Dozens of ���Ի徱���Բ�’s public school superintendents say their districts will cut teaching and support staff in the coming years to contend with the financial fallout of property tax reform, according to a new survey from the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

This is the second year the volunteer advocacy group surveyed superintendents about the financial outlook of their schools in the wake of Senate Enrolled Act 1, which set forth a series of major property tax reforms.

The survey went out to 290 superintendents throughout the state in August; 144 responded.

Other solutions raised in the report are creative: one superintendent said they planted prairie grass instead of mowing to save money on fuel, removed televisions to save on electricity and launched a student-run business to generate new income.

Nearly all of the respondents said they anticipate negative financial impacts from SEA 1, while a clear majority expressed similar concerns about universal school choice and the level of funding the General Assembly will allocate to public schools next year.

Schools would need anywhere from 1% to 25% in one-time funding increases to maintain the level of services expected by the community, plus an average of 6% in ongoing increases thereafter, the report found.

Jim May, a volunteer with the ICPE, described the findings as “more disheartening than surprising.”
“We’ve seen very large numbers of schools reduce staff, both support staff and teaching staff,” he said. “We’re seeing cuts to services. We’re seeing a lot of rural corporations saying things like classroom sizes are growing.”

How schools are contending with shortfalls?

Many districts are eliminating support staff and teaching roles to make up for budget shortfalls.

Half of respondents said they’ve already cut support staff, while another 16% will do so soon and 30% are considering the same.

Forty-six percent of superintendents said they are eliminating some teaching roles. That number rises to 93% when accounting for districts that are actively considering or will take similar action.

Nearly 40% have issued or will issue a new general obligation bond, though many others are considering the option to raise more support.

Others are considering delayed maintenance, reduced staff raises, cuts to transportation services, electives and field trips or consolidation. One raised the possibility their district won’t be able to sustain student internships, career pathways or dual-credit offerings.

In rural districts, superintendents say they worry lawmakers are pressuring them to consolidate or close schools.

“I feel like funding is bleeding the small schools dry,” one superintendent wrote. “I am skeptical that this is simply a push to consolidate.”

“Our commitment to live within our means in the past, with no referendum and super low tax rates, has caught up with us,” another said. “I think larger schools with better tax bases have given the rest of us a black eye. We haven’t spent haphazardly, but are punished like we did.”

Why so few referendums?

Far fewer districts are seeking a referendum than initially expected this year, despite it being a year for referendum questions on the ballot.

Responses to the group’s superintendent survey offer a clue as to why so few took this route: 39% of respondents cited a lack of support within their communities.

This is particularly true for rural districts, which were more likely to cut staff than pursue a referendum when compared to urban and suburban districts.

Still, survey responses suggest more referendums could appear on the ballot in 2028 — the next year schools can do so.

“We cannot continue to do more with less,” one superintendent wrote in response to the survey, which did not identify respondents. 

“Funding has got to keep pace with salary requirements, safety concerns, increased utility costs, and increased equipment and supply costs. In a day and age where we are required to do more and more to support our students and their families, we lack the financial support to do so. At some point in the very near future we will all have no choice to run a referendum because of the inadequate financial support. And on top of all of those increased costs, in my district 51% of our students do not have English as their native language — it does take more to educate them.”

Others lamented the state’s move to universal access for private school vouchers, which became available to all Hoosier families regardless of income for the first time this year.

“It is a shame that our Indiana public schools are being unnecessarily defunded by our general assembly,” one superintendent wrote, saying they were advised to eliminate $2.5 million from the district’s budget.

“Our state’s super majority has chosen to create a manufactured financial crisis by way of funding their voucher program, supporting the growth of their charter school program, and the growth of statewide online schools/platforms. Billions of dollars are being funneled away from our public schools to support these private projects.”

Several respondents suggested private schools should be subject to similar accountability measures as public schools as a condition to accept publicly funded vouchers.

One superintendent went a step further, suggesting any new or existing law should apply to equally to public and private schools supported by tax dollars.

“I do not believe it was a wise financial decision to prioritize paying for the private education of wealthy families,” the superintendent wrote.

“That said, the decision has been made and Indiana is now a 100% school choice state. If this is the case, then we need to level the playing field so all school entities are operating on a level playing field. Any current or new law that applies to public education should be applied to any other school system that accepts state dollars.”

This story was originally published by , a part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

Sixth grader Jocelyn Montiel had her phone stolen. She said her friend, Esteban Gonzalez, was to blame.

Gathered around a table in educator Grover Edwards’ classroom, the two students discussed the situation with two of their peers who were serving as mediators.

Jocelyn shared her sense of betrayal when she turned around to find her phone gone. Esteban described the injustice of being falsely accused.

The two mediators restated the issue and asked Esteban directly if he stole the phone.

They redirected the students when they started raising their voices and helped each reflect on what they could have done differently.

The fight over the phone was only a simulation — in fact, Jocelyn and Esteban serve as mediators too. The conflict resolution methods the students were practicing are part of a decade-old peer mediation program at H.L. Harshman Middle School, which enrolls about 500 students on the near eastside of Indianapolis. Through the program, students learn how to help their classmates settle disputes before they escalate, leading to a better school climate. School leaders say it has contributed to fewer fights and suspensions, even as statewide out-of-school suspension rates .

Student mediators say friends and classmates seek out mediation as an alternative to fighting. In mediation, students put their feelings into words in a supportive environment.

“Talking to an adult, you may be getting in trouble,” said Isabell Gonzales, an eighth grader who has been part of the program since sixth grade. “When you’re talking to your peers there’s less pressure.”

What issues does middle school peer mediation tackle?

The program is supported by a $1.2 million grant from Indiana University Health that places trainers in IPS and Lawrence Township classrooms to teach mediators how to resolve middle school conflicts. Similar approaches have been and elsewhere.

Harshman leaders contacted the Peace Learning Center about starting a peer mediation program in 2016, but the program took off after the IU Health donation and when the school hired Edwards, said Tim Nation, executive director of the Peace Learning Center. Edwards has been leading the program for six years.

Peer mediation is meant to address conflicts before they turn into physical confrontations that require adult intervention.Students most commonly seek mediation for fights between friends or conflicts over relationships, the mediators said. Those kinds of conflicts can be trickier to resolve than determining who took a phone, they added.

“When it comes to relationships, it’s harder for people to take accountability for what they did or said,” said seventh grader Camille Hynes.

One of the hardest parts of learning how to mediate is helping their peers find the words to express how they feel, said Jocelyn, whose older sister also served as a peer mediator.

“Sometimes people will agree with what we’re saying just to get it over with,” Camille said.

Still, it can be easier to express feelings to a peer than a teacher or administrator, Jocelyn said.

More than 100 students applied to be mediators this year, but only about 25 to 30 were selected after an interview process, said Edwards. They train for three weeks after school before stepping in to mediate conflicts.

“They want to be a part of something, building something stronger,” he said.

Harshman students can seek mediation by filling out a form in Edwards’ classroom, where posters about peace line the walls and cloth drapes dim the fluorescent lighting.

Edwards said he has seen a significant drop in the number of fights breaking out in Harshman hallways, as well as subsequent suspensions.

Discipline data from the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation shows that Harshman’s out-of-school suspension rate began declining in 2016 before spiking shortly after the pandemic.

Since 2023, the share of students with out-of-school suspensions has declined from a peak of 26% to 8% in 2024-25.

Across IPS, the out-of-school suspension rate has remained around 10% since 2022, lower than before the pandemic. About 6.5% of students statewide had an out-of-school suspension last year, slightly higher than before the pandemic.

Over the last school year, peer mediators handled about 25 peer conflicts, Edwards said.

Edwards also facilitated conferences with students focused on , which are alternatives to traditional discipline focused on repairing harm.

Students and teachers must trust the process

When a conflict is resolved, both parties sign an agreement not to discuss their argument further outside the room. That helps build trust in the mediation process and mitigates feelings of embarrassment, the mediators said.

“Talking about it after can become a further issue,” Camille said. “The situation may be small but that can make it bigger.”

The program also requires buy-in from adults at the school, Principal Amy Moore said. Administrators have to trust that the peer mediators can resolve a conflict using the skills they’ve learned.

The principles of peer mediation have had an effect beyond Edwards’ classroom, she said.

Moore said she sees students in the hallways using conflict resolution language with each other. They say in jest: “That’s not the Harshman way,” she said.

“They’ve internalized it,” Moore said. “It’s become woven into the fabric of the school.”

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Enrollment in ���Ի徱���Բ�’s Choice Scholarship school voucher program slowed in overall growth for the second year in a row last school year, shows, but the number of higher income families using the program increased.

For the first time, more vouchers went to families making more than $100,000 than less than $100,000 this year.

This change has drawn criticism from public education advocates who say vouchers benefit families who can already afford tuition. But some choice advocates say the criticism doesn’t take large families into account. Around 72% of Indiana families participating in the Choice Scholarship program have a household size of 4-6, according to the report.

The program saw a slight uptick in the number of students who previously attended a public school before receiving a voucher, or around 2,000 students. But the majority of students in the program have never attended a public school, as in past years.

Around 4,000 additional students received a voucher in 2025-26 than in 2024-25, bringing total enrollment to approximately 80,000. In 2024-2025, the program added about 6,000 students, and in 2023-24, the program saw a sharp increase of nearly 17,000 students after 2023 legislative changes made vouchers

The 2025 legislative session approved vouchers for all Indiana families regardless of income, but those changes didn’t take effect until July 2026. Any affect on enrollment won’t be evident until the next school year.

To qualify for a 2025-26 voucher, a family had to have an annual household income limit less than 400% of the amount used to qualify for subsidized school meals. That was around $238,000 for a family of four.

Approximately 7,000 students from families making more than $200,000 received a voucher in 2025-26, compared to around 5,400 in 2024-25 and 3,700 in 2023-24. More vouchers were also awarded to families in the $100,000-$150,000 and $150,000-$200,000 income brackets than in past years.

The number of vouchers given to students from families making less than $50,000 dropped from 16,000 in 2024-25 to around 12,000 in 2025-26.

The state awarded $548 million for Choice Scholarships in 2025-26, according to the report, up from $497 million in 2024-225. The 2024-25 amounts were adjusted slightly because some students transferred out of their choice schools before the end of the year. The actual payments were around $491 million, according to this year’s report.

Most students in the program charged by their private school, but rather an amount that is 90% of the per-pupil state funding for their assigned public school district. Around 20,000 students received the full tuition and fees, and that number that has steadily declined since 2023-24.

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The coverage mandates these parents helped secure have driven hundreds- and even thousands-fold increases in Medicaid spending on ABA — an unproven, even harmful, behavior modification system that uses rewards and punishments to try to eliminate certain behaviors.

Over the last decade, the ready flow of cash has attracted private equity, a type of investment that purchases large shares of companies that are not publicly traded. Through cost cutting and other restructuring methods, these short-term investors try to boost revenue before selling the businesses for a profit. With scant state or federal oversight, they have also acquired nursing homes, facilities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, medical equipment providers and other healthcare industries that rely on taxpayer dollars to profit.      

Now, states — which put few regulatory guardrails on the ABA industry, on private equity’s role in healthcare in general or on Medicaid reimbursement — are cracking down. Even before a series of damning federal commissioned by the Biden administration were released in recent months, lawmakers and health officials have proposed capping the amount of ABA an individual child can receive and how much providers can bill, as well as imposing standards on clinics and therapists. 

As states have revisited Medicaid reimbursement rates and other policies that impact providers’ financial bottom lines, two types of ABA-related debates have played out in statehouses. One involves the ABA industry’s entrance into state-level political spending; the other, efforts by providers and caregivers to require public schools to allow the therapist of a family’s choosing to accompany their student to class.  

The start of statehouse spending 

Individual state legislative races are relatively cheap to influence. While parents have long packed hearing rooms to testify against threatened cuts to autism services, in recent years some of the industry’s largest, private equity-owned ABA providers have begun making campaign donations to candidates for state-level office who could sway legislation on ABA oversight, Medicaid reimbursement rates, whether private autism therapists should be allowed in schools and other laws that impact providers’ profits.  

Lobbying and campaign finance reporting requirements vary widely from state to state. Using records compiled by the political spending watchdog group Open Secrets, �鶹��Ʒ was able to identify instances when ABA lobbyists donated to state-level campaigns around the country at consequential moments, to benefit the companies the lobbyists represented. 

In 2022, Florida lawmakers passed a law allowing behavior technicians from private, for-profit ABA centers to accompany kids to school — opening a new and potentially lucrative market. While reimbursement rates vary by state, private ABA centers typically bill insurers for behavior technicians’ time at $50 to $100 an hour. Special education classroom aides employed by public schools, in comparison, frequently make about $25 an hour.  

Campaign contributions made that year by two of ABA’s largest private equity-owned concerns, Hopebridge Autism Therapy Centers and Acorn Health, would barely cover a lobbyist’s bar tab at a Washington, D.C., watering hole. 

Hopebridge Autism Therapy gave a total of $10,000 to nine incumbent lawmakers and one challenger. Acorn Health gave $7,500 to the state House Republican Campaign Committee and $3,333 to the Florida Republican Party. 

It was a small expense for two of the country’s largest autism therapy companies, which between 2019 and 2024 brought in almost $200 million — nearly $134 million for Hopebridge and more than $63 million for Acorn, according to a 74 analysis of Medicaid ABA billing records. 

The largest company by Medicaid revenue, Centria Healthcare, was paid more than $400 million between 2019 and 2024, according to �鶹��Ʒ’s analysis. The company spent almost $200,000 in Oregon and Indiana in three election cycles: 2020, 2022 and 2024. 

In 2024 in Indiana, where a federal audit would soon find up to $133 million in improper Medicaid ABA claims from multiple providers, sparking caps and cuts, Centria gave $25,000 to gubernatorial candidate Michael Braun.

As governor, Braun created a state applied behavior analysis to consider ways to rein in costs while continuing to serve autistic children. The group’s membership is dominated by ABA practitioners.

In Oregon, the company gave former Rep. Dan Rayfield $55,000 during his last two terms as House speaker, followed by $25,000 for his successful 2024 run for attorney general. The state House Democratic Campaign committee received $50,000, while 13 other lawmakers got contributions of $1,000 to $10,000.

On the table: A to expand the state’s private insurance autism therapy mandate until 2030 and a to extend Oregon’s ABA mandate to conditions other than autism, such as intellectual and developmental disabilities — potentially opening significant new markets. The law mandating continued coverage of autism treatment was enacted.

The bill to expand the disability categories for which ABA practitioners can be reimbursed faced significant pushback. Testimony submitted to lawmakers included of research on the therapy’s effectiveness for conditions other than autism, such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and epilepsy. It concluded the evidence is thin. The measure is still pending in the state House. 

Facing Medicaid rate cuts, Utah Behavior Services (now known as Bridgeway Integrated Healthcare Services) — with Medicaid revenue of some $196 million, according to �鶹��Ʒ’s dataset — spent some $41,000 to influence 21 contests, including state auditor. Action Behavior Centers, which collected $1.7 million in reimbursements between 2021 and 2024, spent $2,500 .  

Must schools allow private ABA in classrooms?

Special education law requires schools to provide “medically necessary” services to children whose ability to attend school and learn depends on them. For the most part, school districts can pass these costs along to Medicaid or another public healthcare plan, or to a family’s private insurer.   

Commonly cited examples are children who need a nurse to manage their airway or feeding tube, or have a condition that requires physical therapy. Historically, ABA has not been recognized as a medically necessary service. Schools typically try to meet students’ behavioral and communications needs in other ways.    

In 2022, two Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to require school districts to enshrine autism therapy as medically necessary. Administrators from the Colorado Consortium of Directors of Special Education, the Englewood and Cherry Creek school districts and others expressed concern with the bill. 

They would be liable for the in-school conduct of a technician they don’t employ, several of those commenting said. And, most practically problematic, schools would be legally responsible for figuring out how to make up the academic instruction that students would miss while engaging in therapy during the school day.

The General Assembly eventually passed a version of the bill not specifically addressing ABA. Instead, it requires districts to have policies outlining how they will address medically necessary services.  

Louisiana and Pennsylvania recently enacted laws saying schools must accept autism therapy technicians. The requirements are too new to assess results.

This investigation was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Indianapolis Public School students can receive a zero on assignments again, but only if they make zero effort to complete them.

The IPS school board updated the district’s grading policy to remove the district’s no-zero grading policy for students in first through 12th grade in a unanimous vote on Thursday.

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The change comes about six years after the no-zero policy was implemented and is largely due to teacher feedback, said Lela Simmons, IPS chief learning officer, during the school board’s agenda review session on Tuesday.

Now, students can receive a zero on an assignment if they make no attempt to complete it after getting multiple opportunities and support from the teacher. How that works is up to the teachers and will depend on the student and their grade level, Simmons said.

If students make a good faith effort, they will earn at least 50%, Simmons said. Anything 59% or lower is an F, while other letter grades are about 10 points each. For example, anything 90% or higher is an A and grades between 80% and 89% are a B. Earning at least 50% on an assignment makes it more likely students will pass the class.

She said the aim is to continue to give students opportunities to do better and try again.

The no-zero policy was approved in July 2020 and meant that the lowest score students could receive was 50%.

“The intention of that shift was because it is incredibly hard for students to come back from zeros in their grades,” Simmons said.

She said the change was also in response to the COVID-19 pandemic which led to students learning virtually and missing assignments for related reasons such as quarantine.

The policy had multiple critics, including some IPS staff and parents who said it was difficult to implement and to identify students who needed support. Simmons told the board that teachers said the change didn’t prepare students for college.

Based on that feedback, Simmons said the new policy is a “happy medium.”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

���Ի徱���Բ�’s early literacy rates improved for the fifth consecutive year, with nearly 89% of Hoosier third graders demonstrating proficiency in foundational reading skills on the state’s IREAD assessment.

The Indiana Department of Education statewide IREAD, ILEARN and SAT results for the 2025-26 school year Tuesday at the State Board of Education’s August meeting.

The results show continued improvement in early literacy and a new baseline for the state’s redesigned ILEARN assessment.

Officials credit the success to science of reading instructional coaching targeted at low-performing schools and earlier assessments, which allows schools to identify struggling readers before they enter third grade.

Student literacy rates for every student population have now surpassed pre-pandemic levels, with the greatest year-over-year gains recorded for Black and Hispanic students.

More than 500 schools reached ���Ի徱���Բ�’s 95% reading proficiency goal in 2026 as well.

IREAD is administered in second and third grade, giving students five opportunities to demonstrate proficiency before leaving third grade.

The assessment measures foundational reading skills like phonics, vocabulary, fluency and basic comprehension.

Students who pass are not required to retest, while those who are rated at risk are offered targeted supports to get them on track. If they don’t pass, state law requires they remain in third grade. 

Literacy Cadre boosts pass rates

All special needs students at Parkside Elementary School in Columbus passed IREAD last school year.

The school assesses the highest number of special needs students and still passes 100%, Principal Chris Smith told the State Board of Education.

“The achievement is a powerful reflection of our belief that every student can succeed when provided with high-quality instruction, intentional support and high expectations,” he said.

Parkside is one of 770 Indiana schools to participate in the Department of Education’s literacy cadre program — an instructional coaching program available to elementary teachers at schools with low IREAD passage rates.

IREAD growth is nearly four times greater at schools using the cadre than those that do not participate, Chief Academic Officer Anna Shults said.

Third grade passage rates at St. Anthony Catholic School, a predominantly Hispanic school in downtown Indianapolis, surged from 54% to 100% in a single year after the school joined the literacy cadre.

Many students at the school are English learners, but Principal Madalyn Schepers said, “we never wanted language to become a reason to lower our expectations.”

The latest cohort of third graders experienced three years of intensive literacy instruction, with an emphasis on what each student needed to reach grade-level benchmarks, she said.

“Students were not simply placed into a low (reading) group and left there for the year,” Schepers said. “Their progress was monitored, and their groups were fluid. The instruction changed as their needs changed. Our teachers knew their students as readers. They knew who needed additional work and dynamic awareness. They knew who needed decoding support. They knew who needed fluency practice, and they knew when a student was ready to move on.”

Behind the statistic, Schepers said, are children who see a new version of themselves. “A child who struggled to read in a second language is now a child who knows they can do hard things.”

State sets new ILEARN baseline

Results from the newly redesigned ILEARN assessment — a more rigorous, through-year assessment measuring academic mastery of math and English language arts — set a new overall baseline of 42% proficiency in ELA and 42.7% proficiency in math. 

The test is administered in grades 3 through 8, designed to align with the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessment to measure whether students are on track for college.

This is the first year the redesigned assessment was administered to students.

The Department of Education streamlined the computer-adaptive test to align with core academic standards, in accordance with state law. 

The test is now a through-year assessment, with three checkpoints and a shortened summative assessment administered each spring, allowing parents and educators to monitor student progress throughout the year.

“We have now a benchmark,” said Paul Ketcham, assistant secretary of education. “We have reliability in our data that we’re receiving today. We now go to work so that we can move our kids in the right direction.”

Scores are divided into four categories: below, approaching, at or above proficiency. 

Ketcham said nearly 80% of students who took the assessment last school year were rated at, above or approaching proficiency.

And with a through-year assessment, Ketcham said educators are now equipped with timely data to get those students on track.

“Math is probably our next big lift,” he said.

Education leaders caution not to compare ILEARN results to previous years or other states, as the test is unique to Indiana.

“The only reason we’ve had five consecutive years of movement in IREAD is because of the army of people we’ve built statewide at the community level who are the change agents who are making it happen — educators, parents and families working together,” Education Secretary Katie Jenner said. “So, we believe as this new (ILEARN) baseline is set, we need the same level of army and focus on ELA and math.”

Other results released Tuesday show 52% of Hoosier juniors met college-ready benchmarks for reading and writing on the SAT, while 26% met mathematics benchmarks.

This story was originally published by Indiana Capital Chronicle.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

There’s a long-held misconception that students’ opportunities are constrained by the size of their town. In many people’s minds, rural career and technical education and career-connected learning are synonymous with agriculture and manufacturing, while college prep is limited to a path from the graduation stage to the nearest state school.

Unfortunately, this mentality can be difficult for many school leaders to shake. When and the local tax base is small, investing in new initiatives comes with a high price tag that many districts can’t afford.

While they face distinct challenges, rural schools are equipped with agility and adaptability that larger districts may find difficult to match. Resourcefulness is a necessity, compelling school leaders to think more creatively, and without bureaucratic red tape, schools that can take large districts years to coordinate. 

In rural Indiana, innovation looks like collaboration between high schools that are competitors on the football field, but partners in opening doors for their students. Through the known as RAZ-32, six neighboring districts share classes, instructors and resources so students can take career-focused courses at any participating school. 

Like many small districts, Randolph Eastern School Corporation wanted to offer more dual credit CTE courses to prepare students for the rigor of college-level coursework. However, with such a small student population, filling these classes with enough students to make them viable was difficult. Conversations with other superintendents revealed they faced a similar problem — they wanted to offer a broader range of courses but lacked enough students to justify offering niche classes or the budget to bring on new teachers to lead them.

What began as a partnership between three neighboring districts — Randolph Eastern, Monroe Central and Randolph Central — in 2024 has grown into a regional example for expanding career education. By creating a formal agreement that allows students to criss-cross district lines, the schools opened the door to opportunities that no single campus could offer on its own. 

Key to the partnership was inviting students, educators and business leaders to shape the experience so that pathways reflected the region’s workforce needs and the diverse interests of students themselves. With these insights, RAZ-32 stayed true to its districts’ rural roots while preparing students for careers whether they stay close to home or pursue opportunities outside Indiana after graduation. 

In addition to traditional CTE pathways like welding and agriculture, the regional alliance has expanded to eight different pathways that align with students’ ambitions, such as broadcasting & media production, health care, early childhood education, and marketing & sales. This fall cybersecurity, hospitality and public service pathways will be added due to student interest.

Transforming a vision into curriculum required a high level of collaboration among districts. School leaders had to be candid and transparent regarding their districts’ strengths — and where they needed support from fellow superintendents. Rather than viewing gaps as limitations, they were the starting point for identifying where expertise, instructors and resources could be shared.

All participating districts contribute to a joint funding model by allocating a portion of their CTE dollars to the host school. The host school then directs a share of those funds to RAZ-32, sustaining the alliance’s collaborative functions such as transportation, executive director salary, equipment,and professional development. RAZ-32 also receives financial support from local county commissioners and is part of the, which funds new competency-based learning models.

Today, students can enroll in career-focused and dual-credit courses at any participating district. If one school doesn’t offer precision machine technology, for instance, their students can access the program at a nearby school to gain the credentials needed to earn their industry certification. 

Making a regional model like this work requires thoughtful planning. The participating schools are 15 to 40 minutes apart, depending on the route, with most students traveling less than half an hour to reach their host campus. Rather than expecting students to fit transportation around a traditional bell schedule, the districts aligned their academic calendars, coordinated school start times and built three-hour morning and afternoon instructional blocks that include both class time and travel. 

Students do not receive a free period simply because they attend a program at another school, although counselors may incorporate a hybrid or virtual course when needed to ensure they stay on track for graduation while taking advantage of expanded opportunities.

Students who are interested in participating in the program have someone to guide them from day one. RAZ-32’s executive director works with administrators and counselors in every school to schedule visits between students and program teachers as well as outline their CTE pathways step-by-step. During each district’s, students put in their request to participate.

Helping increase RAZ-32’s impact are the partnerships with local employers to offer workplace learning, including Ivy Tech Community College and Reid Health. About 82% of students on the RAZ-32 medical assistant pathway earned their Certified Clinical Medical Assistant certification through in-hospital instruction this past school year. In addition, students can participate in a federally-approved apprenticeship with Reid Health their second year and continue to work in the field while completing their associate’s degree in nursing at Ivy Tech.

During RAZ-32’s first year, 81 students enrolled in the program: 92%o completed pathways, 83% earned dual-credits, and nine students earned a post-secondary credential. In 2025, shared enrollment in the program increased by 74%, and three more schools — Randolph Southern School Corporation, Liberty-Perry Community School Corporation, and Northeastern Wayne School Corporation — joined the initiative.

Beginning this school year, RAZ-32 will also provide at the host schools for participating districts, expanding access and increasing opportunities for students without reliable transportation.

The regional alliance illustrates one approach rural districts can take when working together. At a time when many of rural schools, such alliances offer an alternative. Even with small enrollments and small budgets, rural districts are expanding opportunities for students while building the skilled workforce needed to support Indiana’s long-term economic future.

With every new initiative, rural school districts are challenging the — that they are isolated, less inclusive and fail to prepare students for a world beyond their town borders. School leaders are successfully leveraging the strengths that are the heart of rural communities, including civic pride, resourcefulness and interdependence, to create new opportunities for every student.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified one of the school districts participating in a regional career training collaborative. It is Randolph Southern School Corporation, not Eastern Hancock County Community School Corporation.

Karega Rausch, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers since 2020, was selected Wednesday to lead the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation. The Indiana state legislature created that board earlier in the  year, over opposition from the school district, to give charters a greater say in running the city’s schools.

Rausch, who led the Indianapolis mayor’s education office from 2007 to 2011, will now guide efforts to increase the share of local taxes going to charter schools, create a joint district-charter bus system and find ways to close and share school buildings. The city now has 50,000 school seats for just 41,000 students, a costly surplus of 9,000 seats.

He’ll take the position this fall in the middle of a campaign to pass a tax increase in the November election that will be split equally between the school district and charter schools. That sharing of taxes was mandated by the state legislature after bitter fights between district and charter supporters.

Rausch, a resident of Indianapolis since 2000, told the IPEC board before the vote that he considers himself a “bridge-builder” who will work with both the district and charters. He said the Indianapolis Public Schools has expertise he hopes to tap into.

“I was not looking for a new opportunity,” Rausch told �鶹��Ʒ after the vote. “I love the work and impact we are making at NACSA. This opportunity was very unique and a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to be the founding executive director, allowing me to help make a transformative difference in Indianapolis.” 

IPEC board member Patricia Castaneda said she believes Rausch is “answering the call of community” in leaving his national post for the job.

“It is not often that someone comes home to their community to do the work that they have so successfully done across not only the state, the city, the state, but also the nation, and that is encouraging to me,” said Castaneda, former chair of a charter school network in the city.

Board member John Hammond said he is happy Rausch wants to “help us lead a very special effort here that is unique in the country.”

“I think he understands the special circumstance that we’re in as a community… and the balance that needs to be struck as we kind of move into a new era, and understands both sides and all sides of the equation,” Hammond said.

Rausch’s selection continues a push, driven by Republican state legislators, to shift more control of schools in Indianapolis from the school district to charter schools, which have gained so many students in recent years that Indianapolis is one of nationwide where more than half of students attend charters 

The legislature’s creation of IPEC, whose members are appointed by the mayor instead of elected like the district school board, moves power away from the school board. 

The tax increase on the November ballot, for example, previously would have been sought by the district just for district schools. Now, only IPEC can ask voters to approve taxes for both the district and charters.

Experts said earlier this year that Indianapolis is rivaling New Orleans, the most charter-friendly city in the country, in its support of charter schools. Charter supporters say the majority of students deserve more say and to close a gap in funding for district schools and charter schools, while critics say IPEC threatens to drain money and resources from district schools. 

Though IPEC members, by law, include members of Indianapolis Public Schools’ board, it still leans heavily pro-charter. A majority of its members have worked for or served on boards of charter schools. Its chairman, David Harris is founder of several charter schools and led the Mind Trust, a local advocate of charter schools, until 2018. 

The selection of Rausch continues that pattern.

Rausch, who has a PhD from Indiana University, was director of the city’s Office of Education Innovation under two Indianapolis mayors from 2007 to 2011. He then was director of Stand for Children, an education advocacy group in the city, before later joining NACSA as vice president of research and evaluation in 2014. 

Indiana K-12 schools must meet new standards before seeking approval to implement a four-day school week.

The model, once favored by rural schools due to a shortage of bus drivers, is spreading nationwide to urban and suburban districts seeking to recruit teachers and students by extending the school day, so students and staff can take Fridays off.

Schools can apply for a flexibility waiver through the Indiana Department of Education to move to a four-day school week.

Now, schools must earn an “A” grade through the state’s A-F accountability model to be considered for a four-day school week waiver.

That’s one of four minimum requirements outlined in House Enrolled Act , which took effect July 1.

The Indiana Department of Education recently issued guidance to schools about the new criteria ahead of the coming school year.

Schools must also offer transportation for students who choose to attend a school operating on a five-day schedule, meet the state’s $45,000-a-year minimum teacher salary threshold, and offer enrichment and remediation at no cost to parents the day school is not in session.

The State Board of Education must then grant approval before a school can transition to a four-day week.

Vinton Elementary pilots four-day week

Vinton Elementary School is entering its third and final year piloting a four-day school week.

The Lafayette-area school, with an enrollment of 408, is the sole school in Indiana operating on a four-day schedule through the state Department of Education’s flexibility waiver for innovation.

School starts at 8 a.m. Monday through Thursday, with dismissal delayed until 3:45 p.m. — a necessity to meet the required 54,000 minutes of instruction each year, which the school accomplishes in a mere 151 days compared to the typical 180 days.

Students attend class on Fridays only when a holiday falls on a Monday, so they don’t miss two days in one week.

The National Conference of State Legislatures 850 school districts operate on a four-day schedule, saving their budgets an average of 0.4% to 2.5% a year.

Principal Cindy Preston is impressed by the results she’s seen thus far: Student disciplinary referrals are down from 495 before the pilot started to 293 referrals last school year.

Staff absences declined from 656 to 398 a year.

Eighty-nine percent of third graders passed their spring assessments last year, up from 73% when the school still operated five days a week.

And a clear majority of parents and staff report they are satisfied with the four-day schedule, Preston said.

Yet she looks at the new criteria and wonders whether Vinton will qualify for another waiver once the pilot expires.

The school already meets two of the four minimum standards for teacher salaries and transportation.

Students are provided free busing to other elementary schools within the Lafayette School Corporation if parents wish to keep them on a five-day schedule.

The YMCA offers on-site daycare at Vinton on Fridays, but few students participate.

Preston said she is exploring options to provide free onsite enrichment and remedial programming on Fridays to qualify for another waiver, but an “A” rating will be more difficult to achieve.

“We’re a high-poverty school,” she said. “We’re about 80-85% poverty, so hitting that mark is very hard. This will be my 15th year as principal here, and we’ve never reached that.”

A spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Education said waiver applications will formally open to other districts following the release of A-F grades later this school year.

The department prioritizes applications “that clearly center on student needs and include thoughtful engagement with families and school staff about the potential impacts,” said Courtney Bearsch, chief communications officer for the department.

Moving forward

Preston said she’s hopeful lawmakers will either grandfather Vinton in or revise the standards so the school can continue its four-day routine, even if it doesn’t receive an “A” rating this year.

The school applied for its initial flexibility waiver to make the district more attractive to families in neighboring districts.

While enrollment declined the first year, Preston said it rebounded the following year. Twenty-six percent of those new students transferred from a neighboring district, she said.

Initial staff concerns subsided as the year progressed, and the school no longer witnessed an influx of parents removing their child from school early for weekend trips, Preston said.

Teachers had time for deeper, uninterrupted instruction. The 90-minute reading block became 120 minutes, she said.

“Even though we’re squeezing five days (into four), teachers feel like they really do have a lot more wiggle room to do more hands-on, deeper dives into instruction instead of just hitting the surface.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

About two-dozen Hoosier childcare providers and advocates overwhelmingly opposed looser statewide staff educational requirements during a Monday public hearing.

“This is a profession. This is not just a babysitting job,” said Hanna Wetzel, the director of the Children’s Learning Center of Posey County.

She spoke to representatives of the Family and Social Services Administration, the state agency overseeing childcare providers around Indiana.

FSSA last month dealing with staffing, meals, sleep and more — which Gov. Mike Braun and agency leaders say will lower costs for providers and families.

The agency plans to adopt the finalized regulations July 13, according to dockets for childcare and . They’re expected to take effect October 11.

The directors of childcare centers would no longer need a bachelor’s or associate’s degree to do the job, according to . They would qualify with two years of experience and a child development associate credential — which is as a career “stepping stone” by the organization that issues them.

Lead caregivers would not need a child development associate credential or other higher education — just a high school diploma or equivalent. And lower-level caregivers wouldn’t need to have completed high school, although they’d still have to be at least 18 years old.

Austin Scales, a lead educator at United Day Care Center in Muncie, said many of the primarily low-income children served there have experienced “severe, significant trauma.”

“Without that education, I would not have been able to serve them,” Scales said. He has a bachelor’s degree in early elementary education and special education.

Multiple people argued the changes would not assuage the industry’s labor shortages.

“The root causes of high director and staff turnover is driven by low compensation and burnout, not by educational requirements. Lowering expectations will not strengthen this workforce,” said Amy Van Bruggen, the senior director of quality and compliance at The Westin School in central Indiana. She has also worked as a childcare inspector and referral provider.

Relaxed standards could lead to a temporary increase in job applicants, according to Erin Kissling, the president and CEO of Early Learning Indiana. But she said educators without early childhood degrees or credentials are less likely to remain in the profession over time, citing a University of Nebraska of eight states.

Other feedback

Several speakers supported “modernization” provisions, including those allowing for electronic records and dropping certain required postings.

Omar Khan, the leader of the Indiana Child Care Business Alliance, spoke in favor of provisions requiring caregivers to keep children within eyesight or hearing range — without using other devices — and within arm’s length around water.

He also applauded a proposed twice-annual active shooter and intruder drill mandate and proposed greater leeway in mixing age groups at opening and closing times.

But Khan and several others opposed relaxed regulations for sleeping and diapering.

FSSA’s draft would allow childcare centers to use sleeping bags, as long as they’re placed on carpet, instead of cots elevated off the floor. It would also broaden diaper-changing table provisions to “surfaces;” eliminate a ban on cloth, lattice or wicker parts; and scrap requirements for sanitizable pads and waterproof paper strips.

“Families deserve to know their children are receiving the highest quality care in safe, developmentally appropriate environments,” said Ashanti Ordone, the owner and CEO of Gifted & Talented Academy in Indianapolis.

Providers also spoke against allowing portable wading pools, citing drowning risks, and lower standards for the materials provided to children. The draft rules delete a list of required activity types, including art, literacy, math, music, science and more.

“Every regulation should be evaluated by one question: Does this help ensure children are safe, nurtured, and given the strongest possible start in life?

“As you consider all these proposed licensing changes, I ask that we do not view quality and accessibility as competing priorities, because ���Ի徱���Բ�’s children deserve both,” said Beth Wickham, representing Early Head Start programs across the state. “Every regulation should be evaluated by one question: does this help ensure children are safe, nurtured, and given the strongest possible start in life?”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

���Ի徱���Բ�’s school choice program leaves its nearly 300,000 rural public school students with fewer options and fewer resources while funding the private education of others. Indiana school students, or 28%, reside in rural areas.

A recent analysis of each of ���Ի徱���Բ�’s 82 rural counties found that only eight, or fewer than 10%, have a charter or non-religious private school to attend. Families in other rural counties — such as Brown, Crawford, Newton, Ohio and Union – have no alternatives at all.

Standing charter schools tend not to open in rural areas because low student enrollment fails to bring in sufficient revenue and geographical isolation prevents cost-sharing among schools. ���Ի徱���Բ�’s judiciary  as rural any county with a total population less than 40,000, a density of less than 100 people per square mile, and a largest city less than 10,000.

The impact of school choice on the state’s rural education has raised alarm not only among supporters of public schools but supporters of school choice as well, including the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

“As choice expands, we must be honest about the challenges facing many smaller and rural school districts. Our focus should remain on ensuring every student — no matter their ZIP code — has access to a high-quality education that prepares them for success and economic prosperity,” Indiana Chamber President Vanessa Green Sinders wrote in an email.

In some instances where declining enrollment has forced the closure of rural public schools, local parents have opened their own charter schools. Under state law, public schools must sell their closed and unused facilities to charter schools for just a dollar. Charter schools also have the economic advantage of paying lower salaries and providing fewer benefits to teachers. A request to the Indiana Department of Education for data on how many rural public schools in the state have closed in the last five years and how many were replaced by charter schools went unanswered.

“Competition makes you improve. I don’t think anybody would say that’s a bad thing,” said Chris Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association. “We just ask that there be a level playing field” for all schools, public and private.

Seventy-two rural counties offer religious school alternatives, with numbers ranging from a single school in counties like Fulton and Switzerland to as many as 10 in LaGrange where there is a large Amish community. The state’s universal voucher system will pick up most of the tab for those students and other non-public schools, adding $492 million to the state’s school expenditures.

Vouchers provide either 90% of a student’s local public school funding or the full amount of their private school tuition and fees, whichever is less. While the average award in 2024-25 was $6,536, participating private schools reported an average tuition of $8,369. Of the 76,000 students receiving vouchers, only about 28% received full support.

Indiana public schools are primarily state funded.

In the 2022–23 school year, the most recent year of available data, about 57% of Indiana public school funding came from the state. Another 30% was generated locally and the federal government kicked in the remaining 13%. All told, Indiana public schools received $16.7 billion in funds, or $16,200 per student. Indiana ranks 37th of 50 states in education spending per pupil, according to the .

By funding its schools per pupil, ���Ի徱���Բ�’s strict “money follows the student” policy is especially hard on rural districts when their enrollment declines. Losing just a few students to private schools or local population decline can dramatically impact their school budgets. That’s because rural schools usually serve fewer students to begin with, reducing their economies of scale and increasing the cost of instruction per pupil.

As a fixed cost, for instance, schools must still pay one teacher’s salary whether a grade level has 10 or 15 students. Other fixed costs include transportation, building maintenance, and administrative staff. That leaves staff and educational programs such as extracurricular activities, art and music classes, and after-school programs vulnerable to cuts.

Meanwhile, with few means to increase their local revenue, traditional rural public school districts are being pinched as the state’s school choice program expands.

If 2022–23 voucher funds were returned to the public education funding pool, South Adams Community Schools would have received nearly $600,000 in additional funding for that year alone, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, a public policy research organization in Washington, DC. The district’s annual budget is about $22 million for 1,312 students.

Budget constraints last year forced South Adams to cut two bus routes, five instructional assistants and two custodians, said Superintendent Michelle Clouser-Penrod.

As the cost for student and teacher supplies continue to rise, she said the parent-teacher organization has stepped up its fundraising efforts to make sure “we have a fully stocked supply closet” as well as “providing many other supports for students and teachers as needed.” Half the students in the district come from families living below the poverty line, she added.

The district’s 1,312 students have no alternative except remote learning through a virtual charter school. When students unhappy with virtual schooling return to the district during the same school year, South Adams often loses the state money that would have followed them, Clouser-Penrod said.

“We work very hard to be conservative and live within our means,” she said via email, “but costs of operating schools continue to rise. Property casualty insurance has gone from approximately $100,000 in 2021 to $217,000 in 2025. Health insurance and utility costs also have a tremendous impact on budgets.”

To make up the difference in state funding, rural districts can raise local tax revenues through voter referendums, but success is not guaranteed. Farms mean fewer property owners must take on a larger tax burden that can’t be offset by the value added to their homes through better schools.

“The cost benefit for the voters is not there,” Lagoni said. And unlike wealthy suburban districts, he noted, rural towns and cities seldom have the strong industrial and commercial property tax base to levy additional operating funds.

Starting this coming school year, Indiana families will be able to qualify for private and religious school vouchers regardless of their income, making Indiana one of the few states in the country to reimburse parents for religious and private school tuition regardless of the family’s wealth.

“I think people want their tax dollars to go to their public schools to support public school students, and I think that’s especially true in rural communities where they rely so heavily on public schools as an important hub in their community,” said Paige Shoemaker DeMio, author of the Center for American Progress’s 2025 report “How the School Choice Agenda Harms Rural Students.”

A found that rural adults were the least likely to support school vouchers.

Clouser-Penrod said in an email that South Adams is already planning cuts for 2027: “We are looking at all of our utility expenses and (have) begun deeper monitoring and working with a team to determine ways to reduce costs.” The district is also discussing offering a retirement incentive for higher-salaried veteran teachers next year, she said.

“We may be forced to increase class sizes in the future if costs continue to rise and funding continues to be inadequate.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

Courtney Buuck thought there was some kind of mistake.

When she learned that she received a $40,000 bonus payment on top of her base teacher’s salary last fall, she was in shock. Like other staff at United Schools of Indianapolis’ three charter schools, she was eligible for a bonus based on her year-end evaluation score.

She just didn’t think she’d come out on top.

“I am just really hard on myself as an educator,” said Buuck, who teaches kindergarten at the Avondale Meadows Academy K-4 school. “And then once the shock wore off, I was just really proud of myself.”

Buuck plans to save her bonus to help her purchase her first home.

Buuck’s bonus comes from the $12.5 million Vigilance in Teaching and Learning — or VITAL — Trust, and pledged to support performance-based bonuses for staff at the charter network for 25 years. In the first year of awards, she received nearly $16,000.

Now, another venture with essentially the same name is expanding merit bonuses to 11 more Indianapolis charter schools this year in an effort to attract and retain high-quality educators. In April, the philanthropic VITAL Foundation awarded roughly $1.3 million in its first round of grants for teacher bonuses at high-needs schools that could range from $1,000 to $10,000.

The two initiatives differ in a few respects, but both are a substantial investment in merit pay in Indianapolis, where dozens of charter schools and multiple school districts compete for educators. The federal government has promoted the concept over the years through , which the Trump .

The big question: Will it work? Research suggests that it could, if implemented in certain ways. But other studies suggest that . And there are concerns dating back years that .

VITAL Foundation head Kelly Herron understands that money alone can’t solve the educator shortage. Instead, she said, the grants are part of a broader system to retain teachers.

“You have to create a culture in which this can work,” said Herron, who studied each school’s culture prior to awarding grants through school visits, staff focus groups, and surveys. “You can’t go into a school that already has a broken culture, and think that this is the magic wand.”

Merit pay hopes to address charter hiring challenge

Roughly 15 years ago, President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative .

But today, state law does not tie teacher pay directly to student performance. Instead, school districts can bargain differentiated pay based on a teacher’s evaluation. The state Teacher Appreciation Grant also gives money to up to 20% of a district or charter school’s teachers using .

Charters and district-run schools can face different challenges when it comes to hiring and keeping teachers. Starting salaries can vary based on the schools. And charters don’t have to adhere to collective bargaining.

In the hiring game, charters may have the upper hand in at least one key respect. , according to a 2025 paper from the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research, or CALDER. The center analyzed teacher applications for 43 districts and charter school organizations nationwide using the Nimble application platform — a common hiring tool in Indiana.

But charter leaders can also have distinct hiring challenges that Herron, a former executive director of the United Schools of Indianapolis network, has experienced firsthand.

Some may struggle to keep up with the competitive base pay of nearby districts, she said. Others may have longer hours than traditional district-run schools or lack traditional districts’ name recognition.

The VITAL Trust bonuses, entering its third year, is based on a staff member’s numerical evaluation rating. The top 30% of performers receive an award that is weighted based on their score. In the program’s first two years, awards have averaged $10,000, with the top performer earning the $40,000 maximum. All staff members, not just teachers, are eligible for an award.

The new VITAL Foundation grant operates a bit differently.

Charters were awarded $3,000 per certified teaching position, and can only give bonuses to teachers designated as effective under the school’s performance system. How much each teacher receives also depends on their exact numerical evaluation score.

Schools that applied for the grants provided the foundation with their performance rubrics, which may rate teachers on academic outcomes along with other measures.

Neither the VITAL Foundation nor the VITAL Trust discloses its donors.

At Enlace Academy — which was a pilot school for the VITAL Trust that received $5,000 per certified teaching position — 40% of teacher evaluations is based on student academic outcomes. The rest is based on school-wide goals such as staff attendance and professional practice measures, such as response to feedback from teaching coaches.

Longer hours and lower pay is a challenge when it comes to recruiting teachers, said Katie Dulay, executive director of the Neighborhood Charter Network that operates Enlace.

“But the people who do well and are at Enlace for the long haul are here because they’re amongst peers who deeply care about their community and deeply care about getting strong outcomes for kids,” she said.

How can merit pay for teachers be successful?

Researchers suggest that there are two ways that merit pay could improve the existing teacher workforce.

“Pay would induce people to work harder or to get invested in themselves in ways that make them better,” said Dan Goldhaber, the director of CALDER who has studied teacher pay systems. “And it could also change the quality of the workforce by encouraging the right people to stay or come into a system.”

Some research suggests that certain merit pay structures — like one-time bonuses tied to year-end test score increases — don’t work well, Goldhaber said.

And merit pay like the state’s Teacher Appreciation Grant has fostered competition rather than collaboration, said Indiana State Teachers Association President Jennifer Smith-Margraf. Some districts declined the grant because of those tensions, she said.

Ultimately, Smith-Margraf said pay for performance is not what motivates teachers.

“What motivates them is wanting to be good at their job for their students,” she said. “And what keeps them from being focused on that is having to take care of doing two to three and four jobs instead of focusing on the one job of being an educator.”

On the other hand, a found a positive effect of merit pay programs on student test scores.

Systems like those in the VITAL initiatives that distribute bonus amounts based on a teacher’s relative performance to others are more likely to have a positive impact on test scores, the analysis found. And those competitions did not appear to generate unhealthy competition.

Successful performance pay structures base teacher evaluations on factors beyond just student achievement, Goldhaber said. They also make the bonuses permanent by increasing base salary after multiple positive evaluations, for example, he said.

Matthew Springer of Basis Policy Research, an author of the meta-analysis, said it’s important to look at the “continuous quality improvement of the program and its design, as well as the overall effect of what the program is having on the system as a whole.”

How merit pay can change the teaching pool

At the United School of Indianapolis, administrators say they’re already noticing a difference two years into the VITAL Trust award program.

“I definitely think that the type of people that we get is becoming different,” Ciara Jones, principal of the Avondale Meadows Middle School within the charter network, said of the hiring process. “It’s the people (who) want to be recognized and have opportunity to work hard and receive something.”

Teacher retention rates dropped across USI schools since the first round of the VITAL Trust awards from 2023-24 to 2024-25, according to data from the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. But leaders say they expect to see retention rates fluctuate from year to year while they focus on retaining high-performing teachers.

In the first two years of awards, 98% of bonus recipients returned to a USI school the following year, the network noted.

Damien Plaza, a social studies teacher at Avondale Meadows Middle School who won the $40,000 award in its first year, said he’s seen teachers increasing their level of commitment in response to the award.

“I think for all the people who received different levels of this award, it validates the feeling of excellence as a teacher,” he said. “Teachers working here have a big lift on their shoulders. The receipt of this award is just a rubber stamp of, ‘You’re going in the right direction.’ ”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon awarded Indiana a “Returning Education to the States” waiver, easing federal regulations on how the Indiana Department of Education can use $13 million in federal Title grants for “state-level activities” including testing, teacher training, and afterschool programs. 

But McMahon, after months of negotiations with Indiana officials, did not grant the much broader request Indiana submitted last summer to waive restrictions on $350 million in Title grants that flow directly to districts and schools.

At issue are the $30 billion federal Title grants – such as Title I to combat poverty and Title III to help English Language Learners – that Congress created in the 1960s to give vulnerable students across the country extra help in school. Conservatives have wanted to scale those grants back for years, with Trump seeking to cut them and combine them into more flexible block grants to schools as far back as 2020.

The outcome in Indiana was similar to what happened in Iowa, where state officials proposed in March, 2025, a broad waiver of restrictions on how money is used by both the state and by individual districts. What started as a in state grants by the time it was approved in January.

The reduced Indiana waiver, combined with the scaled-back waiver in Iowa and a small waiver of requirements in Louisiana, suggest McMahon may not have as much legal authority to cut rules —  considered red tape and inefficient by some and guardrails to protect the neediest kids by others — as much as some states and conservatives hoped.

A spokeswoman for the Indiana education department said Congress would have to change the laws covering the Title grants in order for the state’s request to be granted.

Opponents of the waivers were relieved that McMahon did not waive the rules broadly. 

“I hope that it signals that, at least when it comes to waivers, the department is doing closer to the law than what some may have expected,” said Phillip Lovell, Associate Executive Director of All4Ed, an education think tank that has opposed the waivers. Lovell said the Iowa and Indiana waivers show the Trump administration is “being a bit more moderate than what many of us had feared they would be.” 

Nicholas Munyan-Penney, assistant director of P-12 policy of the EdTrust education nonprofit which has also opposed the waivers, said he was hopeful because ���Ի徱���Բ�’s request to include all districts and schools “largely did get shot down.”

“My sense is that they really are trying to be thoughtful about this, and are worried they won’t be able to defend parts going broader,” he said.

But both Lovell and Munyan-Penney had concerns about McMahon approving some waivers of academic testing rules as Indiana reshapes its grading system for schools and districts.

McMahon did not address why ���Ի徱���Բ�’s full request was not approved at the . She instead proclaimed that it “frees…state and local funds from bureaucratic red tape compliance paperwork, and returns it to its rightful place in the classroom.”

Indiana Governor Mike Braun, a Republican, and state education secretary Katie Jenner also did not address why the full request did not win approval.

Indiana Department of Education spokesperson Courtney Bearsch later downplayed the scaled-back waiver.

“The only component in the request that was not able to be granted would require an act of Congress to make it possible,” Bearsch said. “Indiana is ready and eager to lead those discussions nationally and continue to increase flexibility for states to improve education for our students.”

Last year, McMahon encouraged states and school districts to apply for waivers that cut the “red tape” of federal requirements to prove that each dollar of grants went to the specific group of disadvantaged students.

���Ի徱���Բ�’s application last fall asked to combine multiple grants into a single fund so it could better focus the money on its main goals –  literacy, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) proficiency and reshaping high school education.

Indiana also wanted to take some other grants to create an “innovation fund” that would act as a school choice grant. The state proposed taking money aimed at improving struggling schools to help other schools nearby, whether charter or traditional district schools, that students could choose instead. Such a fund would “better support a growing ecosystem of effective, innovative school models,” according to ���Ի徱���Բ�’s application. 

That proposal is not included in the waiver.

���Ի徱���Բ�’s waiver added, however, a limited pilot program to try out combining Title funds for teacher training, reducing class sizes, mental health and afterschool programs at up to 15 percent of districts.

Before 2024, students at Whiteland High School seeking advanced curriculum could already choose between Advanced Placement and dual credit courses.

So when school officials considered adding a new curriculum backed by the University of Cambridge in 2024, they wanted to address the needs of a specific subset of students: the community’s growing population of non-English speaking students, who represent around 14% of the district and speak 64 languages.

They found that the essay-based test in Cambridge courses allowed students to demonstrate their mastery of advanced content while they were still learning English, said assistant superintendent Cassandra Shipp.

“We don’t want to limit our students who we know are bright,” Shipp said. “Regardless of whether they’re taking AP or Cambridge, our students have to be global competitors.”

Indiana wants more schools to offer Cambridge STEM courses through $500,000 in grant funding earmarked in the latest state budget. The long-term goal is to create another way for students to earn an advanced diploma that leads to automatic college admission. Schools can apply for grant funding that will help pay for teacher training and program fees.

In February, the state’s department of education awarded six schools — including Whiteland — funds to introduce courses like Thinking Skills, Computer Science, Biology, and Chemistry. Now, it has opened another round of funding to allow up to 16 more public and private schools to start offering these classes.

What are Cambridge Courses?

Cambridge courses come from the University of Cambridge in England through its .

Though the courses are new to Indiana, and less common nationally than Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes, they’re offered in approximately two dozen other states and 160 countries.

The offerings from Cambridge are a little like both IB and AP programs: Like IB, Cambridge offers programs that begin in elementary school and go through high school; but like AP, it also offers standalone courses.

Passing an A-level Cambridge course in an Indiana high school is equivalent to passing one in the U.K. or Singapore and indicates that a student is ready for college-level coursework, said Mark Cavone, the North American regional director for international education at Cambridge University Press and Assessment. While not necessarily aimed at multilingual students, some features make the courses a particularly good fit for them, like the incorporation of , a neutral form of English.

While most Cambridge courses are aimed at students going to college, the organization also offers some career-oriented courses, such as in marine science and travel and tourism, Cavone said.

“The thing that keeps us up at night is that we want kids to be college and career ready by the time they graduate high school,” Cavone said.

How can Indiana students use Cambridge courses?

Through the expansion, more Indiana schools will be able to allow students to earn the Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education, or AICE, diploma, Cavone said.

The AICE diploma is one of the ways that students can earn an Honors Enrollment Seal in the state’s , which guarantees students admission to any of the state’s public universities. Students can also earn this seal by earning an associate degree, IB diploma, AP Scholar with Distinction, or other advanced pathway. And schools receive a $2,495 bonus for every student who earns an honors enrollment seal.

Cavone said ���Ի徱���Բ�’s diploma redesign and education choice policies made it a good fit for the organization’s expansion.

Currently, Cambridge courses are available mainly in traditional public high schools, Cavone said, along with some charter and private schools. The first round of grant funding from the Indiana Department of Education was awarded to four public high schools, one charter school, and one private school:

• Whiteland Community High School at the Clark Pleasant Community School Corporation. The district also offers Cambridge English courses in middle and high school that are not backed by the grant.
• North Central High School in the Metropolitan School District of Washington Township
• Terre Haute South Vigo High School at the Vigo County School Corporation
• East Chicago Central High School at the School City of East Chicago
• GEO Next Generation Academy
• Al-Haqq Foundation Academy

Schools interested in applying for the IDOE grant should fill out before July 17.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

���Ի徱���Բ�’s charter school students have experienced greater academic growth in the years following the pandemic than their peers in traditional public schools, according to a new preliminary analysis.

The also found that the gains were particularly pronounced for Black and Hispanic students, and for those who were among the lowest-performing and economically disadvantaged.

The findings could hold important lessons for how schools can recover from learning loss and have sparked researcher interest in what tactics charter leaders adopted to do that. While there are many studies examining the impact of charter schools on student outcomes, the authors note that there has been almost no research on charter school performance since the pandemic.

The findings tracked students from 2017-18 to 2023-24, focusing on how ILEARN test scores improved from their baseline levels during the pandemic in 2020-21. They have prompted researchers to examine how certain schools responded in the years immediately following the 2020-21 school year.

“What really matters is, what is it that these schools were doing?” said Joseph Waddington of the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame, one of eight authors of the study. “We’re not so much interested in telling a story of how did this sector (perform) versus the other sector — we want to understand why. We want to understand the variation.”

The analysis, which is undergoing peer review, examined students who stayed in brick-and-mortar charter schools and in traditional public schools throughout the entire study period.

Charter students were matched with traditional public school peers who most closely resembled them based on a variety of factors, including their socioeconomic status, geographic location, and their 2021 ILEARN test score.

Most of the state’s charter schools are in Indianapolis, but the study also examined all counties in which charter schools are present. The analysis included few rural students, Waddington said, because of the lack of charters in those areas.

During the 2020-21 school year, charter students performed the same as their traditional public school peers in math and modestly outperformed them in English, according to the study. But after 2020-21, charter students outperformed traditional public students in all years in English, and nearly all years in math.

The difference was modest in 2021-22, but grew in 2022-23 and 2023-24, according to the study.

“The findings in this analysis suggest a shift occurred during the pandemic and its aftermath,” the study concludes. “Not only are students in ���Ի徱���Բ�’s charter schools experiencing more accelerated test score gains than their (traditional public school) peers, but these impacts appear to be growing over time in the post-pandemic period.”

Chronic absenteeism and instructional delivery — whether in-person or virtual — did not account for the differences in achievement, the study found. Charter schools were more likely to offer virtual learning for more of the 2020-21 school year than traditional public schools.

In Indianapolis, charter schools as a whole have posted higher rates of Black and Hispanic students reaching proficiency in both math and English, compared with those run by Indianapolis Public Schools, according to a .

The study’s authors are examining what could contribute to the differences in outcomes between charters and traditional public schools by surveying school leaders in both sectors across Indiana, Waddington said.

The changes could be attributed to additional instructional time or differences in instructional type, such as having students spend more time in smaller pull-out groups, he said. He also said some schools may have added certain types of staff, or utilized certain partnerships to bring in tutors.

The study’s findings mirror broader research on charter school students’ performance that finds positive impacts for Black students, those from lower-income households, and the lowest-performing students, Waddington said.

But the researchers are hoping to learn more details from survey results about how schools responded to COVID learning loss.

“There may be something in the story about differences in how the sectors responded to the pandemic that can actually be illustrative for all sectors going forward in terms of best practices associated with learning loss recovery,” he said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

An overhaul of ���Ի徱���Բ�’s public K-12 school accountability ratings will take effect despite objections from Attorney General Todd Rokita, who criticized the new system as diluting the importance of academic proficiency.

Rokita and Gov. Mike Braun signed off on the State Board of Education rule this month, concluding a multiyear effort by lawmakers to rewrite ���Ի徱���Բ�’s high school graduation and accountability requirements.

Braun on Wednesday brushed off Rokita’s criticism of the revised A-F ratings, which formally take effect for the 2026-27 school year.

A look at the new A-F model

The Board of Education the new statewide A-F model in March.

The new system assigns points to each student rather than using schoolwide averages and standardized test scores.

These student scores are based on academic proficiency, growth and other success indicators, which are then averaged within elementary, middle and high school grade bands and combined into the overall A-F grade assigned to each school.

Education officials praised the changes for better reflecting student progress, literacy and post-graduation readiness in place of the “all-or-nothing” model of the past.

The new approach mirrors changes to ���Ի徱���Բ�’s high school diplomas and diploma seals.

A school’s graduation rate and SAT performance each account for 10% of its score, combined with other measures like coursework, credentials, work-based learning and student engagement.

The state will calculate and publicly release letter grades under the new system for the 2025-26 school year, but will not take action against poorly rated schools during the transition year.

The rule is now final following signatures from Rokita and Braun on May 1.

Rokita argues new system blunts accountability

Rokita again raised concerns about the new accountability metrics in a letter to Braun this month, citing Board of Education metrics revealing few schools will be rated as D or F schools despite poor academic proficiency.

Thirty-three percent of Hoosier students in grades 3-8 are proficient in both English language arts and math on the state’s standardized exams, while fewer than one in four high school students meet SAT proficiency benchmarks, yet few schools will receive low ratings, Rokita wrote in the letter provided to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

“Under any system driven by academic performance, these proficiency rates would be expected to produce far more low-rated schools,” he wrote. “They do not.”

Rokita served as chairman of the subcommittee on K-12 education in the U.S. House of Representatives before his election as attorney general.

In his letter to Braun, Rokita criticized the Indiana Department of Education for not making its internal modeling public during the rulemaking process, writing the “surprisingly high number of schools” with higher-than-expected ratings is by design.

“In the extreme, a school where all students are fully proficient and a school where no students are proficient could receive the same rating if the nonproficient students satisfy various nonacademic indicators,” he wrote.

The Board of Education made revisions to the rule earlier this year to satisfy Rokita’s objections.

While those revisions satisfied his legal review, Rokita wrote he remains concerned the new system fails to accurately reflect student proficiency, which in turn could undermine the state’s school choice reforms.

He urged Braun to direct the Board of Education to reconsider its approach.

“If ���Ի徱���Բ�’s A-F system is to remain credible and transparent, it should clearly distinguish between schools where students meet those standards and those where they do not,” he wrote. “In practice, the Rule will likely not accomplish this task.”

Asked Wednesday about Rokita’s objections, Braun stood by Education Secretary Katie Jenner and the Board of Education.

“I’m going to trust the secretary of education, the boards that weigh into it,” Braun told reporters. “And to me, I’m always going to error on the side of more accountability, not less.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

The Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, created by the state legislature this spring, will help pay for charter and district school buildings, create a busing system that includes charter students and take over from the city’s elected school board the ability to ask voters for tax increases. 

Indianapolis is already one of Experts predict charter schools could become even more popular in Indianapolis under IPEC, despite some community opposition that the new board strips power from the city’s elected school board and may drain money and resources from district schools.

Indianapolis won’t likely jump from the 51% of students attending charter schools today to the 99% in New Orleans, charter advocates say. Hurricane Katrina destroyed most schools there in 2005, prompting the dramatic shift from district schools to charter schools as the city rebuilt. Indiana faces no such crisis, but the state’s push to treat charter schools as equal to district schools makes the city nearly as charter-friendly. 

“This is going to be a game changing model for charter schools,” said Cara Candal, vice president of policy for ExcelinEd, the education advocacy group of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“It’s going to compare, at the very least, incredibly favorably [to New Orleans],” Candal added. “This might…might…actually put it over the top.”

The new nine-person board, appointed by Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, includes members of the Indianapolis Public Schools’ board, but leans heavily pro-charter. A majority of its members have worked for or served on boards of charter schools. Its chairman, David Harris is founder of several charter schools and led the Mind Trust, a local advocate of charter schools, until 2018.

The plan was opposed by the local NAACP and the National School Boards Association, which objected to the legislature making “a shift from normal practice” by creating the new board.

“Having layers of governance can create unnecessary disruption,” said the association’s CEO, Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs.“Who’s going to suffer from that? It’s going to be the community, parents and students.”

Resident Megan Alderman, co-chair of Progressive Democrats of America, told the state senate at a February hearing the power shift “undermines democracy.”

“It strips core powers from our democratically elected school board, which is by definition, taxation without representation,” she said.

IPEC’s superseding the school board breaks the pattern of other pro-charter cities including Denver and Baltimore, where the local school board keeps some control over planning and oversight of charters, while also helping pay for them and letting them use former schools.

Mike Petrilli, president of the pro-charter Fordham Institute, called the new board and sharing of assets “very different than what we’ve seen anywhere else, maybe with the exception of New Orleans.”

Doug Harris, a Tulane University professor and expert on charter schools in New Orleans and nationally, said he could think of no other city, besides New Orleans, where a central board stepped in to oversee district and charter schools, other than state takeovers of districts because of bankruptcy or academic failure.

The first big step in the power shift will begin by Aug. 1 when the new board starts flexing its taxing authority. The board is expected to ask voters to approve a ballot measure for a tax that would provide more money for both district and charter schools.  

The new board will also research how to take the district’s busing plan and expand it to include charter school students by the 2028-29 school year, as the legislature requires.

And it will wade into a complicated tangle of property law and finance to merge district-owned schools and charter school buildings into one portfolio of properties for the new board to manage and maintain.

That will be a challenge experts believe no other city has faced on this scale. Managing school buildings centrally is simpler where districts share properties with charter schools and keep control of them. If a charter wants to build its own school, the district and charter can sort out who controls and pays for a building right from the start.

But Indianapolis is trying to create central control after-the-fact, with more than 60 charter schools, all with different building arrangements. Some use district buildings. Some lease old church schools. Others have purchased and rehabilitated old church schools. Some have built new facilities. And others have partnered with donors or community groups to rehabilitate old industrial buildings.

All of which have different financing and debt, or shared ownership with other nonprofits or companies, that block any easy merger of schools into a collective portfolio.

That’s partly why the legislature gave IPEC until the 2028-29 school year to take over buildings. 

The legislature also allowed the district and charters to choose whether they want to put each building under IPEC control, or not – with millions of tax dollars riding on that choice.

The state now gives charters $1,400 per student for facilities costs, but that money will shift to IPEC and only go to participating buildings. Charters can also receive a share of local property taxes designated for buildings, but only those that join the portfolio.

Charters lose out on both sources of money if they don’t join, said State Sen. Bob Behning, the Senate Education Committee chair who authored the bill.

“There’s a distinct disadvantage for a charter to opt out because they’re going to lose their [money],” Behning said. “They’ll have no capital projects or no dollars for facilities.”

Charters are researching how, and whether, they should have their buildings included.

“Some of the facilities that we have ownership in, if we have full site control and full ownership, we’re happy to leverage that ownership through IPEC and see how that plays out,” said Tommy Reddicks, founder of the Paramount charter school network. “But we have some debt holders on some of our buildings, so it’s really not up to us whether or not we can give ownership away or share ownership. Because they’re the ones holding the note, they would have to approve anything like that.”

Charter experts could not point to any other districts which had to sort out these issues at this scale. Even in New Orleans, where charter schools were still so new when Katrina hit, experts said, only one school at the time was privately-owned. After Katrina, that school and the state-created recovery school district shared insurance and federal Katrina relief aid to build a new building the district owns.

Behning said that so many details need to be researched and ironed out that he expects the legislature to change state law several times over the next few years. 

Disclosure: The Mind Trust provides financial support to �鶹��Ʒ.

The , which represents 35 members who work for the statewide teachers union, its president, vice president and a regional director were put on administrative leave and threatened with termination early this year following its objection to a staff restructuring proposal. The organization filed unfair labor practice charges April 7 with the National Labor Relations Board, saying the association’s actions violate federal law.

In February, the 40,000-member , an affiliate of the National Education Association, proposed reassigning 24 staffers who provide support to local union chapters, according to a . The organization said it protested the change because the teachers association failed to include input from members and local union leaders.

“These staff serve as front-line advocates for educators at the bargaining table and in grievance and representation matters,” the organization said in a . “ISTA’s proposal would have replaced these positions with on-call consultants responsible for roughly twice as many local associations.”

Rick Scalf, the organization’s president, said he and Vice President Anita Vernon were put on paid administrative leave Feb. 23. A third union member was also placed on leave but has since returned to work. All three work as unified service directors, the job title slated for reassignment. They assist Indiana State Teachers Association union locals with questions about negotiations and procedures. 

The association didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, but in an internal fact-finding report published in March, it claimed Scalf and Vernon violated its policy that prohibits unified service directors from getting “involved in governance matters of local affiliates and the state association.”

The claim stems from a January meeting between Scalf, Vernon and Sandra Vohs, president of the Fort Wayne Education Association, according to the report. Vohs met with Scalf and Vernon to review a bylaw proposal she was planning to introduce at the annual meeting of the state union’s representative assembly, which is scheduled for Saturday.

One of the proposed bylaws related to the association’s proposal to restructure its staff by reassigning unified service directors.

“We didn’t have much reaction to the bylaws themselves, because she did a great job of drafting them — they were ready to go,” Scalf told �鶹��Ʒ. “The conversation really was more around making sure she understood the submission process.”

The association said in its fact-finding report that Vohs should have asked the director assigned to her local union for help instead of Scalf and Vernon, who were in charge of other areas of the state. Vohs said in a written response that person was absent, so she asked Vernon to weigh in because their offices are next to each other. Vernon then asked if Scalf could join the discussion because of his experience with the association’s procedures.

“Initially, there was no apparent reason for the Fort Wayne president to meet with the [Professional Service Organization] president and vice president to discuss a bylaw amendment,” the Indiana State Teachers Association wrote in the fact-finding report. “However, the explanation became much more obvious when evidence surfaced of the movement to build support for a proposed bylaw amendment that would inhibit ISTA management’s ability to structure the staff and give the Board of Directors the power to review any requests for addition or deletion of staff positions, as well as the power to approve or deny such requests.”

The association’s report recommended firing Vernon and Scalf. Both have meetings with union officials scheduled for Monday, where they will have the opportunity to defend themselves. Scalf said the association has until five days after the meeting to announce whether they will be fired.

The Indiana Professional Staff Organization is under the umbrella of the , which represents 4,000 members across the country. Justin Zartman, the organization’s vice president, filed unfair labor practice charges against the Indiana State Teachers Association with the National Labor Relations Board on April 7. 

Zartman, who used to work for the labor relations board, said it will gather evidence from both sides before announcing a decision about the case. If it finds a violation, he said, it will issue a complaint that will either result in a settlement or be considered by an administrative law judge.

Zartman said he’s never seen union leaders be disciplined like this in the 20 years he has been involved with National Education Association affiliates. Scalf and Vernon didn’t violate the Indiana State Teachers Association’s policy, he said, because they were solely answering a union local’s question about procedures — something they do regularly.

“This is clearly because they want to get rid of a president and vice president because they have opposed their reorganization and how it impacts the staff, but they’re using this as the mechanism to do it,” he said. “I’ve never seen a state go after a president or vice president like this. I have leaders from other NEA states asking me what’s going on.”

National Staff Organization locals in at least 22 states, along with other national labor groups, have voiced their support in recent weeks by publishing denouncing the association’s actions. A rally is scheduled for Saturday in Noblesville, Indiana, for members to protest as the representative assembly meets. The Indiana State Teachers Association will also be discussing the staff restructuring at the meeting, Zartman said.

The National Staff Organization’s executive committee Wednesday that it will boycott the Indiana State Teachers Association by prohibiting its members from applying for vacant positions there.

“We cannot stand by while our union siblings face such injustice,” President Brad Darjean said in a . “These sanctions are a necessary step to demonstrate that the broader labor movement is paying attention and we will act to defend our members. We are committed to supporting Indiana staff throughout this crisis.”

Monday, Indiana’s Fremont Classroom Teachers Association asked the statewide union to reinstate Vernon, who served as its unified service director. The union local said her sudden departure has “left our leadership frustrated, confused and unsure where to turn for guidance.”

“Her leave has also caused us to question what support we are truly receiving from ISTA at this point and where our financial contributions are being utilized,” the Fremont union wrote. “Our UniServ director is a crucial part of our success as a teachers union. Without Anita’s guidance, Fremont CTA would not be where it is today.”

Scalf said there’s no just cause for the state union’s actions, especially because the assistance he and Vernon provided in January is work the association has directed them to do in the past. 

“The ISTA members rely on staff to advise them on union activity and day-to-day business,” he said. “This creates a chilling effect on our ability to effectively advocate and represent those members.”

Why the Classic Learning Test, which embraces Aristotle but spurns calculators, has caught ���Ի徱���Բ�’s eye

A test that relies on classic Western texts and bans calculators for math will soon play a role in assessing how well Indiana students and schools are doing.

Since February, Indiana has expanded the use of the Classic Learning Test in two key ways. First, a new law requires state colleges and universities to consider CLT scores to the same extent that they would consider SAT or ACT scores for admission.

Second, under a new state accountability model that gives schools an A-F grade based on points students earn for proficiency, the Classic Learning Test is one way high school students can earn bonus points for their schools’ grades. The Indiana State Board of Education approved the use of the test at the last minute when adopting the new A-F model in March. It was not part of previous drafts of the model.

The Classic Learning Test’s expansion is part of a in Indiana and by conservatives to counter what they see as an education system that leans too progressive by providing alternatives they believe are more rigorous and in line with Western tradition.

The elevation of the CLT follows state leaders’ decision in 2024 to in Indiana higher education, a move seen by many as a boon to conservatives on campuses, as well as previous years’ efforts to that could make students feel guilt or . This year, lawmakers also required higher education leaders to explore — in line with .

Supporters of the CLT say they like the test because it assesses students’ reading skills with texts that are foundational to the country’s history. That also aligns with a to foster “a shared understanding of America’s founding principles” on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

But there’s also practical reason to welcome the CLT, supporters say: It shakes up a long-standing testing establishment that gave students just two options for college readiness testing — the SAT or the ACT. That reflects the school choice environment that includes a growing number of classical schools.

“The CLT is the first newcomer since Eisenhower was president,” said Michael Torres, director of legislative strategy for the CLT. “We offer an opportunity for our students to prove they’re ready for college based on the curriculum they use.”

But critics counter that there is not enough evidence to say a CLT score is on par with a score on the SAT or the ACT — especially when the scores are used for high-stakes decisions about school accountability and college admissions.

“It especially matters to make sure that kind of mathematical relationship between the scores is stable and well-founded when there are any consequences in how these tests are used,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, senior vice president for College Readiness Assessments at the College Board, which administers the SAT.

Indiana could eventually decide to let students using vouchers to attend private schools take the CLT instead of the ILEARN state exam that voucher students must now take. A private school leader raised that idea during the legislative session, and CLT officials would support it, Torres said.

But that could make it harder to compare how private school students are performing compared with their peers in public schools. Indiana officials have not discussed this idea publicly.

As Indiana expands the use of the CLT, the state should want to ensure the test it’s well-suited to its academic content standards, measures for school quality, and its goals for students, said Chris Domaleski, executive director of the Center for Assessment. The state advisory committee that focuses on required assessments did not weigh in on including the CLT for school accountability because it’s an optional test, Indiana Department of Education officials said.

“The more it’s used, the more we need to seek evidence that it’s useful, that it has reliability, validity, and fairness, for all student groups, including students with disabilities and multilingual learners,” Domaleski said. “All those kinds of questions we’d ask for any assessment used in a consequential way.”

How do Classic Learning Test scores stack up?

The CLT for juniors and seniors is a two-hour, 120-question test developed in 2015 by founder Jeremy Tate, who “saw there might be interest in a third option that proved students are ready to go to college but didn’t force schools to embrace the Common Core,” Torres said, referring to the state standards that some conservatives came to distrust. Classic Learning Initiatives, the company behind the test, also offers a CLT for grades 3-8 and a 10th grade test.

The CLT uses passages by a bank of Western writers from the ancient to the late modern times — the most recent listed is author Toni Morrison — as well as contemporary nonfiction texts.

Sample questions on “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” for example, ask students to determine based on the passage the reason that caused the gods to flood the land, and determine which lines in the poem support the argument.

Critics say this focus promotes of culture and society — and that the test offers an advantage to students familiar with the pieces. Still, classical schools and educators say these works are fundamental to all students’ understanding of history.

“When we talk about college readiness, what are we talking about? Is it the use of AI? Is it being able to critically think, look at passages, look at historical text?” said Kylene Varner of the Indiana Association of Home Educators, who supported the bill to require colleges to consider CLT results like SAT and ACT results. “If we can’t understand the culture and history … and the writing of our Constitution, how do we learn?”

There are also differences on the math portion of the test, where the CLT does not allow calculators; Torres said that means students must show they are “independently numerate.”

And around 15% to 20% of test-takers utilize a remote option not available on the SAT or ACT, Torres said. This option is important to home-schoolers who may not have access to other tests, Varner said.

But what makes the CLT stand out has in turn raised questions about whether comparing scores from the test to results from other exams can be misleading.

The CLT has published between CLT scores and SAT and ACT scores. Torres said the study behind that table relied on a sample of about 4,500 students and produced reliable results. He noted that in addition to self-reported scores, the company received some scores from the colleges that accept CLT, SAT, and ACT scores.

But representatives from the ACT and SAT . To establish that one score on the SAT reliably correlated to a score on the ACT, the College Board and the ACT jointly examined the scores of more than 500,000 students who had taken both exams, said Colin Dingler, ACT’s chief policy analyst.

In addition to a smaller, less-representative sample size, there are two other key issues with CLT’s score comparison, Rodriguez said: The students’ SAT scores were self-reported, and that sometimes years had passed between the two tests.

Ultimately, it would be unfair if two tests had different passing scores, and one was easier to pass than the other, but some students only had access to the harder test, Dingler said.

“It’s very important from an equity standpoint to have some scientifically established tool to go from the scores of one assessment to another assessment,” he said.

How the CLT factors into school quality, college readiness

One of the primary uses of test scores is to indicate that a student is ready for college.

A handful of private colleges in Indiana — along with around 300 nationwide — already accept the CLT scores, and the .

But few K-12 schools offer the test right now, state education officials said, and most public universities in Indiana don’t require any test scores for admission, although Purdue University is a notable exception.

Supporters of the CLT, including leaders of private classical K-12 schools in Indiana who testified in support of it earlier this year, said the test is for measuring students’ college readiness — or .

Not everyone agrees. Iowa in 2024 recommended against the use of the CLT for admission to its public universities, about the academic performance of the students who took it.

A key question for assessing college readiness is whether a test based on a prescribed curriculum is gauging students’ knowledge of that curriculum, rather than their general readiness for college-level classes. Even in subjects like science, the ACT is written so that students without a familiarity with a specific scientific concept can figure out the question, Dingler said.

“I don’t think that philosophically, there’s something wrong with assessments that are anchored in content or a specific reading list,” Dingler said. “But I do think that using the results of that test to generalize that any student is ready to succeed or to do well … that’s a really different matter.”

Torres said that while classical schools have embraced the test, familiarity with the texts is not a prerequisite for success on the CLT.

“It merely uses those texts to test reading comprehension and grammar,” Torres said. “We find that to be a rigorous measure of college readiness.”

Test scores also play a role in assessing Indiana school quality.

Students’ SAT proficiency will make up 10% of a high school’s letter grade on the state’s new A-F accountability model. But the state’s decision to let schools earn accountability bonus points through student scores on the ACT or CLT might lead schools to push students to take the CLT, “where it may be easy to get a score that looks high compared to the ACT or the SAT but maybe actually isn’t,” Rodriguez said.

In a statement, the state education department said the school accountability system approach to the CLT balances “personalized pathways” with elevating “real opportunities for students.”

The test’s supporters like that flexible approach, which could play a role if Indiana considers letting students using private school vouchers take the CLT instead of the state’s standardized test.

“Allowing schools to use nationally normed assessments like the CLT that are also rigorous … objective, and publicly reportable, this respects both accountability and also educational diversity,” said Rachel Oren, head of school at the Classic Academy in Indianapolis.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Student demographics are shifting so that in just six years, districts have lost nearly 2 million students nationwide. Meanwhile, charter schools gained about half a million, private schools added thousands more, and homeschooling rates remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. These shifts look different depending on where you live, but almost no district is immune. The result: Traditional district schools are serving a shrinking share of a shrinking market. 

In many states, options that used to be considered fringe alternatives are now much more accessible. Policy shifts favor charter schools and open enrollment across district lines; and education savings accounts and tax credit scholarships incentivize alternative school options. 

This means the traditional assumption that most students in a district’s boundaries will attend its schools no longer holds. It also means districts need to rethink how they can continue to successfully serve their students and communities. And it means that it is more important than ever to think about how districts and states serve students with disabilities so they don’t fall through the cracks. 

Enrollment declines create immediate pressure. Districts still have to maintain buildings, transportation systems and central office functions even as student numbers fall. Political realities often make it difficult to close under-enrolled schools. And districts must continue to meet legal obligations, especially for students with disabilities.

Over time, this leads to hard tradeoffs. Resources shift away from classrooms just to keep systems running. Meanwhile, are often the first to leave. That can concentrate marginalized students and students with disabilities in the schools with the fewest resources and the least capacity to adapt. Staffing becomes harder. Financial strain grows. Academic outcomes can suffer.

Left unchecked, this becomes a downward spiral that, in some places, ends in state intervention or financial insolvency. States will increasingly face a choice: develop a new playbook for districts or manage the consequences of decline. 

Two paths districts must pursue at the same time

For decades, districts operated as vertically integrated systems: They ran the schools, delivered the services and served nearly every student in their area.

That model no longer reflects reality. Today’s districts face two distinct but connected challenges:

First, they must compete for students by offering schools and programs that families will actively choose. That means understanding what families want and building options that respond to those preferences.

Second, they must support a broader ecosystem of public education,finding ways to serve students, families and schools beyond those they directly operate. 

Districts that succeed will do both.

Competing today isn’t about marketing existing schools more effectively. It’s about rethinking what schools look like.

Some districts are already moving in this direction. Orange County, Florida, is facing enrollment declines for the first time in decades. To meet new demands, they’re exploring screen-free microschools and other specialized programs. Elsewhere, districts have launched classical education schools modeled on approaches gaining traction in the private sector. In Houston, a district-run virtual academy now serves more than 11,000 students, helping offset losses elsewhere.

The most effective efforts share a common thread: They start with understanding what families want and build new models from the ground up.

Other cities like Denver, New York City, Indianapolis and New Orleans have expanded school options while maintaining common enrollment processes, accountability frameworks and access to services like transportation and special education.

States can accelerate this work by removing barriers. Creating more flexibility around staffing, seat-time requirements and program rules can make it easier for districts to launch microschools, hybrid programs and career pathways that reflect how families want their students to learn.

At the same time, districts can no longer afford to disengage from families who choose other options.

In many places, families are piecing together education across multiple providers: a few district classes, an online program, tutoring or homeschooling. In Florida, more than half of districts now offer classes or services to students using scholarships or education savings accounts, often on a fee-for-service basis. This keeps districts connected to students and creates new revenue streams.

But doing this well requires clearer rules. Questions about pricing, accountability and safety are often unresolved. States can help by setting expectations for part-time enrollment and unbundled services, making it easier for districts to participate while protecting students.

There’s also an opportunity to simplify choice. Many families just want an education that works; they don’t want to have to navigate a complex marketplace of options.

Even as student enrollment declines, districts will continue to control significant assets: buildings, buses, food services and specialized expertise,especially in areas like special education. 

Those assets don’t have to sit underutilized. Districts that partner with charter schools offer a template for how to use these assets in new and novel ways. In places like Miami, Indianapolis, Camden and San Antonio, charter schools have been able to lease space, opt into transportation or food service or purchase maintenance and security services. This lowers barriers for new providers, improves use of taxpayer-funded infrastructure and creates revenue streams for districts. 

Districts can also play a larger role in delivering specialized services, particularly special education. Smaller schools often lack the capacity to provide comprehensive support for students with disabilities. With the right funding and flexibility, districts can offer these services across multiple schools and providers. 

States set the conditions for success

Districts didn’t become rigid by accident. State policies that impact funding formulas, staffing rules, accountability systems have shaped the current model. Now those policies need to evolve.

States can help districts adapt by:

• Funding students, not systems, while maintaining strong accountability
  
• Removing barriers that limit innovation and flexibility, such as seat time requirements or teacher certification rules
  
• Clarifying rules for part-time enrollment and shared services
  
• Ensuring districts are compensated for serving non-enrolled students
  
• Modernizing facilities policies to support shared use
  
• Stepping in when districts cannot or will not adapt

The era of school districts as monopolies is over. But their core mission remains: ensuring every student has access to a high-quality education.

The question is not whether districts will change. It’s whether they will change fast enough, in ways that strengthen, rather than weaken, public education.

Districts that embrace both being a competitor and a connector have a path forward. With the right support from states, they can remain central, trusted institutions in a more dynamic and diverse education landscape. 

Disclosure: Travis Pillow wrote this commentary while working as the director of thought leadership and growth at Step Up For Students. He has since taken on a new role as a spokesperson for the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program at the Texas Comptroller’s Office.

In Kristin Lidstrom’s business classes at Hamilton Southeastern High School in Fishers, the finance lessons quickly become personal.

“They begin thinking about their own spending habits, future goals, or even what they’re seeing at home,” Lidstrom said. “Concepts like interest rates or debt suddenly carry weight when they realize how long it can take to pay something off or how quickly costs can grow.”

Not every student will pursue business after Lidstrom’s class. But all of them can apply the lessons they’ve learned from business class in their future career paths, she said.

And Indiana wants all high school students to start thinking about what those paths will look like beginning in high school. The state will have in 2029 that emphasize career learning and financial literacy.

Lidstrom’s own career journey started with studying marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. But she found the path she wanted to pursue through volunteering in schools, and combined it with her passion for business to become a teacher.

Now the business department chair at Hamilton Southeastern with 22 years of experience in the district, Lidstrom has been piloting an AP Business with Personal Finance class this year, which is open to grades 9-12. The course, which is set to roll out nationwide in the 2026-27 school year, has the backing of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and local employers.

Read more below about Lidstrom’s class at Hamilton Southeastern High, and the projects that students complete pitching business ideas and putting together a realistic budget.

These answers have been edited for length and clarity.

What does a typical day look like in AP Business with Personal Finance? How is this class different from other AP courses?

A typical day in this class is very active and hands-on. The course is intentionally designed with a project-based learning approach, so while there are occasional moments of direct instruction, most of the time students are learning by doing, working through real-world scenarios, collaborating with peers, and applying concepts in meaningful ways.

What really sets this course apart from other AP classes is that it’s less about memorizing content and more about developing skills. Students are consistently engaging in problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication, which mirrors how business actually works outside the classroom.

One of the anchor projects in this course is an entrepreneurship business plan that students build from the ground up, centered around solving a real problem.

Students start by identifying a need — something they’ve observed in their own lives, school, or community. From there, they develop a product or service to address that need and work through the full business planning process. This includes defining their target market, analyzing competitors, creating a marketing strategy, and building out basic financials.

What makes this project especially meaningful is that it’s not hypothetical in the traditional sense. Students are expected to make realistic decisions, justify their choices with data, and adapt as they encounter challenges along the way.

The project leads to a presentation where students pitch their business as if they were seeking investment. It’s a great example of a real-world scenario because it requires them to bring together everything they’ve learned.

The culminating project in the course is a financial-adviser simulation, in which students take on the role of advising a client through real-life financial decisions.

What makes this project impactful is that students have to think holistically and justify their recommendations based on the client’s situation. It pushes them to apply what they’ve learned in a realistic context and communicate their reasoning clearly.

Have you seen any moments where the material “clicked” in a real-world way for students?

One of the biggest “click” moments is around things like compound interest or saving for the future. When students see how small, consistent decisions can significantly impact their financial situation over time, it changes how they think. They start asking better questions, making more intentional choices in simulations, and connecting it to real-life decisions they’ll be making soon.

It’s in those moments you can tell it’s no longer just a class, it’s something they see as directly relevant to their lives.

What do your students hope to do after high school and has taking this course changed the way they think about money, entrepreneurship, or next steps?

My students have a wide range of plans after high school. Some are heading to four-year colleges, others to community college or trade programs, and some are eager to jump straight into the workforce or start something of their own. What this course does is give all of them a stronger sense of direction and confidence in those next steps. While not all students will pursue business after high school, they all come away with an appreciation for how business acumen can support them in any career path.

How does the course support students in meeting ���Ի徱���Բ�’s new diploma requirements?

This course directly supports ���Ի徱���Բ�’s new diploma requirements by fulfilling the Personal Finance requirement, ensuring all students graduate with a strong foundation in money management, credit, and financial decision-making.

As an AP Career Kickstart course, it also helps students begin building a purposeful pathway early in high school. It encourages them to pursue additional AP coursework, putting them on track toward earning Honors and Honors Plus Seals. By starting that progression earlier, students are more prepared and confident as they move into more rigorous AP classes, while also developing practical, real-world skills that connect to both college and career opportunities.

If you could adjust one thing about how business or personal finance education is taught nationwide, what would it be?

If I could adjust one thing, it would be to make business and personal finance education more consistently rooted in real-world application rather than theory. Students don’t just need to know what a budget, credit score, or interest rate is, they need to actively use those concepts in realistic scenarios. When students are making decisions, experiencing the consequences, and reflecting on those choices, the learning sticks in a much deeper and more meaningful way.

I’d also push for this type of learning to happen earlier and more consistently across grade levels. By the time students are making real financial decisions, they should already feel confident navigating them, not encountering the concepts for the first time. Ultimately, the goal should be to move beyond exposure and toward true readiness, so students leave school not just informed, but capable.

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

The best teaching advice I’ve ever received is to never do for students what they can do for themselves. In practice, that’s shaped how I structure my classroom in a big way. Rather than stepping in with answers, I focus on asking questions, creating space for productive struggle, and designing experiences where students have to think, decide, and reflect.

It can be uncomfortable at times (for both the students and me) but that’s where the real learning happens.

In a course like this, it means students aren’t just learning concepts, they’re applying them, making mistakes, adjusting, and building confidence along the way. Over time, you can see them become more independent, more thoughtful, and more willing to take ownership of their learning, which is ultimately the goal.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

Iowa’s governor said the approval would result in less time spent on administrative duties, allowing educators to put more resources and time back into the classroom.

Other states have pointed to the of having flexible accountability and assessment systems that reflect local priorities, foster innovation and empower local decision-making, rather than adhering strictly to federal mandates. But some education leaders, such as the , worry that if states ultimately establish 50 distinct accountability and improvement models, students’ access to learning accommodations and opportunities will vary based on where they live and learn. Academic outcomes can depend on the availability of tutoring, advanced coursework and enrichment, special education services, assistive technology and other supports.

As states consider the opportunities that waivers present for greater flexibility in using federal funds, they should consider lessons from the recent past. The pandemic-era Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds were a lifeline for schools, but they also exposed critical gaps in states’ approaches to innovation and evaluation. While ESSER funds enabled rapid response and recovery, the program lacked robust provisions for evaluating which strategies worked and why. As a result, there is limited evidence about which interventions — such as summer school, tutoring or targeted supports — were the most effective. 

For the department and states, the lesson is clear: Rigorous evaluation and continuous improvement must be embedded in the waiver and experimentation process from the start. States should clearly show how their plans connect to better student outcomes, and the department should assist them in these efforts. With more flexible financial strategies in place, states could find new ways to combine funds to reach their goals and learn from one another as they develop innovative approaches. Most importantly, however, states should ensure their investments include research and evaluation components, so they know what works and what does not.

Even as it cedes some control, the department has an important role to play in ensuring the following elements are in place: 

1. Purposeful Experimentation: States should be empowered to innovate, but with the expectation that they will rigorously evaluate new approaches and share what they learn. This will help ensure that successful strategies can be replicated and adapted elsewhere. Existing investments can be used toward these goals. For example, the Regional Educational Laboratories, the Comprehensive Center Network and the Educational Innovation and Research program help schools build their data-using skills and provide guidance on evidence-based practices.
2. Capacity Building: Many states will need expert guidance to design and implement effective reforms. Federal investment should focus on making lasting improvements, not just short-term fixes. The comprehensive network, for example, is a government-funded organization of regional centers that help states design, test and strengthen new ideas and strategies, and guide policymakers, state education agencies and educators in building the skills needed to improve teaching and learning.
3. Collaboration Over Isolation: The government should continue to facilitate collaboration among states, ensuring that innovations and lessons learned are shared widely. This may be done by providing insight on how to launch and sustain new programs and develop continuous improvement strategies, or by strengthening ongoing cross-state work through grants, technical assistance, conferences and national networks that help align standards, share data and improve student outcomes.

States have always been constitutionally responsible for providing public education, though federal policy — since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was enacted in 1965 — has incentivized states to serve disadvantaged students and promoted greater consistency in educational quality nationwide. 

Now, the department is signaling a willingness to let states experiment. But to avoid repeating the missed opportunities of ESSER, federal and state leaders must prioritize evaluation, capacity building and collaboration. Only then can the flexibility presented through these waivers lead to lasting improvements in educational excellence. 

���Ի徱���Բ�’s is officially on the books, pending a few final signatures.

The State Board of Education on Wednesday voted unanimously to formally adopt the new statewide model, locking in a that state officials said better reflects student progress, literacy and post-graduation readiness.

“This has been something that has been a long time coming,” said Katie Jenner, ���Ի徱���Բ�’s secretary of education. “Many, many stakeholders around Indiana weighed in.”

after Indiana dismantled its previous accountability framework and rewrote high school graduation requirements. Schools have been without a grading system in the interim while the replacement model was in development.

The rule now heads to state Attorney General Todd Rokita, who has 45 days to sign off, and then to Gov. Mike Braun for final approval.

“This model values academic outcomes as well as skills and experiences. It’s so much more than just creating a robot who can memorize things,” said Paul Ketcham, assistant secretary of education. “It is a very granular model. Every student will have the opportunity to grow, and it’s our responsibility to grow them.”

“In 49 other states, it’s an accountability rule,” Ketcham said. “In Indiana, it’s a roadmap for schools and students and families to be successful.”

A familiar framework — with a rebuild

Indiana schools will continue to receive single-letter grades — A, B, C, D or F — under the new system, but those grades will now be calculated in a fundamentally different way.

Rather than relying primarily on schoolwide averages and standardized test scores, the new framework assigns points student by student. Jenner and other education officials have described it as a model in which schools earn credit for each individual student based on a combination of academic proficiency, growth and additional “success indicators” that vary by grade span.

Those student-level scores are averaged within separate grade bands — elementary, middle and high school — and combined into one overall A-F grade for each school.

The model was intentionally designed to move beyond an “all-or-nothing” approach and incorporate multiple measures while keeping academic mastery central, particularly reading and math in the early grades, according to a .

“No longer does an indicator encourage schools to dismiss certain students that might be way behind,” said Ron Sandlin, senior director of school performance and transformation for the Indiana Department of Education. “We fundamentally flipped the paradigm. Every student in a school generates points.”

At the high school level, the model more directly ties accountability to ���Ի徱���Բ�’s newly redesigned diplomas and diploma seals.

Graduation rate and SAT performance each make up 10% of a school’s grade-12 score, alongside measures tied to coursework, credentials, work-based learning and student engagement.

“What we’ve tried to do is understand the student in their entirety,” Jenner said. “So that they don’t get washed in simple numerator-denominator math that we’ve been doing for so long.”

Multiple education groups and other board members additionally voiced support during Wednesday’s meeting.

“This framework gives teachers the tools to celebrate and support success beyond a single test score,” said Rachel Hathaway, Indiana executive director at Teach Plus, a national nonprofit focused on education policy. “Accountability should not be about labeling schools. It should be about improving them.”

Todd Bess with the Indiana Association of School Principals emphasized that the new model “prioritizes student growth alongside proficiency.”

“It recognizes the progress schools make every day with students at all starting points. Moving up those that are below (proficiency). Those that are just about there — and then obviously, those that are still wildly proficient — keep moving them, too, and finding those success indicators,” Bess said. “Families and communities can better understand school performance … and what I like is we can say we’re going to add these things up. Every kid matters, and here’s the greatest outcome.”

A transition year before grades ‘count’

The new accountability system will roll out through a transition period Sandlin tagged “Year Zero,” which applies to the 2025-26 school year.

Letter grades for the current academic year will be calculated and publicly released under the new model, but they will be informational only and will not trigger any timelines or consequences tied to ���Ի徱���Բ�’s accountability laws.

Sandlin said that the goal is to give schools and communities time to understand the new calculations and respond before the grades formally carry weight. Year Zero, he said, is intended to “set a clear baseline” and provide families and schools with transparent information about where performance stands under the new system.

IDOE plans to begin sharing detailed performance data with schools later this year, followed by the public release of Year Zero grades.

“This is different than any past A-F years,” Sandlin said.

As part of the transition, the grading scale will also be temporarily adjusted. For Year Zero, an A grade will span 85 to 100, rather than the traditional 90 to 100 range.

Starting with the 2026-27 school year, letter grades will once again count for accountability purposes. At that point, the cutoff for an A will gradually increase over time, rising by 2.5 points in any year when at least 25% of schools earn an A, until it reaches a final target of 90 to 100.

State officials said the approach is intended to allow an initial transition period while steadily increasing rigor as schools improve under the new model.

Wednesday’s vote followed months of revisions and public feedback led by IDOE, as well as parallel negotiations with federal education officials over ���Ի徱���Բ�’s accountability obligations.

Jenner said the — which would give Indiana added flexibility in how it aligns accountability and funding — to avoid locking in a model that was still being revised.

The seeks permission from the federal government to overhaul how Indiana spends and tracks billions of dollars in education aid — a request that Hoosier officials said would align the state’s accountability system with federal law and allow more freedom in how schools use their funds.

Hoosiers officials specifically requested exemptions from multiple provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, the federal law governing K-12 education, plus permission to combine funding from more than 15 federal education programs into a single “strategic block grant.”

The U.S. Department of Education has 120 days to review and respond to waiver applications once they’re received. ���Ի徱���Բ�’s was submitted in October, but the pause extends that timeline.

“We intentionally paused our federal waiver process as we were working through the final touches in our accountability model ….  in order to get this at the best place,” Jenner said. “We will unpause our waiver timeline shortly.”

“The fact that we’re doing this accountability work simultaneously as we’re working on our waiver has been a huge advantage to Indiana,” she said. “In addition to stakeholders in Indiana pushing us on some things, (federal officials) have also pushed us on some things. … A lot of people think policy work is threading the needle. We’ve had, like, multiple pieces of yarn.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.