were frustrated that the legislature wanted to change graduation requirements yet again.

Indiana adopted its latest graduation model, which allows students to earn diplomas through different pathways, in 2017. It goes into effect for the Class of 2023.

Democratic Rep. Tonya Pfaff, a math teacher in Vigo County, asked Goodrich if students would be allowed to change career goals under the program. In a school-based career technical education program, she pointed out, students can try one career path and decide it’s not for them.

Behning and Goodrich replied that they hoped relatively few students would change career pathways because they’d be getting support from employers.. For those who did change their minds, Behning said he hopes some of their skills would be transferable to a new pathway.

Lawmakers did not amend or vote on HB 1002 Wednesday. The committee will meet again next week.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana bill would require teachers and schools to report student requests to change names, pronouns

2023-01-13T22:19:07+00:00

Gender identity and transitioning are the focus of a number of bills filed by Indiana lawmakers in the 2023 session, including one that would require teachers and schools to disclose if students request to change their names or pronouns.

The focus on transgender youth this year builds on similar themes from the 2022 session, when lawmakers passed a controversial bill to ban transgender girls from girls’ sports. At the same time, lawmakers appear to be steering clear of bills on other controversial social issues in schools that have sparked previous disputes in Indiana and elsewhere.

The proposed legislation is causing alarm in some camps, including the ACLU of Indiana, which has called for action to stop the “record number of anti-LGBTQ bills” in the Indiana legislature, referring to them as a “slate of hate.”

Senate Bill 354, authored by Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz, chair of the Senate Education and Development Committee, primarily deals with school accreditation. But Raatz’s bill would also require teachers and school employees to report to the school if a student indicates that they would like to change their “name, attire, pronoun, title, or word to identify the student in a manner that is inconsistent with the student’s biological sex at birth.”

They would also have to report if a student expresses having “conflicted feelings about … or difficulty handling” their gender identity or gender expression. The school would then be required to disclose this information to the student’s parents within five days.

GOP Rep. Michelle Davis, who authored the legislation banning transgender girls from girls’ sports last year, has introduced a bill this year that would prohibit medical professionals from providing gender transitioning or puberty blocking procedures to minors.

Another bill, authored by Republican Rep. Ryan Lauer and co-authored by Davis, specifies that a child could not be removed from their parents’ custody if the parent declines procedures or therapies that “affirm the child’s perception of the child’s gender or sex if the child’s perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.”

At least one prominent lawmaker pushed in the opposite direction. A bill by Senate Minority Caucus Chair J.D. Ford, a Democrat, would extend anti-discrimination protections at schools to students based on their gender identity and sexuality.

Ford’s legislation, Senate Bill 39, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to state law prohibiting discrimination in public schools, which currently includes disability, race, color, gender, national origin, religion, and ancestry.

The bill would prohibit segregation based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and ban schools from denying students admission on that basis. It would also prohibit discrimination in hiring teachers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Aside from the early focus on transitioning and gender identity, the General Assembly seems to lack the appetite to tackle other bills about controversial social issues bills that marked the 2022 session, including another attempt to ban certain topics on race and racism from classrooms.

And despite earlier reports, lawmakers don’t appear interested in debating legislation similar to a Florida bill — commonly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last year — that restricts discussions of sexual orientation in early grades.

The House’s deadline for filing bills was Thursday, while the Senate’s deadline was Friday afternoon.

The bills from Raatz and Ford have been referred to the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development, which meets for the first time on Tuesday. Neither bill is currently on the agenda for that day.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Sen. J.D. Ford's title.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how Indiana Republicans plan to make good on their promise to ‘reinvent’ high school

2023-01-12T23:00:23+00:00

A new bill in Indiana would establish accounts for students to pay for career training outside their schools, as part of House Republicans’ campaign to “reinvent” high school and align it more closely to the workforce.

House Bill 1002 creates career scholarship accounts similar to Indiana’s education savings accounts, which grant eligible families a portion of their school’s K-12 tuition support dollars to seek special education services and therapies from providers outside of their school district.

Like the education savings accounts, the amount that each career scholarship student would receive to pay for apprenticeships, coursework, or certification is based on a calculation of the state dollars that their school receives. But it’s not immediately clear whether career savings accounts would also be funded in part by state tuition support dollars.

The bill, authored by GOP Rep. Chuck Goodrich of Noblesville, aims to fulfill the promise that House Republicans made last November to change the high school experience in a way that prioritizes workforce experiences. It’s a recurring theme for the state, which already has several career-focused tracks for students, like local pathways to graduation that lead students to careers in certain industries.

HB 1002 would make further changes to allow students to apply funds from the 21st Century Scholars program — a free college program for students from low-income families — to apprenticeship programs as well.

“Whether our high school graduates want to further their education or enter the workforce, they’ve got to be ready to hit the ground running,” Speaker Todd Huston, a Republican from Fishers, said in a statement. “We need to align our local employers’ needs with our students’ needs.”

Under HB 1002, students in grades 10-12 would need to create a postsecondary plan in order to qualify for the scholarship accounts, which can only be used to pay for courses or apprenticeships that align with that plan.

The Indiana Department of Education would be tasked with approving the courses and tracks available to students, as well as determining the grant amount for each course. Under the bill’s provisions, the department would also need to adopt new diploma requirements by 2024.

HB 1002 also requires high schools to hold career fairs, and prohibits schools from receiving money for career and technical education for students who are already enrolled in the career scholarship program.

The bill, filed on the Thursday deadline for House legislation in the 2023 session, has been referred to the House Education Committee.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana education groups seek school funding increase, expanded preschool access from lawmakers

2023-01-06T20:10:51+00:00

As Indiana lawmakers prepare to create the state’s next biennial budget, education advocates have coalesced around a few key issues that they say will best support Hoosier students and families.

They see expanding access to both early learning and higher education as critical to the state’s economic health. And they hope to see another historic funding bump for K-12 education in order to help alleviate rising operating costs and school staffing shortages.

They have support from Gov. Eric Holcomb, who shares at least a few of the advocates’ priorities.

It’s not yet clear how responsive legislators will be to these requests, though advocates say they’re hopeful. As of Friday, the education bills filed ahead of Indiana’s legislative session include another attempt to make school board elections partisan, and curriculum-focused bills to mandate teaching cursive, sex education, and internet safety.

Here’s what advocacy groups say should be on the legislature’s radar in 2023.

Increased funding for schools sought

Education watchers expected to see an increase in school funding as the state heads into a budget year with a surplus on the books.

Holcomb on Wednesday proposed a nearly $1.2 billion increase in K-12 tuition support, which funds both public schools and the state voucher program. Holcomb also said he supported continuing the state’s work to raise teacher salaries to an average of $60,000.

The Indiana State Teachers Association said increased funding is key to addressing teacher shortages and meeting the state’s salary goals.

“Without at least meeting inflation, services for students will continue to suffer,” the union said in its list of policy priorities. “Simply repeating Indiana’s historic commitment from its last budget would not meet today’s impact of inflation.”

The governor’s proposal represents a 6% increase in funding for the first year of the budget — a figure that’s in line with the Indiana School Boards Association’s recommendation to help schools meet increased operating costs. Terry Spradlin, the group’s executive director, said inflation has affected everything from food service to busing.

The final increase will likely be dependent on spring budget forecasts, said Denny Costerison of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials. He pointed out that in the 2021 budget, schools received more than expected after a positive economic outlook.

But requests for more funding aren’t confined to the tuition support formula.

Many education advocates support the Department of Education’s request to increase funding for students who are learning English, which is allocated outside of the formula. Groups have also called for more funding for special education services, especially those that are considered unusual or relatively expensive, like out-of-state schooling.

Holcomb’s budget proposal includes increasing funding for English learners to $50 million a year, in line with the education department’s request.

Without the increases, district officials say they will have to continue using funds meant for students from low-income backgrounds to cover English learner and special education costs.

“In talking to legislators, no one is saying that’s not needed or we’re not looking at it,” Costerison said of the additional funding.

More for preschool and child care

Expanding access to preschool and child care has been a near-universal call this year from education groups, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, and Holcomb. It’s too early to tell if lawmakers will acquiesce — one bill filed ahead of the session would seek to double the number of preschool grants awarded in Marion County.

The state has made strides in this area over the past decade, said Samuel Snideman, vice president of government relations at United Way of Central Indiana, including by funding all-day kindergarten and establishing the On My Way PreK assistance program for low-income families.

Still, there’s room to grow, he said, as well as a need to challenge the notion that early education is solely a parent’s responsibility.

“We think that making high quality early childhood education possible for as many families — especially families in poverty — as possible is worth the state’s investment,” Snideman said.

“There are lots of families where every parent available in the house has to work, and even then, they can’t afford childcare.”

United Way is calling for the state to expand eligibility for its two child care programs by raising income limits to 185% of the federal poverty level — a higher threshold than the 138% limit Holcomb has proposed.

The Indiana School Boards Association would like to see that threshold raised even higher to 300% of the federal poverty limit, which would match the income requirements for the state’s K-12 voucher program.

Spradlin said research has shown that every dollar spent on high-quality early learning provides at least a $4 return on the investment.

“There’s been hardly any pushback,” Spradlin said of talking to legislators about early learning. “It’s that there are so many priorities, we’ll see what we can fund.”

Other proposals include establishing a universal preschool program, incentivizing employers to create child care programs, and funding overall wage increases for child care employees.

Apart from funding, several groups have zeroed in on loosening regulations unrelated to health and safety in order to allow more child care programs to open.

Snideman said the state could streamline the inspection process to help established high-quality providers open additional locations in other parts of the state.

Auto-enrolling students in 21st Century Scholars

Another popular proposal this year is to automatically enroll all eligible students in the 21st Century Scholars program, which pays for college tuition costs.

The program is open to seventh and eighth grade students in Indiana who come from low-income backgrounds, and has been linked to increased college enrollment and completion rates.

But advocates would like to see greater participation. The state’s Commission on Higher Education in December found that fewer than half of all eligible students enroll.

According to the Indiana Youth Institute, while 69% of Black Hoosier students are eligible for the 21st Century Scholars program, only 17% are enrolled.

The higher education commission recommended in December a streamlined enrollment process using Indiana Department of Education and Department of Revenue data to mark students eligible.

“It’s an easy key to turn,” said Snideman of United Way.

Proposals focus on school staffing, retention

Groups have also put forward legislative proposals to address staffing and retention challenges in Indiana schools.

Both the Indiana State Teachers Association and the school boards association have called for more funding to increase the number of psychologists, counselors, and nurses in schools, saying that Indiana’s ratios far exceed recommendations.

For example, while the recommended ratio of students to psychologists is 500-to-1, Indiana has just one counselor for every 1,674 students, said Spradlin of the school boards association.

“We want to free up teachers to teach in the classroom, and not have their efforts diminished by focusing on wellness issues or health issues or behavioral issues,” Spradlin said.

The school boards association would also like to see the state re-establish a mentorship program that paid veteran teachers a stipend to support new teachers. At a cost of $1,000 per mentor, the program would cost an estimated $3 million a year, Spradlin said.

The teachers association, meanwhile, has renewed its call to restore teachers’ rights to collectively bargain their working conditions, and asked for paid parental leave for teachers.

Current laws, according to the association, “are another source of workplace frustration particularly when new parents are forced to return to the classroom before they are ready and/or effectively take a pay cut to have a child.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers revive bill at center of book-banning dispute for 2023 legislative session

2023-01-04T21:32:44+00:00

A revived proposal from Indiana lawmakers that would allow librarians to be held criminally liable for distributing material deemed harmful to minors is among the first education bills filed for this year’s legislative session.

Proponents of such a law have argued that they seek to target only material deemed pornographic or obscene under state statute. But opponents have expressed concern that the law could be used to intimidate librarians and remove books about sex education or LGBTQ relationships from schools and public libraries.

A similar bill failed in the 2022 session after an outcry from K-12 librarians and educators, who said they could be unfairly criminalized under its provisions.

This year’s legislation, Senate Bill 12, is authored by Republican Sen. James Tomes of Wadesville. Like last year’s bill, it specifies that only college and university librarians would be able to claim legal protections from the law for disseminating or displaying material deemed harmful.

The new bill signals that GOP lawmakers might ignore pleas from their Democratic colleagues and teachers unions to focus on matters like school funding rather than divisive social issues. Republican leaders have remained noncommittal about whether the General Assembly will reopen perhaps the most high-profile education debate from last year’s session: whether to ban certain topics related to race and identity from classroom discussions.

Senate Bill 39, authored by Democratic Sen. J.D. Ford of Carmel, meanwhile, would extend discrimination protections at the state’s public schools, including charter schools, to include gender identity and sexual orientation.

Other legislation filed ahead of the Jan. 9 start of the session includes a perennial attempt to mandate a course on cursive in K-12 schools.

Two other bills spotlight personal finance education. Senate Bill 68 would allow students to meet a graduation requirement to take Algebra II by taking a personal finance course instead. Senate Bill 35, meanwhile, would require all graduates to complete a personal finance responsibility course.

Indiana’s academic standards currently include financial literacy.

Senate Bill 142 would require the Indiana Department of Education to add a curriculum on internet safety for multiple grade levels.

Lawmakers will again consider whether to make undocumented immigrant students eligible for in-state tuition at Indiana colleges and universities, a proposal included in Senate Bill 135. If the bill passes, Indiana would join 17 other states who already extend in-state tuition benefits to those students, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

House lawmakers can file bills until Jan. 12, and Senate lawmakers have until Jan. 13.

The session begins on Monday.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Eric Holcomb proposes nearly $1.2 billion increase for Indiana schools

2023-01-04T21:17:39+00:00

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has proposed a nearly $1.2 billion increase for K-12 schools as one of his priorities ahead of the 2023 legislative session, calling it the single biggest funding increase for schools in the state’s history.

Under Holcomb’s proposal, state K-12 tuition support would rise 6% in the first year of the biennial budget, and 2% the following year, for a total allocation of $17.5 billion.

“[It’s] significant to say the least,” Holcomb said during a Wednesday press conference at Liberty Park Elementary School in Indianapolis.

The increase would come on the heels of another historic funding bump in the 2021 state budget, which was meant to help schools boost teacher salaries. In a press release, Holcomb, a Republican, said he supports further raising the state’s average teacher salary from the current figure of $56,600 to $60,000.

Holcomb also proposed eliminating textbook and curriculum fees for Hoosier families by creating a $160 million fund to pay for all such supplies for more than 1 million students in public schools, as well as students from low-income backgrounds at nonpublic schools. Indiana is one of only a handful of states that allow schools to charge families for textbooks.

Early literacy also featured in the governor’s budget proposals, which included a $20 million incentive program to reward schools that improve their passing rates on the state reading test, and a $4.1 million initiative to expand access to the Dolly Parton Imagination Library statewide.

Holcomb also proposed a $184 million funding increase for higher education institutions for a total of $3 billion over the biennium, as well as a new funding incentive for colleges that keep graduates in Indiana.

Echoing calls from local education advocates, Holcomb supported automatically enrolling eligible students in the 21st Century Scholars program, which pays for tuition costs at Indiana colleges for students who qualify.

Expanding early education is a priority

Community organizations, along with the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, have pushed expanding access to child care as critical to the state’s economic health.

Holcomb’s budget proposal included several initiatives on early education, including expanding eligibility for the state’s two child care support programs, On My Way Pre-K and the Child Care and Development Fund.

His proposal would raise the income eligibility limit for the programs from 127% to 138% of the federal poverty limit, allowing around 5,000 more families to qualify, according to a press release.

The threshold would remain lower than the threshold for Choice Scholarship Vouchers, which offer money to students from families with an annual income equal to or below 300% of the poverty limit to attend private schools.

Holcomb’s proposal also includes establishing a federally funded grant to help employers create childcare programs.

Focusing on overall, not weighted, school funding

Holcomb said he chose to focus on an increase in the overall state tuition support — which supports both K-12 schools and the Choice Scholarship program — rather than increase funding earmarked for specific groups of students, like those who come from low-income backgrounds or are learning English. His budget proposal, however, includes a $45 million increase for English learner students.

“It provides obviously the most flexibility,” he said of the tuition support increase.

A summer legislative committee heard school district officials testify about the need to increase supplemental funding for specific student groups. The Indiana Department of Education has also called for the state to nearly double its support for English learner students, from $55 million to $100 million.

Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said at the press conference that the department still hopes to get the additional funds for English learners.

Asked whether he thought lawmakers would support his proposed funding increases, especially amid fears of a recession, Holcomb characterized the requests in the overall budget as legitimate and needed.

He added that he felt confident of convincing lawmakers to adopt his proposals as the legislature prepares to convene on Jan. 9.

“We’ll be mindful to not spend more than we have,” Holcomb said.

This story has been updated.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana hopes tutoring can help struggling students. Here’s what it should look like.

2023-01-04T18:08:06+00:00

When tutor Natalie Koenig answered a recent call, the student on the line was facing a familiar problem: Her algebra homework wasn’t clicking.

She was calling in to the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s free tutoring hotline for help from university students like Koenig, who take math and science questions from sixth to 12th grade students every evening.

After Koenig helped her through some simpler algebraic concepts, the middle schooler nailed her first problem — and was eager to do more.

Koenig then told her to pick the hardest question on the page. Working through it, Koenig said, the student’s confidence grew.

“She asked if she could call again to get help from me,” Koenig said. And the student did call Koenig later that week for more help.

Since its start with a handful of phone lines more than 30 years ago, the university’s AskRose tutoring program has expanded into video calls, emails, and chat support. The Lilly Endowment-funded program recently added earlier hours to reach more students after finding that between 20 and 40 students were calling every day before the hotline even opened.

Over the past year, free tutoring programs have grown in Indiana as the state leans on intensive, one-on-one help as a solution to academic declines and drops in test scores following COVID. Nationwide interest in such tutoring efforts has grown as well.

Established tutors say working with trained tutors or teachers can go a long way to help students rebuild academic foundations and foster the skills and self-confidence they need to succeed. Indiana education officials have also touted the early successes of tutoring.

“Slowing down and rebuilding the foundation that fell apart is where we’re finding the most success,” said Teresa Lubovich, owner of Poulsbo Tutoring, which works with students in 10 states. For example, she’s turned mastering the times tables into a competition for her students in order to rebuild a basic skill that’s critical to other math lessons.

But there are challenges ahead for tutoring programs, too. Students report feeling more lost and frustrated than before COVID, meaning tutors must cover more content in their sessions while also creating a safe and supportive environment.

“Tutoring is a lot about the content, but it’s also about the relationship you build with the child,” said Ishmael Brown Jr., a tutor, teacher, and president emeritus of the National Tutoring Association. “They don’t care what you know until they know that you care.”

Tutoring helps students practice skills

Compared to before the pandemic, more students are calling in to AskRose not knowing where to start on their homework, said Kim Lund, the service’s assistant director for operations and education. This is especially noticeable in math, where new concepts build on past ones that students may have missed during the years of virtual learning.

“What I missed in fourth and fifth grade is impacting sixth grade,” Lund said. “You are finding school districts everywhere are looking for solutions to help kids catch up on what they lost over the years.”

Therefore, it’s important for tutors to engage students by helping them connect the work in front of them to a concept that’s familiar from past classroom lessons, she said.

AskRose tutors, who are all students at the engineering and technology school, have textbooks handy to help them tackle questions, and rely on each other for subject-matter expertise. Around 19 tutors work during the center’s peak hours from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., and they’re paid for their time.

Lund said tutoring is well-suited to reinforcing skills through accurate practice, but that it’s not a replacement for learning the skill for the first time in a classroom setting.

Good tutoring helps students work through their questions without providing the answers instantly — something she said some students have gotten used to while learning on devices.

“They say practice makes perfect, but practice makes permanent,” Lund said. “Perfect practice makes perfect.”

Other hallmarks of a quality tutoring program include consistency, availability, and accountability, said Amanda Case, assistant professor of counseling psychology at Purdue University.

Education leaders have increasingly touted “high-dosage” tutoring, which relies on pairing students with one teacher over the course of several sessions for the best results.

But Case said that high-dosage tutoring ideally takes place more than three times a week. Tutoring should also be accessible to all students who need it, rather than available only to families who can afford it and have a way to attend. And it should come with a method of evaluation, she said.

It’s likely too soon to tell if the new state programs are effective and accessible, she said. They take many different forms, including free virtual tutoring for all students in Indianapolis Public Schools, as well as state grants of $500 to $1,000 for families to choose their own tutoring providers.

“You can give students a ton of ineffective tutoring and it won’t help students do anything,” Case said of the state’s hopes for tutoring. “High-dosage tutoring performed by professionals — it does hold quite a bit of promise.”

More students are feeling lost

Tutors say students need help beyond academics, too.

They’re not only more frustrated than before, said Lund, but facing pressure to return to “normal” after COVID.

Lubovich, owner of Poulsbo Tutoring, said many families also opt for organizational coaching for their students. This covers executive functioning, planning, and meeting deadlines, in addition to content tutoring.

Students may need this kind of help with motivation and organization after several years of receiving passing grades for far less effort, she said. But families may also turn to tutoring to help their struggling students when therapy would be a more appropriate intervention, she said.

Tutoring should ultimately be attuned to the student’s needs and experiences, Lubovich said.

“We say connection before content,” Lubovich said.

A positive experience can start with a tutor’s tone of voice, said Koenig, the AskRose tutor. When she trains other tutors, she encourages them to remain patient and understanding even when a student is struggling to grasp their explanations.

“We want them to know it’s okay to ask for help and that we’re happy to help you,” Koenig said. “I’m honest with them. I tell them, ‘I used to struggle at your age, too.’”

Case, the Purdue professor, said tutoring can help students overcome the effects of negative stereotypes about how groups of students like Black students or female students perform on tests, or in academic subjects like math. Having a tutor who believes in their abilities gives students greater self-confidence, she said.

Beyond academic tutoring, Case said there’s a need for the state to fund more holistic programs for youth that focus on enrichment and mental health. Like tutoring, those programs have typically only been available to families that could afford them.

“We can think about Band-Aid approaches and just think about learning loss, but that’s not what school and youth development are totally for,” Case said. “It’s an opportunity to think about what is the ecosystem we’re creating to surround youth so they’re safe and enriched, and how we’re doing that for all youth.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana Department of Education wants to double funding for English learners in next state budget

2022-12-14T21:54:14+00:00

The Indiana Department of Education has offered an early look into its priorities for the upcoming legislative session, which include nearly doubling the funding for teaching English language learner students.

Secretary of Education Katie Jenner on Wednesday presented the department’s requests to the State Budget Agency, which makes a recommendation to the governor on the state’s biennial budget ahead of the start of the session in January.

The requests did not cover any changes to the K-12 funding formula — which Jenner said would be announced in tandem with Gov. Eric Holcomb — but instead focused on funding specific programs.

The department’s largest itemized ask is a $45 million increase in funding for English learners over the biennium, for a total budget request of $100 million.

The increase would nearly double the current budget of $55 million, which Jenner said is necessary not only due to the growth in the English learner population, but also due to evidence that the group’s test scores have continued to decline after COVID even as other student groups recover. Indiana’s English learner population has increased by 52% over the last five years.

A shortage of teachers for English learners, which school districts have attributed to funding gaps, and a decline in the number of interested candidates are among the issues.

Jenner said that in addition to the funding request, the department would seek to change the name of the fund from the “Non-English Speaking Program” to the “Indiana English Support Program.” The fund is allocated separately from the state’s K-12 funding formula.

Jenner said the department would work with Holcomb and state lawmakers to determine how to adjust the K-12 funding formula based on state revenue projections, set to be released this month. Lawmakers have said they expect to increase K-12 funding, as well as funding for school choice voucher programs.

“As soon as I lay my eyes on that report, I’m going to be as aggressive as you can imagine to get that money into education,” Jenner said.

The department is further asking for a $10 million increase for special education excess costs, which cover services for students with severe disabilities and are separate from the special education grants in the K-12 funding formula. The total budget request for this item is $58 million.

Several literacy initiatives are also part of the department’s ask. It seeks $20 million over the biennium to offer performance incentives to schools based on the number of students who pass the third grade reading test, called IREAD-3.

It’s also requesting a one-time $10 million allocation toward literacy efforts announced this summer, which the Lilly Endowment will match.

The 2023 session begins on Jan. 9.

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Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Some Indiana students have new paths to graduation amid push to ‘reinvent’ high school

2022-12-07T19:45:31+00:00

Indiana students at a handful of school districts have new ways to graduate, and the pathways could expand to more schools throughout the state.

The State Board of Education on Wednesday approved three locally created graduation tracks at two school districts and one adult learning center. They will allow students to earn diplomas and certificates by taking certain courses related to entering the workforce, including in one case potentially getting a job with the district, or enlisting in the military.

District leaders said that the paths could be replicable at schools throughout the state as the legislature considers a push to “reinvent” the high school experience.

The pathways are authorized under 2017 state graduation requirements that are meant to give students more flexibility in earning a diploma. They allow students to graduate via a local track, in lieu of more traditional requirements like earning college-ready test scores or taking advanced classes. The state has previously approved four other such pathways, according to the Indiana Department of Education.

Yorktown High School Principal Stacey Brewer said Yorktown schools’ new graduation track is intended for students who aim to go directly into the workforce after high school. Existing options have been limited for students who don’t want to enter a specific trade, she added.

“Not all students are destined for immediate entrance into postsecondary education, the military, or trade schools,” Brewer said. “Some students will be successful, contributing members of our community working in food service, maintenance, and groundskeeping, to name a few professions.”

Yorktown schools will begin identifying students who are interested in this track in eighth grade, Brewer said, with a course on preparing for college and careers.

No more than 5% of a cohort will be admitted to the pathway in high school, where they’ll train in skills that employers prioritize, like bookkeeping and personal finance, and communicating effectively.

They’ll also receive preferential interviews and hiring from local employers — including Yorktown schools, Brewer said. Students in the pathway will receive training in school-based topics like bullying and seclusion and restraint.

If they get a job during high school, they’ll be able to use time during the school day to get work experience.

The pathway received vocal support from Secretary of Education Katie Jenner and other board members, who noted that students who opt to join the workforce often take a graduation waiver instead of completing a diploma.

“This is a pathway that provides a solution for a group of young adults who deserve similar opportunities as their peers to gain experience, complete training, and build their resume in order to achieve their goal of being workforce ready,” Brewer said.

Another new pathway will also emphasize workforce opportunities, but for adult learners taking classes toward their high school diplomas at the Goodwill Industries-sponsored Excel Center in Gary.

Called Catapult Training, the program will allow students to take shorter-term certification courses from the Excel Center and Ivy Tech. By doing so, students are guaranteed interviews and higher wages with certain employers who are involved in the pathway, said Trent Moore, the director of career and technical education at Goodwill Industries of Michiana.

A final new program at the School City of Hammond will emphasize military enlistment. Board member Byron Ernest said the pathway might be the first such track in the state.

In addition to taking four years of JROTC classes, students on this track will complete a service learning or community service project, attend leadership conferences, take college courses, and participate in military visits, said Cassandra Shipp, Hammond’s assistant superintendent for academic services.

The goal is for students to either enlist in the military at a higher rank and at higher pay than they would otherwise, or to transfer their skills and courses to a college or university, Shipp said.

Though the program is designed to be a four-year track, students can opt in at any point during their high school careers, Superintendent Scott Miller noted.

The state’s four other locally created pathways include a Civic Arts pathway at Greater Clark County Schools, and a Recreation Vehicle Construction pathway at Wa-Nee Community Schools.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Are Indiana students ready for the future? Here’s how the state will track their performance

2022-12-06T21:38:09+00:00

Indiana is rolling out a new dashboard to track student and school performance data that emphasizes how well schools are preparing students for the future.

The Graduates Prepared to Succeed dashboard compiles data on testing and attendance, along with other statistics like employment and enrollment in college, into a snapshot of each district and school.

It’s the result of a 2021 law that tasked the Indiana Department of Education with creating a new system to view certain information like graduation rates and progress toward college. The department also wants to use it to track student skills that it has deemed essential, such as digital literacy and communication and collaboration, although these features won’t be available until a future update.

The dashboard could replace Indiana’s current measure of school performance, the A-F grading system, which has been in limbo since 2018 due to changes in state testing and COVID.

Though the A-F system remains a part of state law, Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said she expects legislators to discuss that system and the new dashboard during the next legislative session, which begins in January.

If the grades remain part of the statute, they will be incorporated into the dashboard, Jenner said.

Lawmakers have also indicated that they’d like to replace the annual school performance report with the dashboard.

She said the goal of the dashboard is to track and improve postsecondary outcomes for students, with an emphasis on “employment, enrollment, or enlistment.”

“It’s putting everything in one place in a transparent way,” Jenner said.

Dashboard highlights literacy, growth in math

Schools are currently reviewing the dashboard, with a public launch date yet to be determined, according to Jenner. The State Board of Education will also discuss the dashboard at a Wednesday meeting.

At a demonstration for reporters Tuesday, Jenner emphasized that the dashboard is in its first iteration, and uses data that’s available from sources like the education department and the Commission on Higher Education.

A screenshot of the new Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed dashboard showing data for Batesville schools.

Some of the metrics included on a school’s overview page include third grade literacy, as measured by the IREAD-3 exam, and sixth grade math growth, as determined by the ILEARN test.

The dashboard tracks how many students complete advanced coursework prior to ninth grade, as well as the number who fill out a federal financial aid application and enroll in the 21st Century Scholars program, which offers free tuition to eligible students. It also offers a look at employment numbers and median income.

Though tracking the number of students that enlist in the military is a priority for the department, the department is waiting for that data from the federal government, Jenner said.

Data like military enlistment will be forthcoming in future updates, she said.

And some measurements — like a way to gauge students’ skills in communication or digital literacy — still need to be developed, said Jason Callahan, assistant secretary of student pathways and opportunities.

The department will update the dashboard in January and again in the spring, Jenner said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

New program will pay for Indiana teachers to earn license to teach English language learners

2022-12-05T13:00:00+00:00

A new program wants to help Indiana teachers get licensed to teach the state’s growing population of English language learners.

The Indiana Teacher of English Language Learners (I-TELL) program will pay for tuition and fees for current educators to earn the additional licensure they need to become teachers of record for students who are learning English. It’s a partnership between the Indiana Department of Education and University of Indianapolis’ Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning

These teachers, who oversee students’ language development, are critically needed in Indiana, according to state data. A recent Chalkbeat analysis found that one-third of all districts and two-thirds of charter schools don’t have licensed teachers of record for their English learners. That’s despite state and federal staffing guidelines requiring such a teacher at each education agency.

English learner teachers may also travel between schools. But that approach can lead to high caseloads and less individual attention for English learners — a population that has grown 52% in Indiana over the past five years.

“Our COVID-19 academic impact data shows that Indiana’s English learner students experienced substantial academic impacts and have still not returned to pre-pandemic year-over-year academic growth,” said Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner in a statement about I-TELL. “The best way to ensure our students accelerate their learning is to ensure they have quality, well-trained teachers supporting them.

Current teachers can take classes from one of 11 universities throughout Indiana participating in the program. Another pathway through Marian University also allows individuals who hold bachelor’s degrees to earn a Transition to Teaching license with a focus on English as a new language.

The new I-TELL program is funded by $2 million in state emergency federal funding.

Helping teachers afford licensure costs

Carey Dahncke, executive director of the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning, said the new program was modeled after an initiative last year to help teachers get their full licensure to teach special education.

Around 650 individuals have signed up for the special education program, Dahncke said, and some have already completed it and started working in schools.

Similarly, Dahncke said the new program aims to add hundreds of new English language teachers to the workforce by removing hurdles like cost without lowering educator quality.

“We recognize that the problem didn’t develop overnight and won’t be solved quickly,” he said.

“We want to facilitate the process so it seems accessible, so you’re not facing financial barriers or a confusing process.”

The financial burden of pursuing additional licensure is a major barrier for teachers who would like to learn how to better support their English learner students, said Laura Hammack, superintendent of Beech Grove Schools.

The district of around 2,800 students has seen a sizable increase in its population of English learners, particularly in the youngest grades, she said. As a result, the number of educators serving that population has grown from one to five — and the district hopes to double that number with the help of the I-TELL program.

Hammock said the district is also looking to alternative pathways that make it easier for paraprofessionals to earn their teaching licenses, which might be difficult for these staffers to obtain otherwise.

These pathways are critical, she said, as the state faces a declining number of students going to college and graduating from traditional teacher preparation programs.

“We’re worried about the decreasing population of individuals to pull from,” Hammack said.

District leans on grow-your-own program

In 2017, Logansport Community Schools had just two educators serving a steadily growing population of English learner students, many of whom were first enrolling as teenagers with limited proficiency in their first languages.

“It was just constantly running around putting out fires,” said Superintendent Michele Starkey, who has worked in the district for 31 years.

But a Purdue University program, funded through a U.S. Department of Education grant, allowed Logansport teachers to earn the license they needed to serve English learners for free. The district picks up any costs the grant doesn’t cover, Starkey said.

As a result, Logansport has around 40 licensed English learner teachers, with 13 more in the process of completing the program. Those who earn the license move up on the district’s pay scale and sign an agreement to stay with Logansport schools for at least five years, Starkey said.

The new assistance program from the state may give teachers more options to earn their licensure, and help the district with its share of the costs, she added.

The district’s grow-your-own efforts have made it more agile in addressing student needs, said Tami McMahan, director of English language learners — especially in the midst of a spike in the enrollment of newcomer students, or students who have never attended U.S. schools before.

This August, the district saw as many newcomer students enroll as it had the entire last school year, Starkey said. Around 46% of the district’s 4,266 students are English learners, and of that population, 69% qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

English learner teachers meet regularly to discuss how best to serve these students, McMahan said. They analyze test results in depth and provide both formal and informal professional development to their colleagues.

Their expertise has also led to a greater awareness of students’ personal needs — the district started a food pantry and a clothing closet for those who need it.

After learning that some English learner students were working overnight shifts, the district offered a semi-independent study program that would allow them to earn credits, take language development, and access health and support services in fewer school hours a day. That gives them more time to sleep.

“For students, it comes down to their needs being met,” McMahan said. “We can’t do better till we know better.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana teachers want focus on more funding, not social issues in the 2023 legislative session

2022-11-23T00:21:52+00:00

Indiana teachers want lawmakers to boost funding for schools to address staff shortages in the 2023 legislative session, union leaders said Tuesday at events marking the ceremonial start of the session.

Representatives of the Indiana State Teachers Association and the American Federation of Teachers said the state’s disinvestment from public education has left schools struggling to attract and retain teachers and support staff at the expense of students.

“It has led to what people call a massive teacher shortage — but I would call it a massive teacher exodus,” said Randy Harrison, vice president of AFT Indiana.

Addressing those staffing woes through increases to state education aid would be more productive, union representatives said, than revisiting bills about divisive social issues that marked the 2022 session.

For their part, Republican leaders like House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) have said they expect to increase funding for K-12 schools while also investing further in the state’s school choice programs. In 2021 — the last budget year — lawmakers added $1.9 billion more for K-12 education.

But the money hasn’t stretched far enough, teachers said.

Casey Honkomp, a second grade teacher at Monroe-Gregg schools, said that while that extra funding allowed the district to raise salaries from $34,000 to the required state minimum of $40,000, the small, rural district is still competing for staff with other areas that can pay more. As a result, the district struggles to keep classrooms staffed, she said at an ISTA event.

“Keeping a teacher right now seems to be an impossible task,” Honkomp said.

Some Democratic lawmakers have also echoed the call for more funding.

“It’s fiscally irresponsible to be sitting on billions of dollars and neglect education,” said Sen. Fady Qaddoura (D-Indianapolis) at the AFT event, referring to the state’s surplus.

Dispute lingers over parents’ rights in school

Harrison also called on lawmakers not to revisit the controversial bills about social issues that defined the last legislative session, like one that would have created a list of concepts on race and identity that teachers couldn’t broach in the classroom.

Lawmakers and advocates who supported those failed bills characterized them as a matter of bolstering parents’ rights over their students’ education.

But speaking at the AFT event, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick said rather than neglect parents’ rights, most schools and teachers beg parents to be more engaged in their children’s education.

“I’ve yet to walk into a school where teachers say ‘no thank you’ to parents,” McCormick said.

Republican leaders have remained noncommittal about whether legislators will bring another bill on curriculum restrictions. Both Huston and Senate leader Rodric Bray (R-Martinsville) say they haven’t yet seen any bills on the matter. Tuesday was the first day for representatives to file legislation.

Skeptical of a plan to reinvent high school

The centerpiece of House Republicans’ education agenda is a plan to restructure high school requirements to allow students to receive credit toward graduation through work-based learning in lieu of specific courses.

The purpose is to better prepare students for postsecondary careers in the 21st century, Huston said Monday.

But ISTA President Keith Gambill characterized the idea as “pretty words.”

“If we want to make sure we are preparing our students for the workforce, we have to make sure each and every child has access to great educators,” Gambill said.

Apart from more funding, Harrison said AFT is also calling for an expansion of wraparound services in schools, less standardized testing, and local control for Gary schools.

The session will officially begin Jan. 9.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Three education issues to watch for in Indiana’s 2023 legislative session

2022-11-21T22:41:23+00:00

Spending more on schools and making high school more relevant are top of mind for Indiana lawmakers heading into the 2023 session, legislative leaders said Monday.

Speaking at a preview event with the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, the leaders of the Democrat and Republican caucuses highlighted proposals to graduate students who are prepared for the workforce and willing to stay in Indiana, as the state grapples with declining college enrollment and the academic impact of the pandemic.

However, GOP leaders essentially stayed mum about whether they’ll take another crack at last year’s unsuccessful curriculum bill that sought to restrict what teachers could say about race and racism.

Republicans, who hold a supermajority in both chambers of the legislature, will seek more work-based learning in high school. Democrats, meanwhile, stressed the need for the state to improve its educational attainment, beginning with early learning.

The legislative session begins in early January. The ceremonial start to the session — known as Organization Day — is on Nov. 22, when representatives can begin filing bills. Here are the education issues to watch for as the session kicks off.

Rethinking what high school looks like

Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) said a top priority for House Republicans is to “reinvent” high school, so that students can work and use job-based opportunities to receive credit toward graduation.

“We have to adjust to a new economy,” Huston said. The current high school structure prioritizes higher education over other postsecondary pathways, he added.

Huston said the details of the plan would be laid out later, but hinted that it could involve replacing courses like calculus with work-based learning.

Indiana is already in the midst of a major overhaul of its K-12 standards after a law passed last year asked the state Department of Education to streamline what students need to know in order to be successful. The department is supposed to seek input from industries, employers, and higher education institutions in order to create those new standards.

Increasing funding for K-12 schools

Heading into a budget year, Huston also said he expects the legislature to approve an increase in K-12 funding, “while expanding options for kids to attend the school of their choice.”

“I feel good about the amount we’re putting into education,” he said.

In 2021, lawmakers approved a $1.9 billion increase for schools, allowing many to raise pay for teachers, who had rallied en masse at the statehouse. (Indiana adopts budgets for two-year periods.)

Calls have already come from school districts this year to invest more into the funds schools receive to educate students who live in poverty — sometimes known as complexity funding.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner also said in a recent state Board of Education meeting that increasing funding for English learner students is a priority, after the state reported double-digit drops in test scores for that group this year.

Expanding child care by reducing regulations

The Chamber of Commerce listed improving access to child care and early education in Indiana as one of its top legislative priorities.

“The lack of affordable, high-quality child care across Indiana is one of the outside factors most negatively impacting attracting and retaining workers,” a statement from the chamber said.

To do this, the chamber suggests streamlining existing state regulations not related to health and safety, as well as offering incentives for providers to improve the quality of their programs.

Huston said reconsidering licensure requirements could be a step toward creating more child care providers in the state.

Senate Minority Leader Greg Taylor (D-Indianapolis) said lawmakers have resisted other ideas that could improve access to early education, like offering a child care tax credit, or lowering the age for compulsory school attendance in Indiana from seven to five.

No ‘specifics’ on another curriculum bill

Some education watchers expect to see another version of last year’s curriculum bill involving how teachers address racial issues. But Huston said during the press conference that he hasn’t “heard specifics” about another try.

He added that his caucus “supports families’ rights to choose” the schools their children attend.

However, Huston told reporters he would support another idea from the last legislative session: A bill to make school board elections partisan. Last year’s bill on the matter, which would have required ballots to include school board candidates’ partisan affiliations, drew significant criticism and died in committee.

During the preview event, House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta (D-Fort Wayne) said he hoped legislators would “give social issues a rest this session,” after tackling contentious topics like abortion rights in 2022.

“It doesn’t do our state any good to be in the national news over those issues,” GiaQuinta said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How did teachers and education advocates do in Indiana statehouse elections this year?

2022-11-09T21:14:36+00:00

Democratic newcomers spurred to run by this year’s controversial curriculum legislation largely trailed behind Republican incumbents in elections to the Indiana Statehouse, although a handful of teachers and other education-focused candidates were ahead in their races as of Wednesday, according to unofficial results.

The newly elected legislators will head into a budget session in January 2023 that will likely include a debate over school funding as the state grapples with teacher shortages and the effects of COVID on student achievement.

Some advocates also expect to see a repeat of last year’s legislation to restrict the teaching of race and racism that was inspired by a national conservative movement.

This election season saw several newcomer candidates — including teachers and parents — step into races to challenge incumbents who had supported such bills.

Among the hopefuls was Joey Mayer, a Democratic candidate for House District 24 in Westfield, who had led an organization to combat racism at Westfield schools.

Mayer received 40.8% of the vote as of early Wednesday afternoon. Independent candidate Ken Tucker, a teacher, received 2.5%, while Republican incumbent Donna Schaibley received 56.6%.

“While this was not the outcome we wanted for our campaign, we will keep pushing forward,” Mayer said in a statement on Twitter.

Matt McNally, who led a political action committee to support Westfield schools before running as the Democratic candidate for House District 39 in Hamilton County, also trailed incumbent Republican Rep. Jerry Torr on Wednesday with 47.6% of the vote.

Other educators who ran but were headed to defeat as of Wednesday include Democrat Jim White, superintendent of Bremen Public Schools who ran against GOP Rep. Jack Jordan; Democrat Donna Griffin, a teacher and journalist who ran against Republican Rep. Chris Jeter; and Democrat Teresa Kendall, a teacher who ran against GOP Rep. Shane Lindauer.

Longtime legislator and teacher is defeated

Meanwhile, Wednesday results showed two teachers running as Republicans ahead in their election contests.

Scott Hawkins, a teacher and Republican candidate for House District 71 in southern Indiana, was up 35 votes over incumbent Democrat Rita Fleming on Wednesday afternoon.

In House District 54, which includes New Castle and Middletown, both candidates had backgrounds in education. Republican Cory Criswell, a teacher and coach, received around 74% of the vote against Democrat Nan Polk, a former teacher and school board member.

But incumbent Terri Austin, a teacher, adjunct professor, and longtime House lawmaker, lost to challenger Kyle Pierce, who won around 51% of the vote in House District 36, or 333 more votes than Austin.

Other House incumbents with backgrounds in education fared better. Results showed that Rep. Tonya Pfaff, a math teacher and a Democrat representing Terre Haute, won his election with 58.4% of the vote.

Rep. Wendy McNamara, an Evansville Republican and director of Early College High School, had around 63% of the vote in District 76. McNamara was one of few Republican legislators who did not support the curriculum restrictions bill, House Bill 1134, saying that it required monitoring teachers.

Indianapolis principal heads to Indiana Senate

One K-12 educator is also joining the ranks of the state Senate.

Andrea Hunley, an Indianapolis Public Schools principal and former teacher, received around 72% of the vote in District 46 — a newly created district in Indianapolis.

“I entered this race a year ago to represent you — my community — the people of Senate District 46 who need to be seen and who deserve to be heard,” Hunley said in a Tuesday statement. “I will fight for you and a better quality of life — of access and fairness and opportunity — for each of you.”

Several candidates from the higher education sphere ran for office this year.

Victoria Garcia Wilburn, a Democrat and assistant professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, was ahead by around 200 votes on Wednesday afternoon in House District 32, which includes portions of Marion and Hamilton counties.

David Sanders, an associate professor at Purdue University faced off against Spencer Deery, deputy chief of staff to Purdue President Mitch Daniels. Deery, a Republican, had 75% of the vote in Senate District 23 on Wednesday against Sanders, a Democrat.

The new state senators will join several other lawmakers with experience in education who won their re-election campaigns, including Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz, a former principal of a private Christian school who is chair of the Education and Career Development Committee.

Election results also pointed to a victory for Sen. Linda Rogers, the Granger Republican who attempted to strike a compromise on the curriculum restrictions bill in the Senate and ultimately declined to call it forward for a vote.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Some Indiana schools may be failing to meet staffing rules for English learner students

2022-11-03T12:00:00+00:00

When Sara Holmes works with students, she takes them outside to observe the weather. Or she brings in objects from outside the classroom, like shells from the beach, to describe and discuss.

As an English language collaborative teacher at North Elementary in Noblesville, she’s responsible for helping around 20 English learner students develop their language skills — a role now required in every Indiana district.

But three years after new staffing guidelines were first announced, it’s not clear if there are enough teachers like Holmes. In fact, in the 2021-22 school year, one-third of districts and two-thirds of charter schools statewide reported not having any licensed English learner teachers.

It’s a critical deficit in a state that this summer reported an 8.5 percentage point drop in reading scores among third-graders who are learning English, while scores for most other groups rose or stayed flat. The population of English learners in the state has also grown dramatically in recent years, increasing by 52% between 2017 and 2022 to around 72,000 students.

Hampering schools is a larger staffing shortage in the state that makes it difficult to fill open teaching positions. Some districts also point to funding shortfalls keeping them from hiring enough teachers to meet the recommended ratios of English learner teachers to students.

And COVID-related upheaval threw a wrench in the works at schools that could find both teachers willing to get certified to teach English learners, and the funding to pay for their coursework.

But the Indiana Department of Education cautions that schools that don’t meet the requirements could be found out of compliance with federal law — and risk losing their federal funding. That could mirror the state’s struggle to comply with special education staffing requirements last year.

Most importantly, students who attend schools without enough teachers may get a worse education, with less instructional time and individualized attention from teachers who must travel between schools and teach to larger-than-recommended groups.

Federal rules for English learner staff

Under federal law, all schools have an obligation to adequately staff their English learner programs, which includes hiring trained teachers or training their existing staff to work with English learners.

The teachers are responsible for a student’s English language development, either directly, or through coordination with other teachers. They develop the weekly instruction that students are required to have and analyze how students progress on their goals.

Beyond their day-to-day responsibilities, the teachers serve their schools as experts on language acquisition, said Kathryn Brooks, a professor at the College of Education at Butler University.

“It’s useful not just for multilingual students but all students developing language skills,” she said.

But Indiana has struggled with this obligation. A 2019 memo from the Indiana Department of Education reported that half of Indiana districts had no “English as a New Language” teacher on staff during the 2018-19 school year, while more than 90% of districts had at least one English learner enrolled.

The memo rolled out new staffing rules requiring all districts to hire an English as a New Language Teacher of Record — an educator responsible for overseeing students’ English language development. Schools had until Sept. 1, 2022 to meet the requirement.

They could do so by hiring a licensed teacher, or a teacher to fill the role on an emergency permit. They could also identify a teacher with experience in English learner education to serve in the role under a state-issued rubric.

And districts with low populations of English learner students could share a teacher between them, if the teacher could still provide each student at least 30 minutes of English language development four to five days a week — a baseline requirement from the federal Office for Civil Rights.

In order to meet this requirement, the state education department recommends that teachers have no more than 30 students. That’s a suggestion some teachers would like to see codified into law.

There is no exception to the staffing rules for districts that don’t have any English learners enrolled, according to the state, because an English learner student may enroll in the future and schools must be prepared to teach them.

What state data shows now

A Chalkbeat analysis of state data from the 2021-22 school year found that the vast majority of English learner students at district schools in Indiana — 98% — had at least one licensed English learner teacher in their district. Two-thirds of all districts statewide report having at least one such teacher.

But school-level data indicates these teachers might be stretched thin. Half of all district schools report not having an English learner teacher, which could show that some teachers are traveling between schools to see all students.

In practice, teachers say this can cut into their teaching time, and require them to meet students in large groups that don’t allow for individualized instruction based on the student’s language level.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of Indiana’s charter schools reported not having an English learner teacher. Around 55% of English learners at charter schools are at schools that have at least one English learner teacher.

While both district and charter schools report having English learner teachers on emergency permits as well, all of those instances are at schools that already have a fully licensed English learner teacher.

The available data doesn’t tell the whole story. Some teachers may be shared by districts through interlocal agreements, expanding their reach.

And some schools and districts may be meeting the staffing requirements via the state rubric option — but those numbers are still being collected by the state and won’t be available until December.

Many of the state’s bilingual immersion schools meet the staffing requirements via the rubric option, according to the state department of education, recognizing their teachers’ years of experience.

A statement from the department said the number of educators holding an English as a New Language license has grown 38% from 2019 to 2021, with a total of 2,289 such educators in the state in 2021.

Numbers for 2022 will be released later this year.

COVID disrupts a district’s progress

When the state first announced new staffing guidelines, Portage schools took advantage of a state grant that allowed their staff to earn additional certification to teach English learners.

By January 2020, Linda Williams, the district’s director of grants and assessments, had identified 10 candidates to take Purdue University coursework, with the state education department paying the bill. One of the draws is that completing the program gets them halfway through a master’s degree, she said.

But COVID-related school closures in March meant that those teachers suddenly had more on their plates and less time for the additional classes. The pool of 10 eventually shrunk to three, Williams said.

In 2021, another four teachers in the district completed the program. But by this year, the state grant had expired, and Williams had to find the funding for nine more candidates to go through the Purdue program herself.

The cost is around $6,600 per teacher, funded through a combination of other state and federal grants, she said.

Still, the district’s efforts have brought it close to the state-recommended ratio of one teacher for every 30 students.

“But that’s only one piece of the puzzle,” Williams said. “The math works out. But kids are spread across different buildings. I’d like to have at least one [English language learner] licensed teacher at every building.”

Reinstating the state education department grant would help the district fund more teachers, Williams said. In a statement, the department said it’s evaluating whether to revive the grant.

Other districts like Fort Wayne told legislators earlier this month that chronic under-funding of English learner education has left them unable to meet recommended staffing ratios.

But Williams added that even with the juggling she’s had to do with grants, funding is less of a challenge for Portage than recruiting teachers.

Fewer teacher candidates mean hiring challenges

The rate of teacher retirements in Indiana has accelerated recently, while fewer candidates are entering teacher preparation programs. Among other things, that’s led to fewer teachers in high-need areas like special education and English learner education.

“I have school districts calling me to ask, do you have anybody available?” said Brooks, of Butler University. “But they’ve already found jobs in March and April.”

Brooks said Butler’s licensure program for teachers of English learners has added around 90 teachers to the workforce over the past five years. Candidates typically have teaching licenses and are looking to add on an English as a new language component.

Around 20% to 30% of candidates in the program have some prior experience with English learner students, or have served on emergency permits in schools and are seeking their full licensure, she said.

And most graduates go on to work as English learner teachers, Brooks said. But some are subject-area teachers seeking only to get better at teaching their multilingual students, she added, and don’t want the additional licensure for fear that they’ll be required to step in as teachers of record.

Ultimately, there’s a critical need not only for more English language learner teachers, but for a broader understanding of the needs of students who are learning English, Brooks said.

‘Everyone is a language learner’

Without English learner teachers on hand, schools may make curriculum decisions that aren’t backed by research, she said, and multilingual students might end up working with educators who are unprepared to teach them.

Even when schools use research-based practices — like Indiana’s push to implement the “science of reading” — studies have shown there are additional factors that affect English learners’ success, such as whether they learned to read in their first language, Brooks said.

Those students may also need extra time to become familiar with phonetic sounds that aren’t present in their first language, for example.

“A trained teacher will add or modify curriculum to target the needs of multilingual learners,” Brooks said.

Holmes, the Noblesville teacher, said one of the biggest changes she’s seen in her decade of teaching is in the emphasis on training all teachers on how to work with multilingual students. Part of her job includes leading professional development for her colleagues — and keeping up with changing research herself.

For example, although she once pulled her students out of their classrooms for small group intervention, she now follows the recommended method of teaching alongside a classroom teacher, she said.

“What we’re trying to get everyone’s mindset to switch to is that everyone is a language learner,” she said.

Holmes credited Noblesville schools with incorporating co-teaching, meeting staffing requirements, and embracing books with diverse characters that are meaningful to her students. But she said she worries for students and teachers at districts that haven’t done as much.

“I think the districts that have taken it seriously and have done it well have invested in hiring staff and making sure their staff is trained,” Holmes said. “Teachers want to know what to do. They want to know: How do we best reach these kids?”

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Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

What do Indiana students need to know? State plans sweeping reduction of standards

2022-11-02T18:58:18+00:00

What’s most important for Indiana students to know?

That’s what the Indiana Department of Education will be evaluating for the next seven months as it seeks to reduce the number of standards that the state’s K-12 students are required to learn.

The goal is to streamline the content that teachers must cover in an academic year, and thus ensure students have all the essential skills they need for the next grade level, according to a presentation from department officials to the State Board of Education Wednesday.

The number of current standards often requires teachers to leave some out, proponents have argued, leaving students lacking critical knowledge.

“This is what everyone talks about. ‘I have so much to do that I can’t ever get it all accomplished,’” board member Byron Ernest said of Hoosier teachers.

The department is undertaking the process as a result of House Enrolled Act 1251, an omnibus bill enacted during the 2022 legislative session that requires it to reduce standards. It’s supposed to seek input from businesses, industries, and postsecondary institutions about what characteristics students need to succeed in order to help inform the new standards.

Department committees will work first to identify 25% of the existing standards that can be cut, according to the presentation. Then, they’ll identify one-third of the remaining standards that will be designated as essential, critical, or foundational, according to Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

But some board members expressed concern that teachers will still be held responsible for teaching the 75% of the original standards that remain, rather than only the essential ones.

“I don’t think we help our teachers to have two buckets still that we’re held to,” Ernest said. “I think there ought to be just one set.”

Other board members asked whether some standards could be incorporated into students’ elective and career and technical education classes, or whether the state should consider implementing a competency-based model.

The department will bring all the new list of standards to the board by June 2023, with an anticipated launch in the 2023-24 school year, and a revamped assessment by 2025-26.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Here are the tutoring programs available to Indianapolis students and how to access them

2022-11-01T12:00:00+00:00

Families looking for tutoring services in Indiana might have more easily accessible options than ever before.

Multiple tutoring programs have rolled out this year to help students catch up on the critical math and reading skills they lost or didn’t gain during the pandemic, fueled by millions in federal relief dollars earmarked for academic makeup.

Indiana is not alone in turning to tutoring. And the approach might get still more attention after recent test scores showed a decline in math and reading performance.

Indiana students’ scores on the National Assessment Educational Progress — or NAEP — showed a not-unexpected decline from 2019. Students’ scores on the state test, the ILEARN, also dropped sharply from 2019 to 2021, before showing a slight rebound in 2022.

While outside tutoring has always been an option, more and more schools are trying targeted “high dosage” tutoring that pairs a few students with one regular tutor — an approach that has been linked to strong results.

Some of the programs are virtual, and some studies suggest that format holds promising outcomes as well.

The new programs also aim to give more families access by providing the funding. Some are free to families through their schools or the city of Indianapolis, while one provides parents up to $1,000 to spend on tutoring through a provider of their choice.

Here are four programs available to Indianapolis students and how to sign up.

Virtual after-school tutoring for all IPS students

Indianapolis Public Schools is offering free virtual tutoring after school for all students at district-run schools. The program is offered through Tutored by Teachers. Students will meet virtually in small groups with a teacher for one hour each of math and English instruction.

Tutoring for the fall semester began on Oct. 3, but the application will reopen on Nov. 28 through Dec. 20 for the spring semester. More information is available here.

Virtual in-class tutoring for certain IPS schools

IPS also announced in July that it would expand virtual tutoring during the school day to more low-performing schools. Students are part of the program automatically if they attend the district’s emerging schools, which have low NWEA test scores and consecutive failing grades from the state.

Anna Brochhausen School 88
Brookside School 54
Charles Warren Fairbanks Schools 105
Christian Park School 82
Clarence Farrington School 61
Eleanor Skillen School 34
George S Buck School 94
H. L. Harshman Math/Science & World Languages Magnet
James Russell Lowell School 51
James Whitcomb Riley School 43
Northwest Community Middle School
Ralph Waldo Emerson School 58

Indiana Learns grants for 4th and 5th graders

Indiana is offering grants of at least $500 for fourth and fifth grade students who qualify for subsidized meals and who tested below proficiency on both sections of last year’s state assessment. But students who are enrolled in certain school districts could qualify for a matching grant and have up to $1,000 to spend on math and reading tutoring services.

That list of school districts initially included Gary, Greenwood, Knox, Penn-Harris-Madison, Mishawaka, and Wawasee, and will be updated soon, according to the state Department of Education.

Indiana Learns launched on Oct. 15. Families can check their child’s eligibility and sign up for services here.

Circle City Readers

Unveiled by Indianapolis on Oct. 11, Circle City Readers is intended to provide reading help for students in kindergarten through third grade. Those students will meet with a tutor several times per week in small groups for literacy instruction at locations throughout the city, according to the Circle City Readers website. The city is funding the one-year program using $1 million in federal emergency money, and seeks to serve around 1,000 students in Marion County.

The program is set to launch in 2023, but families can indicate their interest via an online form.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How Indiana’s curriculum bill about racism motivated a new wave of statehouse candidates

2022-10-31T12:00:00+00:00

When hundreds of people first descended on the Indiana Statehouse this year, it wasn’t to weigh in on what would become the state’s abortion ban, or even the future prohibition on transgender youth in girls’ sports.

Instead, speakers lined up to provide hours of testimony on a sweeping proposal to regulate how teachers discuss race and racism in the classroom.

While House Bill 1134 eventually failed, it made an impression on a new crop of statehouse candidates from across the political spectrum who cite the education legislation as a big reason they’re running.

They believe lawmakers overstepped when they tried to meddle in curriculum. And they link the bill — which was part of a wave of similar legislation nationwide in 2022 — to a broader pattern of Indiana’s disinvestment from education over the years.

Some advocates and candidates are already bracing for another fight over curriculum restrictions next year — but even the echoes of the legislation could bring voters to the polls.

It has already fueled the public’s re-engagement with education issues in a way that could sweep more teachers and school-focused candidates into office, said Andy Downs, director emeritus of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University.

A similar phenomenon — which grew out of the public’s reactions to new policies on testing and accountability — led to the 2012 upset election of Democrat Glenda Ritz for the state superintendent’s position, he said.

“Teachers came out and demonstrated their force,” Downs said. “When you get people involved in politics, when they know what’s going on, and they support a teacher running for office or a parent running for office, it becomes easier to do that.”

Next year, the stakes could be even higher. In a budget year, lawmakers could tie funding to some of the points of the curriculum bills, Downs said.

Watching the curriculum bill unfold

Last session, Joey Mayer, a Democrat and business owner, watched as her state representative, Republican Donna Schaibley, voted in favor of House Bill 1134 and another controversial bill to allow permitless carry of firearms.

That was enough, she said, to call the Hamilton County Democratic Party in February and ask how to support Schaibley’s challenger in House District 24, which includes a large area around Westfield.

But the party didn’t have a challenger. And the deadline to file was just a week away. Would Mayer herself want to run?

Initially, Mayer said no — running for the statehouse was not on her bucket list. But a conversation with her husband led her to drive through a snowstorm on the day of the deadline to file her paperwork.

“I told my husband, can you believe they said this? And he told me, ‘You could spend two years storming and ranting and not changing anything, or you could channel that energy and rage into something that may make a difference,’” she recalled.

Mayer had had a front row seat to growing local tension around content in schools as one of the leaders of Westfield Parents for Change, an organization that sought to fight racism in Westfield schools. The group squared off with others over what kinds of books would be allowed in the district’s elementary schools.

Despite those conflicts, she said the experience of talking to other families in the school district taught her that ultimately, most people wanted the same things for their children.

“I have faith in people’s parenting abilities. I believe they’re capable of having an uncomfortable conversation and reinforcing their family values if those values are tested,” Mayer said.

Rather than disavow lessons on diversity, equity, and social-emotional learning, Mayer said she hopes the state embraces them as critical skills for young people beginning their careers: “You can be the smartest person in the room but if you can’t get along with everyone, you won’t be effective.”

Still, Mayer worries the curriculum bill could make a comeback in the future.

“I’m concerned that it was a trial balloon to see what people most objected to,” she said. “And they’re going to slice and dice it and shove it in other legislation next year.”

Keeping teachers on the job

Some believe the curriculum bill was problematic due to the distraction it created from other issues.

Jordan Davis, a Republican candidate for House District 87 in northeast Indianapolis, said he has watched lawmakers pass bills that tilted too far towards ideological extremes, but didn’t address the underlying problems in his community.

“We’re not passing legislation on funding that’s needed to make sure our future generations are taken care of,” Davis said. “That really bothered me.”

Davis’ campaign platform says it’s important for parents to choose what their children learn and where they learn it. But with House Bill 1134, he said lawmakers took the wrong approach by doing things to educators and not with them.

Instead, Davis said he would have met with teachers first to gauge their thoughts on the proposal and how to reduce their workload.

Moreover, as the state heads into a budget year, Davis said the priority for education legislation should be securing more funding for teachers in order to provide raises and improve retention.

“The state has a history of championing our workforce, but then we forget them when it’s time to pay dues,” he said.

Larger patterns in Indiana education

Many of this year’s candidates see links between Indiana’s past policies on school funding and accountability and the recent push for curriculum restrictions.

“This is nothing new,” said Ken Tucker, a teacher and independent candidate in House District 24. For many years, he said, “The state of Indiana has taken out of the mouths of my children and put more on my plate as a teacher, in terms of what they want me to do and how much they expect.”

Tucker pointed to the state’s embrace of standardized testing as another way that legislators have tried to take control in the classroom, while creating more work for teachers. Such decisions have exacerbated a shortage of teachers in the state, he and likeminded candidates say.

If elected, he said would push to get rid of state tests like the ILEARN in favor of formative and local assessments, in order to reduce the amount of time teachers must spend on test prep.

A curriculum bill like HB 1134 is “absolutely coming back,” he said, over the objections of educators.

“The state is going out of its way to remove the joy of being an educator, but also from students and learning,” he said.

From inside the classroom

Tucker isn’t the only teacher-turned-candidate to express that kind of sentiment.

On Mondays throughout last fall, Noah Leininger’s world history class followed and discussed the mass uprisings in Sudan.

But in the spring of 2022, they turned their attention to legislation coming out of the Indiana statehouse that could affect the frank conversations they were used to in the classroom. If House Bill 1134 passed, they asked, would those change?

“The legislators could come take me down themselves,” Leininger said. “I was going to teach those students what they needed to know.”

Leininger is now running in House District 90 in southeast Indianapolis as a write-in candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. He said Democrats had unsuccessfully challenged incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Speedy in the past.

Without any other challengers this year, Leininger said he was willing to try after a year in Indiana that included the passage of the abortion ban and the failed curriculum bill.

“I thought, somebody’s got to give this guy a run for his money,” he said.

Leininger said the curriculum bill was part of a decades-long push to erode public education. It failed, he said, after teachers expressed outrage at the idea that they could ever teach Nazism neutrally, as suggested by one lawmaker.

“There are definitely things that we discuss even in teaching music that are uncomfortable about our history,” he said. “Treating students as young adults makes them engage and take it seriously. They know when we’re glossing over things. They want to know what’s going on.”

Communities showing support for schools

Apart from hot-button issues, the education platforms that win over Hoosier voters frequently include better funding, a push for more fiscal efficiency at the local level, and plans to improve graduation rates, Downs said.

“Education is an evergreen issue. The question has been how to do it,” he said.

Even during divisive political times, local communities have shown a willingness to rally around their schools, he said.

That’s something Matt McNally, the Democratic candidate for House District 39 in Hamilton County, said he noticed when his family settled in Westfield after he retired from military service.

In the 2016 election, over 80% of Westfield Washington school district voters passed a tax hike to support the district.

Even after national furor over curriculum and books reached the community, McNally said most voters still saw House Bill 1134 as a superfluous bill for their schools, where curriculum was readily available to parents.

As a graduate of The Citadel — a military college in South Carolina — who majored in history, McNally said he didn’t see material in his kids’ social studies textbooks that could be deemed controversial.

“I don’t see anything wrong with telling the truth about the foundation of this nation,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you love your country any less. It’s important to foster an environment where kids can have good honest discussions.”

The legislature’s focus on divisive social issues over concrete matters like funding imperils the quality of education in the state, McNally said, jeopardizing property values and the future workforce.

He said he decided to run for the statehouse as a candidate who could bridge different viewpoints to bring the focus back to schools and students. He previously chaired the Restoring our Community and Kids PAC in Westfield, which aimed to support the school district.

“The ones getting caught up in the middle of this are teachers and administrators who truly care about the community and educating our children,” he said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Virtual charter school that wanted to offer Indiana parents cash withdraws application

2022-10-28T18:12:50+00:00

A virtual charter school that wanted to expand to Indiana using its model of offering parents cash to purchase curricular materials has withdrawn its application to a charter authorizer.

Colearn Academy, a virtual school based in Arizona, applied earlier this year to open a school in Indiana, offering three learning pathways and the option for parents to purchase their own curriculum and activities with $600 yearly stipends.

But as reported by Chalkbeat, offering families such an incentive to enroll is illegal in Indiana. This year, lawmakers expanded a ban on the practice to include “any item that has monetary value, including cash or a gift card.”

The school withdrew its application this month following a September hearing that garnered 177 responses from the public about whether it should open. Around 88% of those responses were negative.

Home schooling advocates had expressed concern that the school was trying to attract home-schooling families to the program with the promise of monetary help, but that those families would lose the educational freedom they’d sought in home education by enrolling at a charter school.

Michael Staton, a founder of Colearn, did not reply to a request for comment about whether the school would try again in Indiana. A website for Colearn Academy Indiana remains live, with an option to join a waitlist.

The school had sought authorization from Education One, the charter authorizing arm of Trine University in Angola, Indiana.

Lindsay Omlor, executive director of charter schools for Education One, also did not reply to a request for comment.

In 2020, Chalkbeat reported on another virtual school, Tech Trep Academy, that first offered cash, and then points, for parents to order educational materials like textbooks, Netflix, and educational toys.

Though some lawmakers said the points system still functioned as an incentive, the school has disagreed, and continues to use the system.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

3 takeaways from Indiana lawmakers’ hearing on funding for English learners, kids in poverty

2022-10-18T22:16:43+00:00

As Indiana lawmakers prepare for budget discussions in next year’s legislative session, school officials are pressing them to reconsider their approach to additional funding earmarked for students who live in poverty.

That funding, which schools receive in addition to base funding for all students, has not kept pace with schools’ actual costs, local district officials told members of a state legislative committee last week.

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that programs for English learners and special education are underfunded, district leaders said, forcing schools to stretch dollars to serve more than just impoverished students, but students who need other additional services as well.

Rep. Greg Porter, an Indianapolis Democrat who brought the issue to the committee, said he hopes such concerns lead to a discussion about adequate and equitable funding during next year’s legislative session.

Here are three key points that the committee’s Oct. 12 hearing covered.

Base funding leaves big gaps

Indiana’s base funding for all students has increased from $4.75 billion in 2015 to $6.3 billion in 2023, the Indiana Urban Schools Association told lawmakers in a presentation.

Yet the association found that additional aid for students in poverty has decreased from $1.15 billion to $700 million in the same time period. (It wasn’t immediately clear if the figures had been adjusted for inflation.)

The result is that funding for schools with fewer students who live in poverty has increased faster than funding for schools with more students who live in poverty, the association said. The latter still receive more money per student on average due to the overall increases in basic funding.

Supplemental funding is meant to fund case managers, counselors, alternative programs, and classroom assistants.

Lawmakers also gave special education funding a $196 million boost in the 2021 budget. But schools sometimes still spend more on special education than they receive from the state’s special education grants to districts, advocates and district officials said.

This can leave schools to draw from their general fund — which includes the money they receive from the state for students who live in poverty — to cover special education expenditures.

Schools struggle with English learner services

Schools receive both federal funds and state funds specifically for educating English learners. But the federal money generally can’t cover teacher salaries, and schools may have to turn to the supplemental funding marked for students in poverty.

Meanwhile, the population of English learner students in Indiana has grown by 42% since 2017. That’s left districts unable to meet staffing recommendations set by the Indiana Department of Education, even as they try to spread dollars between different student groups. The department recommends one teacher for every 30 English learners.

For example, Fort Wayne Chief Financial Officer Kathy Friend said the district uses $4.5 million of its $30 million complexity grant to hire teachers to serve English learners.

The district also used $3.4 million of its federal emergency funds to bring student-to-teacher ratios down from 50-to-1 to 40-to-1, she said. (Indiana received roughly $3.1 billion in federal pandemic aid for state education agencies and school districts.)

But in spite of using other funding to hire those teachers, Fort Wayne would need around $2 million to add 30 more teachers and reach the state’s recommended ratio, Friend said.

“It’s a huge issue for us,” Friend said.

Bartholomew Community Schools spends $578,000 of its education fund on English learner teachers and has a ratio of 70 students per teacher, said Chad Phillips, the district’s assistant superintendent for financial services. He added that funding is not the only challenge in the face of statewide teacher shortages.

“If we posted 10 [English learner] positions today, we’d get one applicant,” he said.

To help address the issue, Phillips suggested integrating funding for English learner students into the base or supplemental funding, instead of keeping it as a separate grant that must be renewed.

Counting kids who qualify isn’t easy

Officials also expressed concern that students who receive special education or English learner services don’t necessarily count toward a school’s allocation of state aid for students with additional education needs.

That allocation is determined by the number of students at a school who are enrolled in food assistance programs, or who are in foster care. Families enroll in those programs through the Family and Social Services Administration, and the Indiana Department of Education matches the children to their schools to determine this funding.

Indiana and Illinois are the only states to rely on certification through benefit programs, according to the Indiana Urban Schools Association’s presentation.

Indiana switched to this system in 2015. Before that, the state relied on a school’s population of students who receive federally subsidized meals to determine the supplemental state aid — a common approach in other states. Since then, the number of students identified has dropped from 250,000 in 2015 to 187,000 in 2022, according to the state’s urban schools group.

The new system was meant to provide a more accurate count. But critics say it misses students, either because their families don’t enroll in assistance programs, or because the agencies’ systems don’t align.

In Fort Wayne, for example, around 67% of students qualified for subsidized meals, according to the district’s presentation, while 29% were identified under the method based on food assistance and foster care.

Rethinking the methodology for how students in poverty are identified is a priority, Porter said.

“Those numbers are not adequate and not accurate,” Porter said of the current system.

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Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Tutoring grants of up to $1,000 for Indiana students to roll out Oct. 15

2022-10-05T20:11:23+00:00

Eligible students at six Indiana school districts will be able to access $1,000 for tutoring services beginning Oct. 15, according to a Wednesday presentation from the state department of education.

Several more districts are awaiting clearance to join the state’s new program, known as Indiana Learns, which provides families at least $500 to use toward math and reading tutoring. Districts can provide another $250 for their students that the state will then match, for a total tutoring grant of $1,000.

The tutoring program, first created by House Enrolled Act 1251 in the spring and funded through federal relief dollars, is Indiana’s take on using tutoring to make up for the academic losses of the COVID-19 pandemic — a popular approach nationwide.

It’s open to fourth and fifth graders who qualify for federally subsidized meals and scored below proficiency on both the reading and math portions of the state test, ILEARN. Those students are eligible for the $500 grants from the state even if their school doesn’t match the funds.

“This is a nationally unique program in the way Indiana structured it, so we’re very excited to get started and learn some things in this pilot phase, too,” said Kristin Grimmie, senior vice president of strategy at The Mind Trust, which operates the program.

Beginning on Oct. 15, families can access their accounts at indianalearns.org, where they’ll be able to check their eligibility and the amount of money they’ll receive. They can also use the platform to schedule services with approved providers.

The response to the program in its initial months has been positive, with Secretary of Education Katie Jenner noting that no school district so far has declined the chance to participate. Indiana Learns hopes to have 3,000 students participating and 20 schools matching grants by December 2022 before a wider launch in January. Schools and districts are eligible to match the funds, according to the law.

The school districts that are providing matching grants so far include Gary, Greenwood, Knox, Penn-Harris-Madison, Mishawaka, and Wawasee, according to the state’s presentation.

Seana Murphy, senior director of Indiana Learns, said the three districts that first announced they would match the grant — Indianapolis Public Schools, Muncie, and Decatur Township — are “in the process” of being added to that list.

Murphy said the program currently has 68 additional applications in the queue, from both school districts that wish to participate and private providers seeking to offer tutoring services.

Indiana Learns uses a nine-member committee to approve tutoring providers who wish to participate, according to the presentation to the state Board of Education.

A handful of private providers like Sylvan Learning Centers and Varsity Tutors have already been cleared to provide services under the grants. Some school districts are also providing tutoring services using their own teaching staff, like Knox schools, which will offer in-person tutoring with certified teachers to its 25 eligible students.

Those students will receive a minimum of 20 1-hour tutoring sessions funded by around $6,000 from the district and $19,000 from the Indiana Learns grant.

“This is really giving school corporations additional resources to be able to support those activities,” Grimmie said of the grants.

One challenge will be making families who qualify for the program aware of the funds, especially in larger school districts that serve more students who might qualify.

Grimmie said The Mind Trust will send mailers to students who qualify, as well as encourage schools and teachers to highlight the program during parent-teacher conferences.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.