Indiana

Education, From The Capitol To The Classroom

Why State Lawmakers Threw Out The Brand-New A-F School Rating System

Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana

Kalen Phillips, left, and Cole Crouch, both students in the AP Statistics class at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis, listen to a presentation from StateImpact Indiana's Kyle Stokes on the system state officials use to issue letter grade ratings to schools.

If at first you don’t succeed, just undertake a massive re-write of the state’s A-F rating system for schools again?

That’s the order state lawmakers have given education officials barely a year after the State Board of Education approved a complex formula for formally identifying Indiana’s best- and worst-performing schools.

Officials won’t have to start from scratch. The Indiana General Assembly’s order still requires state officials to blend schools’ pass-fail rates on statewide tests (as they have since 1999) with a measure of students’ relative academic “growth” (as last year’s re-write prescribed) in the re-written school letter grading system.

But in passing House Enrolled Act 1427, lawmakers took aim at the method state officials chose to measure student growth — a method critics charge is so complicated that even state superintendent Glenda Ritz cannot advise local educators how to improve their final rating.

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After Disrupted Exams, Indiana’s Largest District Says It Won’t Accept ISTEP+ Results

Kyle Stokes / StateImpact Indiana

A student works on an online lesson.

After widespread disruptions to the online standardized tests used to evaluate Indiana students, teachers and schools, the state’s largest school district announced Wednesday it “has refused to accept results — good or bad — from this year’s ISTEP+ exam,” reports the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette’s Sarah Janssen:

Fort Wayne Community Schools… is calling on lawmakers to re-evaluate the state’s system of accountability centered on test scores.

The district will not use the data from the test in its evaluations and will not distribute the test results to parents or teachers “unless and until they can be validated by a legitimate, independent third party.” Continue Reading

Indy Star: More Teach For America Recruits Coming To Indianapolis

Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana

Teachers from the three Indianapolis schools Charter Schools USA is operating discuss curriculum. The company relied heavily on Teach for America recruits to staff the schools.

The Mind Trust will bring more Teach for America recruits to Indianapolis, increasing the number of placements from 140 to 180 next year.

The money comes from a $3.4 million Lilly Endowment grant, writes Indianapolis Star reporter Scott Elliott:

Since Teach for America was recruited to Indianapolis in 2006 by The Mind Trust, its influence has grown rapidly. It now has more than 300 alumni in the city, about 85 percent of whom are still working in public education.

Besides working as teachers and principals, Teach for America alumni hold key positions in the education reform community. Examples are Jason Kloth, Mayor Greg Ballard’s deputy mayor for education; Indianapolis Public School Board member Caitlin Hannon; and Linda Erlinger, executive director of Stand for Children. Continue Reading

Duncan: Common Core Isn’t The Only Set Of College- And Career-Ready Standards

EPA/MICHAEL REYNOLDS/LANDOV

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testifies before Congress.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan fielded questions about the Common Core from members of the House Education and the Workforce Committee Tuesday, reports Alyson Klein for Education Week:

It took 90 minutes for lawmakers to finally bring up the biggest thing happening in education policy these days: the Common Core State Standards. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., asked Duncan whether the federal government is trying to create a national curriculum.

Duncan took umbrage at the suggestion. “Let’s not get caught up in hysteria and drama,” he said. He noted that the Education Department is legally prohibited from putting in place a federal curriculum.

Rep. Todd Rokita of Indiana, the top Republican on the subcommittee overseeing K-12 policy, also asked about language in the administration’s budget request that would provide $389 million in assessment grants to states that have adopted college- and career-ready standards. … Rokita wanted to know if there any other set of college- and career-ready standards, besides common core. Yes, Duncan said. Both Virginia and Minnesota have college- and career-ready standards and aren’t in common core. (Actually, Minnesota is a halfway state. It’s adopted common core in language arts, but not math.) Continue Reading

Parents Say They’d Like To Keep Their Kids At Shuttered Ball State Charter Schools

Kyle Stokes / StateImpact Indiana

The Timothy L. Johnson Academy in southeast Fort Wayne is one of seven schools whose charter Ball State University won't renew.

Parents whose students attended the charter schools Ball State University won’t sponsor next year aren’t sure where they’ll enroll their kids next, reports Sarah Janssen for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

Mary Staples has been a strong supporter of Imagine MASTer Academy, but she feels she’s in limbo now, pulled between her desire to send her kids to the school and her need to plan ahead. Ball State University decided not to renew the charters for Imagine MASTer Academy and two other Fort Wayne charter schools because of their poor academic performances.

Officials at the local schools who lost charters say they still hope to find other sponsors to keep their doors open this fall. Continue Reading

Listen: How I Explained Indiana’s A-F Ratings To High School Students

Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana

Kyle Stokes speaking to the AP Statistics class at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis' Wayne Township last week. Kyle did this at the request of a project-based learning coach and the district's superintendent to give students the "101" on Indiana's A-F grading system.

A few months ago, Wayne Township Schools superintendent Jeff Butts called me with a request: Help out some students at Ben Davis High School who were going to study Indiana’s system for rating schools.

My study of Indiana’s system for rating schools basically drove me crazy enough to make this video, so I immediately empathized with the students because of their assignment: get to know the A-F formula, “the Indiana Growth Model,” and possibly come up with recommendations for how to improve it.

To help them in that task, I spoke to the AP Statistics class at Ben Davis about how the model worked and why state leaders set it up the way they did. Continue Reading

After Lawmakers Pause Common Core Implementation, Teachers Ask What’s Next

Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana

Kindergarteners and first graders are already being taught using the Common Core State Standards. Indiana planned to add second grade next year, but that plan has been put on hold pending a legislative review.

Common Core opponents celebrated an improbable victory last month after legislation to pause implementation of nationally-crafted academic standards passed the Indiana General Assembly.

But what happens next is unclear. According to the bill Gov. Mike Pence signed into law last week, the State Board of Education can take no further action to implement the Common Core State Standards. Yet the legislation also leaves any standards adopted before May 15, 2013 in place.

Proponents of the new standards argue pausing implementation of the Common Core will leave teachers unsure what to teach next year. But the bill’s statehouse advocate disagrees.

“I don’t know how stopping and taking another look at this in any way is worse than moving forward with something we think is bad,” says Sen. Scott Schneider, R-Indianapolis. Continue Reading

IREAD-3 Results: Five Takeaways From Indiana’s Statewide Reading Test

Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana

Lisa Coughanowr, a kindergarten teacher at East Side Elementary in Brazil, reads aloud to her students. She asks questions about the story to check their understanding.

About 86 percent of Indiana third graders passed a statewide reading exam in March that will allow them to advance to fourth grade.

That’s a slight improvement from last year — the first time the IREAD-3 was administered — when slightly more than 84 percent of Indiana third graders passed the test.

More than 11,800 students will have to retake the IREAD-3 this summer or risk retention.

We’ve posted complete statewide results of the exam to two easily-searchable tables. You can find results for your school or your district. (This year’s data also includes results for non-public schools.)

State education officials released the results with little fanfare. Superintendent Glenda Ritz has been fiercely critical of the high-stakes exam, citing it as the primary reason she ran against former schools chief Tony Bennett in November.

Ritz, a former teacher who worked as a media specialist in Washington Township, has said repeatedly Indiana needs to rethink how it handles students who aren’t reading at grade level. Continue Reading

‘It’s Final’: Ball State Rejects Appeals, Pulls Backing From Five Indiana Charter Schools

Kyle Stokes / StateImpact Indiana

Students at Charter School of the Dunes in Gary turned their January academic showcase into a rally to keep their school open after Ball State officials announced they were pulling their sponsorship. The school ultimately found a new authorizer, but five other charters' appeals were officially rejected Wednesday.

Ball State President Jo Ann Gora made it official and “final” Wednesday — five Indiana charter schools will not have the university’s backing next year, and will have to close if their leaders don’t find new sponsors.

Officials from the university’s Office of Charter Schools announced in January they would be pulling their sponsorship from seven Indiana charter schools which, they thought, were underperforming.

Two of the seven schools withdrew their appeals before a panel could review them: Gary’s Charter School of the Dunes found a new authorizer, Calumet College. Fort Wayne’s Timothy L. Johnson Academy is searching for a new backer.

In total, Ball State will not authorize nine of the schools it sponsored this year, representing a quarter of its charter portfolio — the largest in the state, currently. Even losing those charters, though, the university remains the state’s most prolific charter authorizer.

If the schools don’t find new authorizers, more charters will close in 2013 than in the combined twelve years since Indiana’s charter law passed. Continue Reading

Does Indiana Have A ‘Mediocre’ Track Record On Remediation?

Kyle Stokes / StateImpact Indiana

Graduates at Indiana University's winter commencement ceremonies at Assembly Hall in Bloomington.

Following-up on her story about a new state law requiring Indiana high schools to identify students who are most at-risk of failing mandatory graduation exams, CNHI statehouse reporter Maureen Hayden penned this commentary:

Statewide data collected by the Indiana Commission on Higher Education show that almost 30 percent of Hoosier high school graduates need to take at least one remedial course in math or English when they get to college. (It’s more than 60 percent for Indiana high school graduates headed to our two-year colleges.) Those are courses that carry no credit, but cost just the same as the ones that do…

Is that even close to “good?” Continue Reading

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