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 →
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.
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.
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 →
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.
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 →
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.
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 →
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…
At Penn High School in Mishawaka, nearly 97 percent of students who started high school in 2008 graduated in 2012.
The statewide graduation rate at Indiana high schools ticked upward again in 2012, state education officials announced this week, representing a jump of more than 10 percentage points over five years.
Of Indiana students who started 9th grade in 2008, 88.4 percent graduated in four years — up from around 87 percent in 2011 and around 77 percent in 2007.
We’ve posted graduation rates for every school in the state. Easily sort the numbers to look for trends or search for your school on our 2012 graduation rates page.
Legislation signed into law by Gov. Mike Pence will require high schools throughout Indiana do a better job of determining whether their students are ready to go college.
The new law, House Enrolled Act 1005, was prompted in part by research that shows thousands of high school graduates, including those who graduated with academic honors, had to take basic remediation courses in math and English as college freshman.
Starting next school year, high schools will have start identifying 11th graders who are at risk of failing their senior-year graduation exams or need remedial classes before beginning college work for credit. The law also requires high schools to start providing extra help to those students in their senior year Continue Reading →
An update on CTB/McGraw Hill's website saying schools can resume administering the online ISTEP+ after a new problem led at least one district to temporarily halt testing.
But an update on the testing company’s website — as of 12:30 Eastern — says the issue “has been resolved,” and IPS administrators have given the go-ahead for schools to resume testing, district spokesperson John Althardt tells StateImpact.
As we’ve reported, critics have leveled an array of criticisms against the Common Core — some don’t like the standards’ continued emphasis on testing, some fear federal intrusion in state education policy.
As Greenwood director of secondary education Rick Ahlgrim told the Franklin Daily Journal, “there’s no such thing as a pause” when it comes to the Common Core. Continue Reading →
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