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 The 74. “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.

A second-round education deregulation effort advanced to the governor’s desk Friday despite concerns from Democrats that the measure weakens educator protections and professional standards at a moment when Indiana schools are struggling with teacher recruitment and retention.

The House voted to concur with Senate changes to , capping a multi-year effort to strip unused, outdated and conflicting language from ���Ի徱���Բ�’s education code. The Senate approved the bill Wednesday in a vote.

Authored by Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, the bill is part of the House GOP’s broader push to reduce regulatory requirements across state agencies and education systems. Behning has framed the effort as ongoing cleanup, .

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Behning said Friday that concerns raised earlier by school administrators over contract language had been addressed in the final version of the bill.

“There was collaboration between the principals association [and] school boards,” he said.

Behning also pointed to changes affecting school referendums and partnerships with outside providers.

“There was some language taken out dealing with first class mailing specifically on referendums,” Behning said, adding that the bill allows schools to contract with private, for-profit or nonprofit providers for after-school care or preschool services.

But Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, held that the deregulation package goes too far.

“For several years, educators have been coming to us … asking for deregulation, and I supported deregulation. However, this bill went way too far,” Smith said.

He zeroed in on provisions eliminating contract language specifying teacher work hours.

“When you take this provision out, what you’re doing is you’re allowing somebody who wants to be a dictator … to force people to stay as long as they want them to stay,” Smith said.

“We’re having a problem already trying to attract people into the … career of being a teacher. Teachers all over the state have responded saying that they are concerned about this provision,” he continued. “We’re going to look back and we’re going to regret what we did to public education, because every session we destroy a valuable portion of it.”

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.

These changes led to exceptional improvements in academic outcomes, as researcher Doug Harris has thoroughly . In the two decades since, however, no city has attempted such an ambitious structural reform.

Until now.

The Indiana General Assembly on Wednesday passed , a dramatic restructuring of public education within the boundaries of Indianapolis Public Schools. The bill was a direct result of recommendations made by the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, of local education and civic leaders. Chaired by Mayor Joe Hogsett, the alliance voted 8 to 1 in December to support a that proposed, among other things, revamping facility and transportation management for public schools within IPS boundaries.

Indiana legislators used these recommendations to craft HEA 1423, and The Mind Trust advocated for the bill because it presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a school system that serves all students well. The legislation establishes the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, which will have a nine-member board appointed by the mayor. Board members will include representatives from IPS and charter schools, as well as facilities and transportation experts with extensive knowledge of sound business practices. This new entity will be tasked with several key activities, among them:

• Creating a unified transportation plan to ensure that all public school students have access to safe, quality and efficient transportation.
• Developing a system-level facilities plan that would maintain, and potentially own, buildings for all schools that choose to opt in.
• Levying property taxes for both operating and capital costs so that all public schools within IPS boundaries benefit equally.
• Establishing a unified performance framework, including the default closure of persistently low-performing schools, that charter authorizers and IPS would be tasked with implementing.

The changes will effectively put charters and traditional public schools on the same footing — both in terms of the money spent per student and the consequences for poor performance.

All of this comes at a critical time for IPS. Today, a clear majority of public-school students within IPS boundaries attend charter schools, not IPS-managed schools. IPS has struggled to adjust to this new reality and, as a result, is running a $44 million structural deficit this school year, which is projected to grow significantly in the coming years. Without significant changes, the district will exhaust its rainy-day fund next year, risking insolvency and state takeover. 

Underutilized buildings and inefficient operations are key drivers to the district’s financial woes. An independently governed authority has the potential to both significantly downsize the district’s facility footprint and ensure the efficient provision of transportation. This structure also benefits charter schools by ensuring universal access to transportation and fully eliminating over time the funding disparity that currently leaves charter schools with about $8,000 less per student than traditional public schools.

While hard decisions remain for IPS, the legislation creates the opportunity for a reimagined school system, acknowledging that the status quo is no longer acceptable. The revolutionary component of the bill is simple but powerful: Separating the education of children from the management of operations. This approach allows educators to focus more time on what’s happening in the classroom. IPS will now become another school operator alongside charter schools, and district schools will compete on the same playing field and be held to the same accountability standards.

Critically, HEA 1423 allows for greater efficiency and coordination at the system level while safeguarding school autonomy and the ability to innovate at the school level. The new corporation’s role is well defined and limited to facilities, transportation and the creation of a new performance framework. Schools will be in charge of what happens inside classrooms and will even have the option to continue owning their buildings — and foregoing local debt service funds — if they feel the facilities plan does not meet their unique needs. A collaborative, multi-year planning process will ensure thoughtful implementation and the ability to identify future legislative tweaks.

Unlike New Orleans, where a hurricane forced leaders to quickly rebuild a school system, Indianapolis’ approach is a product of decades of methodical reforms and, more recently, a diverse group of local leaders coming together to reimagine what’s possible. And unlike more recent attempts at reform like Houston’s state takeover, this legislation activates a form of local mayoral control that has never before been tried: one that respects school autonomy while providing a single point of accountability for the financial and operational health of public education.

Indianapolis has been a national leader in education innovation since the 2001 passage of the state’s charter school law. Through three different mayors of both political parties, strong mayoral and civic leadership have been the cornerstone of that progress. A growing body of research shows that the growth of charter schools in Indianapolis has led students to significantly more academic progress, closed achievement gaps and helped usher in key system-level reforms.

This legislation is the culmination of 25 years of concerted effort. Now the hardest work begins, implementing this system in a way that significantly improves student achievement and forever breaks the connection between socioeconomic background, student success and long-term life outcomes.

As districts across the country struggle to deal with declining birthrates, universal school choice and lagging student achievement, Indianapolis provides a potential model for cities looking to create a modernized school system built for the future – not for a world that no longer exists. If this new structure is implemented well in Indianapolis, it won’t take another two decades for other major American cities to replicate that success. A little bit of courage today will go a long way toward securing a bright future for our children.

Indianapolis — flyover country to some — might just have the roadmap to get there.

Disclosure: The Mind Trust provides financial support to The 74.

The parents of called on Indiana lawmakers to limit minors’ access to social media after their daughter’s death was linked to a 39-year-old man she spoke to online.

The original version of SB 199 would have banned social media operators from allowing Hoosier children to make accounts on their platforms and limited access for older teenagers. But this language was stripped in the Senate.

Now, House lawmakers are considering adding a version of the restriction back with an amendment.

Speaking at the House Education Committee Wednesday in support of the amendment, Beau Buzbee said 17-year-old Hailey had been lured away from their home by an online predator last month. Law enforcement announced Feb. 1 that she is believed to be deceased and that an Ohio man was arrested in connection with her disappearance.

Buzbee said their experience showed glaring gaps in Indiana law that needed to be addressed.

“We are losing the fight to protect our children. The internet and social media are the devils’ and predators’ playgrounds, and it’s on this front that we must fight,” Buzbee told lawmakers. “Please do not let this opportunity slip away.”

Supporters of have also called for schools to provide mandatory updated predator education and for updates to the state’s missing person alert system. they would add an expansion to the alert system as an amendment to HB 1303, a bill that increases the penalties for child exploitation, and that they would discuss adding more education to the existing health standards.

Indiana— but ultimately — a social media ban for minors under 14 and restrictions for those under 17 this year.

The most recent iteration of the ban is the amendment to SB 199, which requires social media providers to estimate the age of an account user and seek permission from the parents of users under 16. For minor accounts, the amendment forbids social media providers from using an algorithmic feed or selling data for advertising purposes, restricts who can contact the user, and gives parents monitoring tools.

Critics have raised First Amendment concerns as well as the possibility that the state will be drawn into an extended legal challenge over the law.

But supporters of a restriction on social media, including Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, say the state must act to address the risks of social media to children and teens the way it does for other dangerous activities, like tobacco use. Social media use is linked to depression, irregular sleep, and a lack of physical activity and social emotional support, said State Health Commissioner Lindsay Weaver. And these issues spill over to classrooms and affect learning, school leaders said.

House lawmakers heard hours of testimony overwhelmingly in support of the language on Monday, but did not take action to add it to the bill.

Supporters of the amendment included South Bend student Rima Bahradine-Bell, who said social media use promises community and affirmation but actually leads to comparison and dependency.

“I’m coming to you as a teenager and a high schooler, and I’m telling you that I would have liked to not have any social media at that age,” she said. “My friends are telling me to tell you that we did not want this.”

Amy Klink, a school counselor at Guerin Catholic High School, said she frequently speaks to students experiencing mental health crises as a result of social media and to their parents, who struggle to restrict social media access.

“Even when parents are aware of a social media account, they can’t be aware of every account with a new name. Parental verification could help with this,” Klink said. “It’s not the magic pill, but it will help.”

SB 199 will return to the House Education Committee on Wednesday for lawmakers to amend and vote.

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

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

That feeling increased after the club, known as the O.C. Carmichael Youth Center, was used as an all-day learning pod during the pandemic for kids that needed help taking classes online, a role clubs in many cities took on.

“This building sits empty,” Wilson, now CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Northern Indiana Corridor, remembers thinking at the time. “We want every inch of this space to be utilized as much as possible for kids.”

So Wilson found an unusual way to get more use out of the building. 

After first considering loaning the 15,000 square foot space to a preschool, Wilson struck a deal with a charter school that builds many of its lessons around projects or field trips. The Career Academy Network of Public Schools, which has four other schools in the area, opened a K-5 elementary school with just over 110 students in the club at the start of the 2023-24 school year.

The partnership gives the Success Academy at Boys and Girls Club — which is not affiliated with the New York-based Success Academy charter schools — use of the building until 3 p.m. when the doors open to kids from other schools for the afternoon. Many of the school’s students stay for sports, crafts, and extra academic help with the same club aides that were in their classrooms.

“They stay with the cohort that they’re with during the day,” said Wilson. “That’s the whole idea, so that they can have that continuity of care. They know the strengths of the students that they’ve been working with all day.”

Career Academies Superintendent Candida Van Buskirk called the afterschool lessons “an additional power punch of literacy.”

“There’s no acclimation of a new leader,” said Van Buskirk. “There’s no acclimation of a new curriculum. This is the work that we do all day long, and we’re just getting an extra dose after school.”

Partnerships with schools are common for Boys and Girls Clubs, who run before and after-school programs across the country. Clubs are usually separate sites, but are often located at schools that have extra space.

But clubs hosting schools are rare. Van Buskirk said club leaders looked for clubs with similar arrangements when negotiating the partnership, but had no luck.

“We were unable to find one where it was fully enmeshed like this,” she said. 

The partnership helps the charter school in several ways. The school and Boys and Girls Club have jointly applied for grants together, which they say has helped win some. 

In addition, the Boys and Girls Clubs nationally include teaching about careers a priority of their afterschool programs, which matches a focus of the Career Academies charter chain. As part of the partnership, Katie Rodriguez, the regional workforce development coordinator for the Boys and Girls Clubs, works with the school to arrange field trips that teach students about careers.

Those trips also fit the school’s experiential learning model. Students have visited community organizations like the local food bank, local colleges, the local library so students could take home their first library cards and a theater so students could see a play and learn about all the jobs there, from actors to lighting technicians to ticket sales. 

The school also invited a judge to preside over a mock trial of the Big Bad Wolf for blowing down houses of the Three Little Pigs.

One week last fall, students visited the meteorologist at a local television station after learning about weather and how meteorology works in class.

Teaonna Miller, a school employee who works with Rodriguez to set up visits, said the hope is that students connect what they learn in class to the rest of the world.

“If they’re learning about weather inside the classroom, we find destinations that we can take them to that would relate to and correlate with the weather,” she said.

Mary Donlon, the school’s literacy coach, said the trips give students perspectives they otherwise miss out on.

“They don’t go out of their neighborhoods very often,” Donlon said. “They don’t go to museums. They don’t go to zoos on a regular basis. Generally, those experiences only happen in the school setting, and connecting it to academic things is really powerful.”

How well the school is doing is hard to say, since it is only in its third year and draws students from a low-income part of the city. School officials are proud of its giant leap from 2024 to 2025 in third grade reading proficiency from 33% of students to 70% on state tests, after participating in a state literacy effort credited with boosting scores statewide.

New tests this spring will show if gains continue.

But Wilson said he tells other club officials to consider placing schools in their clubs. He said contributing to any gains by students just furthers goals of the clubs.

“We want what’s best for kids,” Wilson said. “So it’s well worth it.”

The Indianapolis Public Education Corporation would not have the direct authority to close public schools, and charters could keep control of their school buildings, according to a bill amendment lawmakers approved Thursday.

Under the amendment to House Bill 1423, charter authorizers and Indianapolis Public Schools — not the proposed Indianapolis Public Education Corporation — would maintain the power to close schools. But if they fail to do so, the corporation could appeal to the state board of education to close the school. The state board would ultimately have to approve the school closure.

In addition, the — introduced by Rep. Bob Behning, the Republican chair of the House Education Committee — would allow charters within IPS boundaries to opt into or out of a facility management plan overseen by the new corporation.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The proposed changes to how school closures work and who controls buildings is part of a broader plan to change key aspects of how public schools work in the city and shift some resources from IPS to charter schools.

The amended bill clarifies that both charter authorizers and IPS must agree on a universal performance framework that could be used to determine which schools must close. in recent years, while over the last few decades.

The revised bill says IPS would still be required to cede authority over their school buildings to the corporation, and also give up power over transportation and the ability to collect and levy property taxes, to the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, or IPEC. But Behning said during House discussions Thursday that he would commit to allowing IPS to opt out of the mandate to give up control over its buildings.

Such a move could further reduce the proposed corporation’s ability to unify oversight of key aspects of how the city’s public schools work.

Shortly after that comment from Behning, IPS released a blasting how the revised bill created a carve-out for charters. The district said it created “a glaring double standard” because it would grant “charter schools the power to opt out of management and control of school property by the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation Board while denying that very same flexibility to IPS.”

Before the House discussions, Behning said his amendment came in response to concern from charter schools that paid for their buildings with private dollars. Since charters have not historically had access to property tax funding for such expenses, they have relied on other funding resources to acquire facilities.

But there would be significant consequences for charter schools that choose not to participate in facilities management, like losing capital referendum and debt service funding, and the charter school facility grant once charter schools have access to more resources, Behning said during discussions with other House lawmakers.

“If I’m a charter … I would have to figure out how I’m going to do all my operations, pay for everything out of those operating dollars, which they have never had to do,” Behning said. “I don’t really think any of them are going to do it.”

Within district borders, over 20 charter schools owned their buildings in the 2024-25 school year, while another 19 leased space and 12 operated in IPS buildings as part of the school’s Innovation Network, according to a report from the Mayor’s Office of Education Innovation.

The amendment allows charters that lease or own their buildings to decide whether to give control of the facility to IPEC. But if charters do opt out, they would not receive property tax dollars for capital needs.

During Thursday’s House discussion of the bill, Behning said his amendment didn’t outline how charter schools with privately owned buildings, or even IPS with outstanding bonds, would participate in facilities management. That’s a task for IPEC to determine in its feasibility study before assuming control of buildings in 2028-29, he said. The bill directs the new corporation to .

“If I was a charter that had privately built a building with private dollars, not with public dollars, if I want to be part of this, that’s going to be something they’re going to have to figure out,” Behning said. “My guess is, you can’t just come in and take away a private asset.”

Charters that own their buildings but are then forced to close could dispose of the building as they see fit if they don’t opt in to the corporation’s facility management plan, according to Behning. The corporation would not assume control of the building.

In theory, the new corporation would ultimately own all district buildings, Behning said. But there could be legal challenges to transferring ownership of buildings with remaining debt attached to them.

HB 1423 is eligible for a final reading in the House on Monday. If passed, it would move on to the Senate.

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 .

The students at Circle City Prep aren’t big fans of squash – no matter which type their school chef makes. But they do like brussels sprouts.

Tracey Couillard, lead chef at the school, leans on her days working in Indianapolis restaurants to come up with ways to cook with vegetables and fruits that might be new to the students.

It’s all about “making sure we are intentional about what we are offering, and not just throwing spaghetti at a wall to make it stick,” said Couillard, who started her job a year ago.

The school’s kitchen is a , a nonprofit formerly known as the Patachou Foundation which aims to make sure all students have access to good food. The organization partners with schools to have cafeterias that serve fresh and scratch-made foods. At Circle City Prep, Couillard leads a kitchen team of six other people to prepare scratch-made food for breakfast and lunch for more than 430 students that include fresh vegetables and fruits as well as daily salads.

What students are eating is also getting attention at the statehouse where house lawmakers from public schools that participate in a “federally funded or assisted meal program.” The bill also requires schools to post a menu and ingredients online.

At Circle City Prep, Couillard said the fresh foods help students build healthy habits both inside and outside of school. And it’s led her to build relationships with students too.

“Sometimes kids will be in a sad spot and ask if I can have lunch with them, so then I sit with them and let them talk and let them share their feelings because there are a lot of big feelings between kindergarten and eighth grade,” she said.

Chalkbeat talked to Couillard about her daily routine, what makes her cafeteria special, and the biggest thing she’s learned on the job.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What led you to become the lead chef at Circle City Prep?

I was in the Army National Guard for 20 years, and after I retired from the guard, I started working in restaurants around Indianapolis and did that for about 12 years.

This opportunity popped up at a time when I needed a change, and I honestly didn’t know if it was going to be for me. Working in restaurants with adults is very different than working in a school kitchen with kids from kindergarten to eighth grade as your primary customers

But the kids are the best part. I’ve got kids that come into my office when they are having a bad day, and they build Legos while I’m working on something. I’ve got a couple of kids who come in after school and do extra practice on their reading.

I get a lot of joy and feel like I’m actually doing something helpful and making a positive difference in kids’ days.

Tell me about the meals you make at the school.

It’s mostly all from scratch and we do a lot of our own sauces. We’re very mindful of sodium, fat, and sugar to make sure we are serving good healthy foods for the kids to eat. Students have fresh vegetables and fruit. Every day they have a different salad option.

I started a program at the beginning of the school year to introduce them to new fresh fruits and new fresh vegetables, just trying to broaden their horizons.

At first, they were apprehensive because it’s something new but now, the kids get really excited about it, they are really invested in it.

How has the food made an impact on students?

They eat more vegetables now when they are coming through lunch, and that’s just good fuel for their bodies and their minds. They’re more willing to try something new too. It’s shocking to me how many kids I see with salads compared to last year because it’s just different exposure.

When they ask their people at home to cook something we had at school and it doesn’t taste the same, they’ll ask if I can share a recipe with their parents on how we do it so it tastes like it does here, which is really cool.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My day starts between 6:30 and 7 a.m. I check out the breakfast stations and make sure they are set, and oftentimes I’ll be walking the halls while the kids are coming in, touching base with them and making sure they are getting their breakfast.

I sit in on late breakfast. There are kids that come in late almost every day so they are already a little behind the curve. I sit down with them, make sure they have a good breakfast and their mind is set to jump in and go to class. I’m trying to be a positive touchpoint for them when they are starting their day.

In between breakfast and lunch, we are prepping. And at lunch, I’m helping kids move through the line, making sure that they have all the items they need on their tray to have a good meal.

What do you want people to know about what it’s like to have a cafeteria that emphasizes fresh foods?

They have to look at the kids as they are an investment. We are able to run a fully staffed kitchen and feed breakfast and lunch to more than 430 kids a day, and we are operating a scratch-based kitchen in the black.

You can run a successful school kitchen without using all of the processed foods, it takes practice, and it takes a certain amount of skill that maybe you wouldn’t expect from a school cafeteria.

But it’s an investment in the future. You are building healthy food habits and eating habits and trying to develop healthy relationships for kids with food. I’m teaching kids that good food can taste good.

What do you want to do next?

I would love to have a hydroponic garden in the cafeteria space. I would love to have a little green space where we can grow veggies and fruits and things like that. Because we serve salads every day, so how cool would it be to have lettuce growing in our cafeteria? The kids could see this is what is actually nourishing our bodies and this is how it grows to develop more of that connection of where does the food come from and how does it get to our plate.

What have you learned doing this job?

You don’t understand how much of an impact you can have on somebody else’s day. And you don’t always see that impact with adults, but it’s really easy to see that with kids. You can see their whole day shift with just a “Hey, how are ya? You good?”

You give them two minutes and those little time investments make a difference. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned because it’s not hard to make somebody smile and share a little joy.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

These ideological battles replace meaningful progress and distract from the work that matters most: building schools where kids feel they belong, are pushed to grow and are understood as individuals.

Unfortunately, the longer adults argue, the longer kids wait.

At in Indiana, this ongoing discourse prompted a growing number of families to leave the district and homeschool their kids. Rather than debate these parents about the merits of traditional public education, district leaders chose to learn from and collaborate with them to create the supportive, student-tailored learning environments they were looking for. 

Eastern Hancock administrators and educators began working with families, state leaders and community partners after two parallel realizations emerged. First, conversations with parents who chose homeschooling made clear that they were not dissatisfied with the school system, but were seeking alternatives that offered more flexibility, individuality and personalized learning. 

At the same time, district leaders had spent years rethinking how learning could be organized through personal pathways, competency-based progress, real-world learning experiences and closer collaboration with community partners. That work pointed to the value of starting fresh, without being locked into rigid bell schedules, one-size-fits-all lessons and a system where students move forward based on age and time spent in class instead of what they actually know and can do.

Together, these insights sparked the idea for a new learning model. And in 2025, Eastern Hancock formed a board, started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and secured approval for a new school from the Indiana Charter School Board.

The result was the . On paper, Eastern Hancock and the collaborative are independent organizations. They operate under different statutes, use different funding models and are governed by different boards. But in practice, they are two sides of the same coin, each based on the shared belief that students deserve schools that feel like they were designed just for them.

This fall, the collaborative and the district opened ���Ի徱���Բ�’s first publicly funded rural microschool. Serving 60 students, Nature’s Gift offers an education at each child’s individual pace, without lowering expectations. Students learn through hands-on activities and real-world projects designed by , building skills step by step until they’re ready to move on, rather than advancing simply because the calendar says it’s time. In addition, educators work closely with families to set goals, track growth and create a tailored path for their child. 

The district provides operational support to the microschool — taking on responsibilities such as payroll, compliance and infrastructure — so Nature’s Gift teachers can focus on relationships and learning. In return, the collaborative serves as a testing ground for new ideas that Eastern Hancock can learn from, including more personalized, clearer goal-setting with students and ways to measure progress beyond seat time. Several of these practices are already shaping conversations and decisions across the district. 

The flow of innovation moves in both directions because the focus is on outcomes, not ownership. The question isn’t, “Whose idea is it?” The question is, “Does it help kids succeed?”

Families are recognizing that it does. Nearly 40% of Eastern Hancock students now enroll from outside the district under Indiana’s public school choice option, embracing either the expanded hands-on instruction and work-based programs offered by our traditional schools or the flexibility and individualized pacing of our microschool. 

And, in the near future, the draw could be an entirely new, student-centered learning environment, designed in conjunction with families and community partners.

Because at the end of the day, students care about whether they feel successful. Whether they’re growing. Whether they love coming to class each day. Whether they are surrounded by adults who believe in them. Whether they are on a path toward something meaningful. Whether learning feels relevant. Whether the school experience feels as though it was created just for them.

The work ahead is not about fighting one another. It’s about fighting for kids. That should be a cause everyone can stand behind.

���Ի徱���Բ�’s Senate Education Committee on Wednesday advanced two bills aimed at reshaping how young Hoosiers interact with technology — one that would restrict minors’ access to social media platforms and another that would require schools to strengthen technology plans and give parents greater control over at-home device use.

, authored by committee chair Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond, passed the panel 11-2 and was recommitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it must be approved before moving to the full chamber.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Democrats Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, and Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, were the only “no” votes against the social media.

The measure contains multiple provisions, but a highly-discussed section would substantially restrict minors’ access to social media. Under the proposal, social media companies like Meta would be required to obtain written parental permission before a minor under age 18 could create an account.

social media restriction language but ultimately stalled in the House.

Supporters argued in committee that the bill is a response to growing concerns over social media’s impact on children’s mental health and school environments.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner emphasized the toll she said social media is taking on students across Hoosier schools.

“For most of us in the room, social media arrived when we were already well into adulthood,” Jenner said, adding that “our children growing up today do not have that same luxury” of a childhood free from constant comparison, cyberbullying, algorithm-driven content and addictive features.

But critics raised concerns about enforcement, privacy and rights of students.

Samantha Bresnahan with the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, for example, argued that such restrictions could infringe on minors’ constitutional rights and require intrusive data collection to verify age and consent.

Parents get more say

, authored by Sen. Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, takes a different tack on technology.

The measure, which passed the education committee 12-1, would require ���Ի徱���Բ�’s traditional public and charter schools to include in their technology plans a description of how they will enable parents to exercise control over school-provided devices when they are not in school and strengthen internet use and wireless communication policies.

If approved, schools must adopt policies by Jan. 1, 2027, that would let parents increase the strength of content filters on school-issued devices and limit the time students can use those devices outside school hours. The bill also directs schools to prohibit use of school equipment “for noneducational purposes during instructional time.”

Hunley was the lone vote against the proposal.

“I think that our school boards can already do this if they would like to,” she said. “I’m a big fan of home rule and local control, and I think that the level of government that’s closest to the school building should be the one to make this decision and enact this policy, not the state.”

Sen. Stacey Donato, R-Logansport, voted in favor but urged additional consideration of how parental controls might apply during e-learning days.

“We talked about the parental controls on an e-learning day, that (parents) may not want a YouTube video or a TikTok or pick-your-poison that may be used in structure for the educational experience,” she told Deery. “I just encourage you to look into that.”

Democrats also pressed for clarity on potential costs to schools.

Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, asked whether districts might need to spend money to implement stronger parental controls.

Deery said his office could not identify any examples where Hoosier schools would take on additional costs because most already contract with vendors that offer such functionality. “

We’ve yet to find any institution that does not have a contract with a vendor that does not offer this,” he said. “I’ve confirmed with virtually all of the major vendors. So, I’m not aware of (any costs schools would incur).”

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.

Nearly 92% of ���Ի徱���Բ�’s high school seniors graduated in 2025, setting the highest graduation rate on record, the Indiana Department of Education announced Monday.

“Today’s record-high graduation rate is a testament to the hard work of ���Ի徱���Բ�’s students, families, and educators,” Gov. Mike Braun said in a news release.

“While high school graduation marks the end of a student’s K-12 journey, our schools play an essential role in preparing students for all that comes next, whether that’s going to college, starting a career, or joining the military,” he continued. “This strong improvement in our state’s graduation rate shows that when we focus on academic excellence and establish clear, personalized pathways, our students thrive.”

The 91.83% graduation rate bested the 90.23% by 1.6 percentage points.

It represents the third straight year of post-pandemic improvement kicked off in 2023, when 88.98% graduated. Seniors recorded a decade-low graduation rate of 86.65% in 2022.

“As we continue to scale the new Indiana diploma and readiness seals statewide, we will not only strengthen the value of high school and help more students graduate, we will ensure that they are prepared to succeed in whatever path they choose for their future,” state Education Secretary Katie Jenner said.

Numerous student populations improved in the results released Tuesday.

Almost 87% of Black students graduated in 2025, up 3 percentage points from the previous year, along with nearly 90% of Hispanic students, in a boost of 2 percentage points. White students improved to 93%, or by about 1.5 percentage points, and their multiracial classmates logged a graduation rate of 88%, up by 1 percentage point.

Seniors learning English, receiving free and reduced-price meals, and in special education also graduated at higher rates than the year prior — but still lagged their native speaker, paid lunch and general education peers.

The rate of students who graduated without waivers additionally cleared 90%. Students who do not complete or pass some graduation requirements can still qualify for a diploma if they demonstrate knowledge or skill.

The waivers are intended to help students with special circumstances, like those who’ve transferred to a new school or who have attempted to pass competency tests at least three times.

State education and policy leaders have for years sought to lower dependence on waivers, including by setting caps on the percentage of graduation waivers that can be counted toward a school’s state and local graduation rate. They took effect with the 2024 cohort.

Non-public schools outperformed their public counterparts by about 1 percentage point — 93% versus 92% — but the differences between traditional public and public charter schools were not reported. In the 2024 results, about 93% of students at traditional public schools graduated as opposed to just 59% of students at public charter schools.

���Ի徱���Բ�’s federal graduation rate increased, almost hitting 90% compared to 2024’s 89%. The rates are calculated differently because of differences between state and federal accountability models, according to IDOE.

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 Department of Education granted the state to blend the funds from programs that support teacher quality, English learners, student enrichment and afterschool programs, a move that Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said will shift “nearly $8 million and thousands of hours of staff time from bureaucracy to actually putting that expertise and those resources in the classroom.”

During an in western Iowa town of Denison, Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the move a “groundbreaking first step that gives state leaders more control over federal education dollars.” 

The waiver, however, is not as expansive as what Reynolds, a Republican, originally floated when she announced the request in March. The funding flexibility only applies to the dollars the state manages, not federal funds going to districts, such as money for low-income students. 

Anne Hyslop, director of policy development at All4Ed, an advocacy group — and a former Education Department official — called the consolidation of funds for state activities “unprecedented,” but noted that the state scaled down after conversations with the department. “This is not the seismic shift in federal funding that perhaps was first contemplated in their original draft.”

The department also granted the state an , which releases districts from some requirements tied to federal programs and gives them more time to spend the money. But , both blue and red, already participate in that program.

The Iowa is one of six before the department. , for example, has asked for a similar block grant, while both Indiana and want to make changes to their accountability systems. Once McMahon grants one, it will be “hard to say no to another state that shows up with the same asks,” said Adam Schott, former acting assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education during the Biden administration.

  with the aim of reducing bureaucracy and giving states and districts more authority over spending has long been a Republican policy goal. Supporters argue that block grants are a more efficient way to address local issues and can reduce staff time spent on paperwork. But skeptics argue that the students whom Congress intended to help through specific programs could be shortchanged as states shift funds to other priorities. 

“I see how this could help to perhaps reduce redundancies, but at what expense?” asked Melissa Peterson, legislative and policy director for the Iowa State Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association. “We do have grave concerns that some of the various student populations may, quite frankly, not receive the services as intended.” 

Republicans pushed for education block grants almost as soon as Congress established the Department of Education. In 1981, the Reagan administration in the Chapter 2 block grant. But Congress kept cutting funds for the program, and . 

In 1998, the House passed the Dollars to the Classroom Act, another block grant. Conservatives liked the “political symbolism of getting Washington out of what has traditionally been a state role,” said Vic Klatt, who worked at the department during George H.W. Bush’s administration and then spent several years working on education policy for House Republicans. But no one, he said, ever wanted to get rid of the major programs, like Title I for high-poverty schools and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The bill died in the Senate.

‘The data collection burden’

Some school finance experts stress that the Every Student Succeeds Act, the primary education law, already offers a lot of flexibility to combine funds. But Catherine Pozniak, a consultant based in Louisiana who works with states on waiver requests, said agencies and districts still struggle to manage multiple programs. The “grievances” that Iowa and Indiana have expressed are real, she said.

“Flexibilities exist, but they are actually quite difficult to take advantage of,” she said. 

While the department didn’t waive requirements related to data collection and reporting, McMahon wrote in to the state that “the conversations between our staff have been informative and insightful regarding the data collection burden” on states and districts.

Jim Blew, co-founder of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute, called the announcement a “remarkable breakthrough” and said he hopes all states would try to follow Iowa’s example. “One of the most burdensome parts of dealing with the Education Department is the reporting,” he said. The agency “just needs time to think through how allowing it in one state will impact others, but I’ll bet they are going to make that a priority.”

Schott challenged the argument that reporting how states are using federal funds is a waste of time.

 “One person’s compliance is another person’s accountability, transparency and general prudent treatment of funds,” he said. ​​”The reason you’ve got these discrete funding streams is not to make someone’s life difficult. It’s to make sure that marginalized student groups don’t have to fight and claw for the resources they’re going to need to access a high-quality education.”

In her comments during the event, McKenzie Snow, Iowa’s education chief, talked about using the flexibility to better train teachers to serve the state’s growing English learner population, which has increased by 40% over the past decade, she said. But Hyslop said the state has yet to “make a compelling case” for how the waiver would improve outcomes for those students.

For Snow, block grants are a familiar strategy. She served as an aide to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during Trump’s first administration. At the time, DeVos proposed  combining 29 programs into a $19.4 billion fund that would give states and districts more authority over how to spend the money. Democrats, who had control of the House at the time, didn’t support the idea, and e in both houses .

As Iowa’s chief, Snow asked the department to in the Perry Community School District following a 2024 at Perry High School that left two dead and six injured.

Schott said most of the waiver requests he received were due to similar tragedies or natural disasters that forced students to miss school. But he always urged states to work with regional education labs or other outside centers to evaluate how the changes they made affect students.

That will be more difficult, Hyslop said, due to the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize and shut down the Education Department.

“The department has fewer staff to monitor right now,” she said. “Understanding the impact of this is going to be really challenging.” 

Stricter cellphone bans, more focus on STEM and increased school “efficiency” are shaping up as some of the highest-priority education debates Indiana lawmakers will tackle during a fast 2026 legislative session that starts back up next week.

The session will be shorter than usual — ending by late February — after legislators already convened for two weeks in December on redistricting. Senate bills must be filed by Jan. 9, and House bills by Jan. 14.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Multiple education bills have already moved, and one — a cellphone crackdown proposal — was heard in the Senate education committee in early December. Caucus leaders in the Republican-dominated General Assembly won’t formally roll out their priority agendas until next week, however.

At an annual legislative conference hosted last month in Indianapolis, lawmakers and Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner previewed a crowded policy landscape shaped by academic recovery concerns, declining enrollment, student disengagement and growing unease about children’s use of technology.

Cellphones in classrooms — and beyond

One of the most visible education debates of the coming session is already underway: whether Indiana should expand restrictions on student cellphone use to cover the entire school day.

Under current law — approved by lawmakers in 2024 — schools must prohibit cellphone use during instructional time unless a teacher permits it for academic purposes.  would go further, requiring public schools to ban cellphone use “from bell to bell,” including during lunch and passing periods, with limited exceptions.

The bill and was authored by committee chairman Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond. Raatz said the committee is likely to vote on the measure early this month.

Supporters argue the change would reduce distractions and improve student focus and mental health. Opponents — including some parents and students — have raised concerns about safety, emergencies and local control.

Jenner signaled broader alarm about technology’s impact on children, calling for a statewide conversation that extends beyond classrooms.

“I cannot tell you how much it is impacting our children,” Jenner said. “We are seeing seven- and eight-year-old[s] with social media accounts. We are seeing nine-year-old[s] on anxiety medicine because they’re obsessed with the number of likes and the comments.”

House Education Committee Chair Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, said lawmakers are also exploring ways to regulate social media platforms themselves, particularly the algorithms that keep children engaged.

“We’re also … looking at some language that could potentially avoid litigation, but goes after the algorithms,” Behning said. “That’s what’s getting the endorphins … that impact their cognitive ability.”

More work on literacy

Lawmakers and education officials continue to tout ���Ի徱���Բ�’s recent gains in early literacy, driven by state investments in reading instruction and intervention. But Jenner said the work is far from finished — and may prompt additional statutory changes on top of major policies passed in the last two sessions.

“We’ve seen some great success in reading, but we have a lot more work to do,” Jenner said, noting that the state . Current law requires schools with fewer than 70% of students reading proficiently to participate in a state literacy cadre program, which provides targeted, evidence-based instructional support for teachers.

“What we wanted to see is … should we adjust that percentage a bit, or should we do a rolling average of some sort,” Jenner said. She emphasized that any changes should avoid creating an unfunded mandate.

One persistent challenge, she added, is middle school literacy.

“The only needle that we have not moved in Indiana is middle school reading,” Jenner said, pointing to seventh- and eighth-grade outcomes as key concerns heading into 2026.

Doubling down on STEM

Beyond literacy, lawmakers and state officials signaled a renewed push to strengthen math and STEM instruction — an area they acknowledged is lagging behind recent reading gains. STEM is shorthand for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Behning said ���Ի徱���Բ�’s success with literacy initiatives could serve as a model for , particularly early numeracy.

“We know that if we’re going to be successful in STEM, we have to be successful in math,” Behning said. He pointed to the state’s literacy cadre as an approach lawmakers could look to replicate in math classrooms.

Behning added that many educators were never trained in “foundational, explicit skills in math,” leaving schools struggling to improve outcomes without additional state support.

Funding equity and school operations

Education funding is also expected to remain a flashpoint, particularly for districts with . Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat who sits on the House Education Committee, warned that public schools’ share of the state budget has declined over the past decade and urged greater state investment to support high-need districts.

“If we move money to them from the state,” he said, “that may free up some local property taxes.”

But legislators are also watching closely as Indianapolis leaders advance recommendations from the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, which calls for a new authority to manage school facilities and transportation across traditional public, charter and innovation schools.

Supporters say the plan could reduce costs and allow school boards to focus more on classroom outcomes. Critics worry about local control and whether similar models could spread statewide.

“I think we’ll be able to learn some things and probably apply them more broadly in Indiana,” Jenner said, while stressing that conversations around consolidation and shared services look very different outside Indianapolis.

Rural lawmakers and education leaders, she added, are closely watching how urban proposals could influence policy elsewhere, particularly in counties facing population decline, long bus routes and limited resources.

Jenner cautioned legislators against using enrollment alone to drive decisions, however, instead urging them to weigh student outcomes and fiscal health when considering changes.

“I would challenge the General Assembly that those are the two elements, at the very least, that we need to understand statewide,” Jenner said.

Other priorities rolling in

Education advocacy groups are also beginning to roll out their own legislative priorities, calling on lawmakers to address school funding, staffing and student supports.

The Indiana Coalition for Public Education has greater state investment in K-12 schools, more equitable funding for districts with limited property-tax bases, and caution against additional mandates without funding.

Meanwhile, the Indiana School Boards Association is to focus on local flexibility, shared services, school safety and workforce-related learning, while reducing regulatory burdens on districts.

The Indiana State Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, has not yet released its 2026 agenda.

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.

But the state’s request before the U.S. Department of Education has raised concerns by advocates who worry needy students could “lose both dedicated attention and resources” in Indiana and other states.   

Indiana joined Iowa this fall in asking the U.S. Department of Education for permission to merge their federal “Title” education grants – such as Title I to combat poverty and Title III to help English Language Learners — into one block grant for states and schools.

A similar attempt by Oklahoma is on hold after state Superintendent Ryan Walters resigned in September, while several state school leaders have asked U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to work with Congress to ease restrictions.

“Our goals…include less red tape for our people,” state Education Secretary Katie Jenner told the state school board. “We’re shifting towards…the flexibility to put the resources where they’re needed the most.”

At the same time, advocacy groups are shouting warnings that removing guardrails on the $30 billion in Title grants, created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” could lead to the country’s most needy students being left out.

In Indiana, officials have asked the U.S. Department of Education to pool the more than $350 million it receives in Title grants in the name of efficiency — to save time and millions of dollars now spent documenting how each dollar is used for specific groups of students.

Instead, the state wants the freedom to use the money for its main statewide education priorities — literacy, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) proficiency and reshaping high school education.

It’s also seeking freedom to spend federal School Improvement Grants — money now targeted at improving failing schools — to go instead toward state school choice goals.

Indiana would create an “innovation fund” with that money to help other schools nearby 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.

“Students and families cannot wait — sometimes for years — for a chronically underperforming school to improve in order to receive access to high-quality instruction,” the application adds..

Both Iowa and ���Ի徱���Բ�’s request to the Education Department — with rulings expected early next year — “are expected to set a precedent for the scope of future waivers granted to other states,” the American School Superintendents Association

���Ի徱���Բ�’s request, however, is raising concerns from several education advocacy groups — including The Education Trust, All4Ed, UnidosUS and the National Parents Union — that removing restrictions on the money will mean that students that most need extra help won’t get it.

“This approach fundamentally misunderstands — and threatens to undermine — the purpose of these targeted federal programs, which were created to address specific, documented gaps in support for vulnerable student populations,” the groups said in a . “When Indiana lists numerous state priorities without any specific commitments to individual student groups, it signals that these populations would lose both dedicated attention and resources under the proposed consolidation.”

���Ի徱���Բ�’s request to the U.S. Department of Education to waive restrictions on the money goes beyond Iowa’s, said Nicholas Munyan-Penney, Assistant Director of P12 Policy at The Education Trust. Indiana is seeking leeway from restrictions both for the state and for individual schools and districts, while Iowa is asking for an exemption just for the state, he said.

“In its current form, ���Ի徱���Բ�’s is much more dramatic and wide-ranging in its scope and potential impact,” Munyan-Penney said.

Within Indiana, the Indiana State Teachers Association is also raising concerns.

“ISTA believes flexibility can be beneficial when paired with transparency, collaboration and a clear focus on student success,” the association . “However, we remain concerned about provisions in the waiver that could reduce input from educators and parents and divert critical resources from schools working to close opportunity gaps.”

The union also has concerns about shifting the School Improvement Grant money.

“The proposed waiver could redirect these funds to schools or programs that are not identified as low-performing, potentially diluting the impact on historically underserved students,” the union said.

And residents of Gary, a high-poverty city, also worry that the neediest students will be left out if guardrails are removed.

“When I hear…this waiver is about ‘cutting red tape,’ I don’t buy it,” Natalie Ammons, grandmother of three students in the Gary school district, testified last week in a webcast to Congressional staff. “It may be cutting something, but it’s not red tape — it’s cutting away the few protections families like mine have left.”

Asked for school officials who are seeking the waivers, the Indiana Department of Education did not suggest any. The 74 also requested a copy of feedback the department sought from residents and officials on the waiver, but the department did not provide it.

The goal of combining Title grants, which total about $30 billion a year nationally, have been a growing priority of Republican officials after a version of it was proposed in Project 25. Oklahoma and Iowa proposed merging them this spring, but concerns arose about what the U.S. Department of Education could legally allow.

Trump also put a hold on disbursing several Title grants to states this year before backing down.

In July, McMahon encouraging them “to seek creative and effective waivers for improving student academic achievement and maximizing the impact of Federal funds” and spelling out a waiver process.

Title I, which accounts for more than half of that money, is awarded to states and schools according to poverty levels and enrollment. All4Ed, estimates that more than two thirds of school districts receive some Title I money, though sometimes in low amounts if poverty is low.

Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, are scheduled to receive $15.7 million in Title I money next school year, while several smaller districts receive well under $100,000.

As if that weren’t enough to keep her busy, she worked with legislators to co-write three climate bills for the Indiana General Assembly, raised $87,000 to support student journalism programs as director of , and helped secure winning votes for Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett in a critical municipal race.

It’s the kind of résumé you’d expect from someone twice her age. Yet when you ask how Maiga got here, she doesn’t talk about awards or titles—she credits her high school.

Maiga is a graduate of Indiana-based , designed in partnership with , a nonprofit working to modernize the high school experience. In 2016, only 12 graduates from Indianapolis Public Schools enrolled at Purdue University, the state’s flagship postsecondary institution. Determined to change course, the community came together to create PPHS, a project-based, STEM-focused high school serving students citywide.

In its first graduating cohort, the school single-handedly tripled the number of Indianapolis public high school graduates entering the university. The network of now three schools has become a statewide model helping to shape policy across Indiana. 

It’s that flexible, out-of-the-classroom thinking that defined Maiga’s four years at PPHS’s Englewood campus. The school gave her the opportunity to discover her passions with interest-driven classes and meaningful internships, shaping her skills and, ultimately, helping her chart her future.

One of those opportunities was the , a pitch competition that gives local high school students a chance to develop their entrepreneurial skills while learning from business leaders and investors. Magia, who had honed her professional skills at PPHS, was well prepared. She and her Compleyes.ai co-founder walked away with first place—and a $25,000 check.

“High school was so important to me,” she said. “I feel like if you talk to a traditional high school student, they probably don’t feel heard enough in educational decisions—that’s pretty different when you talk to students at my school.”

Instead of taking four years of English classes, Maiga interned with a legal organization where she practiced the same reading and writing skills—perhaps with even more rigor—while gaining immersive, practical experience and class credit.

“People think internships are in addition to what you do in the classroom, like joining a sports team or an extracurricular, but they’re not,” she said. “In my internship, I did essentially the same things I did in a lot of my English classes, but it was more technical and advanced.”

Work-based learning let Maiga imagine a career on her own terms—and redefine what success meant along the way. Growing up, she’d always loved the humanities, but her family—who immigrated from West Africa when she was in fifth grade—valued more conventional, financially secure paths. “These roles didn’t fit the traditional idea my family had of a successful career.” 

That perspective began to shift during Maiga’s time at Purdue Polytechnic. Through hands-on learning and exposure to a variety of industries, she began to see that success had many definitions, opening her eyes to the range of possibilities after graduation. “It was really important because it showed me there are different career paths where you can have a lot of impact.”

The experience didn’t just change Maiga’s mindset — it also helped bridge a gap between her and her family. “That was the one thing standing between us,” she said. By seeing the kinds of professional paths Maiga could pursue, her parents began to understand that her interests in the humanities could lead to real, fulfilling work. “My experience at PPHS helped us get closer.”

Maiga’s story is a testament to what’s possible when schools give students room to explore, fail, and redefine success for themselves. For her, work-based learning wasn’t just an academic exercise—it was an invitation to connect her passions to real-world change. 

Today, Maiga continues to lead the charge at as the company evolves and grows while also supporting Mayor Hogsett as an intern. And, of course, she is beginning her next chapter at Cornell.

As she looks ahead at her future and future generations, Maiga hopes more students get the same chance to learn on their own terms. She believes that when young people are empowered to explore their passions, they not only transform their own lives but also shape the communities around them. For Maiga, the journey is only beginning—and she’s determined to make sure others can start theirs, too.

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

About 3,000 Indiana students are repeating third grade this school year for not meeting the state’s reading proficiency standards.

by the Indiana Department of Education showed 3.6% of the 84,000 children who took the statewide IREAD exam were retained in third grade under the first enforcement of a .

Those 3,040 retained students are more than seven times the 412 children held back in third grade two years ago.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Education Secretary Katie Jenner credited improved performance by students in the IREAD exam given last school year with the retention figure being lower than anticipated when the literacy requirement was being debated.

“The numbers that were being thrown out is that it would be 7,000 to 10,000 that this law would trigger retention,” Jenner told State Board of Education members. “But, in fact, a huge shout out to our teachers and our people, we have thousands of kids who are now readers.”

Education officials announced in August that — about 73,500 out of more than 84,000 students statewide — demonstrated proficient reading skills in 2024-25. They hailed the nearly five percentage point improvement from the previous school year as the largest year-to-year jump since the state began IREAD testing in 2013.

That left about 10,600 children who didn’t meet the standard, with almost 7,000 being given “good cause exemptions” to avoid retention. Nearly 75% of those given exemptions were special education students and about 24% are English learners with less than two years of specific literacy services.

Anna Shults, the Department of Education’s chief academic officer, said the new retention requirement was having its intended effect.

“We are now ensuring that students that are promoted on to grade four are doing so with an ability to read and show mastery of key foundational reading skills,” Shults told the State Board of Education.

The Department of Education will have an online dashboard providing breakdowns of the Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determination assessment, or IREAD, by school district and individual schools, including charter schools and nonpublic schools.

Officials noted about 670 children who didn’t meet the literacy standards were not enrolled in Indiana schools this year, saying they likely moved out of state or were being homeschooled.

Jenner said a determination would need to be made about those students if they returned to Indiana schools.

“That’s a question that we’ll need to sort through, because some may move back into Indiana, or if they left for homeschool may come back in,” Jenner said. “Because we’re looking at every unique student, I think we’ll try to figure out exactly where they are.”

According to 2023 data, 13,840 third-graders did not pass I-READ-3. Of those, 5,503 received an exemption and 8,337 did not. Of those without an exemption, 95% moved onto 4th grade while only 412 were retained.

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.

In December, ���Ի徱���Բ�’s Family and Social Services Administration that, due to the end of pandemic-era federal relief funding, it would stop enrolling new children in its main child care subsidy program, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), and institute a waiting list. The number of child care vouchers available per month dropped by from last December to September, according to the state agency. The waitlist now has over 30,400 children and the state has it won’t issue any new vouchers until 2027. 

Miller’s program is one of many that’s feeling the strain. All of the families with infants at Room to Bloom rely on subsidies to afford care, but those infants have aged out and moved into toddler classrooms. Because families can’t enroll new babies, she’s had to completely shutter her infant classroom. That took a big toll on her financially. “Your highest rates of pay comes from your infants,” she said. “We no longer have that stream of income coming in.”

Then, on Sept. 4, Miller received an from ���Ի徱���Բ�’s Family and Social Services Administration’s Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning (OECOSL) with even worse news. The department was drastically cutting CCDF voucher reimbursement rates. “These adjustments address a $225 million funding gap through 2026 created by the prior administration’s unsustainable use of temporary COVID relief funds and ensure continued compliance with federal requirements,” the email stated.  

According to the email, providers would see a 10% decrease in the vouchers that pay for infants and toddlers from birth through 3 years old, 15% less for children ages 3 to 5, and a 35% drop for school-aged children cared for after school and during the summer. To arrive at these cuts, OECOSL said it had surveyed 25% of licensed providers and calculated reimbursement levels “that reflect current operating realities.”

“We did not have any warning whatsoever” that the reductions were coming, Miller said. “We were blindsided.” Since Miller’s program serves children from birth through age 5 during the day and provides after-school care for older children, she knew she’d be impacted by cuts across all the age bands, so she reworked her budget to be able to absorb the cuts without having to ask her families to pay any extra. She eliminated field trips and programming like baby sign language and STEM.

But about three weeks later when she went into the system to view her reimbursements, she discovered that the state had cut deeper than the email suggested. She found that her original rate of $155 a week for a school-aged child was not in fact being reduced to $100.75, which would have been a 35% cut. Instead, she received $49 per school-aged child, which is about a 68% drop. At first she thought it was a mistake, but then she made some calls and eventually was told that the percentage cuts were taken from a new, lower base rate. 

That $49 a week is supposed to cover everything Room to Bloom offers school-aged children: transportation from school, a teacher who offers homework help, an established curriculum. She said her reimbursement rate for children ages 3 through 5, meanwhile, has also been reduced by $68 dollars a week, while the rate for the youngest kids decreased by $14. Miller can’t afford to absorb that kind of cost on her own. She’s reduced staff hours, dropping some to part-time status, which may make it harder to retain quality employees. 

Even that is not enough. “Unfortunately now we have to ask our families to pay a CCDF shortage just so we can stay afloat,” she said. She’s not asking any parents to pay the full amount that she’s losing, but she’s asked most to kick in something. Those with school-aged children have been asked to pay $51 a week. “I will tell you, that’s hard,” she said, adding that before the cuts, parents didn’t pay at all. Some families simply don’t have that kind of money. For them, she’s just eating the cost. “We have to take care of them,” she said. “I cannot allow these students to be left hanging. I cannot do it.” 

Miller is far from alone in her experience. The cuts Indiana has implemented in its child care program since the end of last year are wreaking havoc on providers across the state. The state did not respond to a request for comment on the number of child care programs that have closed this year. According to Hanan Osman — executive director of the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children (AEYC), which is gathering data on closures — more than 100 child care programs closed in September and October following the steep reimbursement rate cuts. Of those closures, 49 were due to economic hardship, while 16 were because of low enrollment. “Those programs are done forever,” Osman said. 

The decrease in vouchers means that collectively, providers are losing an estimated $1.9 million a week in revenue, while the reduced reimbursement rates have led to an estimated $1.8 million weekly loss, according to Early Learning Indiana, a state-level nonprofit that’s on the impact of the CCDF cuts on revenue.

More child care closures are expected to come. In an of 443 providers conducted by Early Learning Indiana, nearly 80% said they were receiving decreased funding from CCDF vouchers. Just 16% said they were fully enrolled, about 19% had closed at least one classroom, and 11% said they believe they will have to close entirely over the next year.

Indiana is not expected to be the only state to experience this crisis. All states have been grappling with a severe decline in federal funding. In 2022, the American Rescue Plan sent states $39 billion to prop up the struggling child care sector, but the grants stopped flowing at the end of 2023. The Biden administration’s “Build Back Better” legislative package, which included $100 billion for child care, was meant to ensure continued funding, but when it failed to pass it left an enormous, unfilled hole. “All of that is coming down,” said Jennifer Wells, director of care at Community Change, which organizes child care providers to advocate for policy change. 

The events unfolding in Indiana illustrate “an example of what happens when this funding gets cut,” Wells said. “But it’s not going to be isolated to Indiana. We know it’s going to spread.” Already Arkansas has followed suit; on Sept. 19, the state that it was cutting reimbursement rates for providers and instituting new copays for parents, although after the reimbursement change was paused for 30 days. Its voucher waiting list is . “We know it’s going to snowball across the country,” Wells said.

“Indiana is in crisis,” said Martha Rae, a former Indiana child care provider and current advocate. “Dumpster fire in a flood zone — that’s how we feel right now.”

Indiana has now potentially poured gasoline on the fire. On Oct. 10, OECOSL sent an email, shared with The 74, to families who receive vouchers that said, “We understand that some families may be noticing higher out-of-pocket costs since the recent provider subsidy rate adjustments.” After noting that providers set their own rates, in bold it told parents that they “have the right to choose a provider that best fits their family’s needs and budget.” It added, “Your child care voucher belongs to you, and you may use it at any eligible CCDF provider.” Advocates and providers fear this message will prompt parents to move to programs that are charging less or aren’t charging any extra at all. It will “create competition amongst providers,” Rae said. 

Alyssia Thompson, who runs the Agape Learning Academy, a child care center in Merrillville, Indiana, is already watching this happen. It’s become “survival of the fittest — shark tank,” she said. Thompson said she knows of providers who are charging “the bare minimum” to try to siphon children from other programs. “Parents are going wherever they can afford,” she said, even places that “might not even have a license.” The only reason she hasn’t lost families, she said, is because so many of them have been with her for so long. 

As with Miller, Thompson has experienced a far larger reduction in her reimbursement rates than the OECOSL email indicated. Typically, she would be reimbursed $160 a week for a school-aged child, but that’s dropped to $48, a 70% reduction. The rate for her preschool-aged children was reduced by 24%. “We were given false information,” she said.

Thompson had to make cuts to try to make the math work, such as getting rid of her cleaning service. “Anything I was paying to outsource to do, we have now just picked it up,” she said. “Now we have to do everything.” She’s asked parents to bring in snacks to reduce the cost of food. Even so, she’s had to ask each family to pay an extra $25 a week. 

Even with those changes, she may not be able to keep the doors open. The possibility of having to close her program “has definitely been a discussion,” she said. She’s confident she has enough money to operate for the next six months. But, she said that over the next four months, if she doesn’t see any signs that the state is changing course and she hasn’t been able to make up enrollment with parents who don’t use vouchers, she will notify her parents about closure. 

Early educators and advocates are mobilizing to push back on the cuts. “As soon as these providers got word of these cuts happening, they were immediately set on fire,” Wells said. The Indiana AEYC organized “INAEYC Calling Day” on Nov. 5 and the association asked providers and families to call state legislators  to make the case for investing in child care. With a budget surplus of this year, they hope to convince lawmakers to dedicate money to the sector. 

If they don’t, Miller is consumed with fear about what will happen to the school-aged children in her program. “Those are the most vulnerable students,” she said. She worries that if they can’t afford what she now has to charge them parents will decide to leave children home with an older sibling or even by themselves. That, she frets, will put them in danger; they’re not old enough to be cared for by anyone but an adult, she said.

To the state, Miller has a message: “Fix this crisis that you have put families and child care providers in.” She added, “Some way, somehow, it needs to be fixed.”

The U.S. Department of Education is expected to reopen for business Thursday after the in history. Education Secretary Linda McMahon is likely to pick up where she left off 43 days ago, reshaping the federal role in school policy and trying to phase out the agency.

The staff won’t be as small as the Trump administration had hoped. McMahon gutted the offices overseeing special education, K-12 and civil rights at the start of the shutdown, but a federal judge paused the job cuts and the reopening agreement in Congress . The deal to end the shutdown prohibits any additional terminations through Jan. 30, the next deadline for lawmakers to finalize the 2026 federal budget. 

Two more top officials will also soon join McMahon’s team. In October, the Senate confirmed Kimberly Richey to lead the Office for Civil Rights and Kirsten Baesler as assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education. Neither could be sworn in during the shutdown. 

Baesler, former North Dakota education chief, is likely to take the lead on considering waiver requests from Indiana and Iowa and managing other “administration-wide priorities, like moving away from ‘DEI’ and increasing the use of AI,” said Julia Martin, director of policy and government affairs with The Bruman Group, a Washington law firm. 

and want the department to distribute federal funds as a block grant with fewer requirements on how to spend them. In September, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds pointed to an to make the case that states can be trusted to manage federal funds without the Education Department.

Margaret Buckton, a school finance expert and the executive director of the Urban Education Network in Iowa, generally supports the state’s plan. She explained that funding from one federal grant is often not “significant enough to move the needle on school improvement.”

But say that the Every Student Succeeds Act, which includes funding for high-poverty schools and several other targeted programs, already allows ample flexibility and warn that blending the money could mean districts won’t spend it the way Congress intended. 

Indiana also wants to change the way it grades school performance by highlighting qualities such as developing students’ work ethic and financial literacy. Anne Hyslop, director of policy development at All4Ed, an advocacy group, said the request is premature because the state is still on its new accountability plan. She questioned whether the new design would still include measures like graduation rates and progress for English learners. 

“There are particular accountability requirements that are really important,” she said, “and have always been really important for the last 20-plus years.” 

Here are a six other areas that were affected by the budget impasse.

1. Moving special education to HHS

In trying to fulfill her goal to eliminate the department, McMahon has taken steps to transfer oversight of special education programs to the Department of Health and Human Services despite having no authorization from Congress and strong opposition from advocacy groups. 

“The department is exploring additional partnerships with federal agencies to support special education programs without any interruption or impact on students with disabilities, but no agreement has been signed,” spokeswoman Madi Biedermann said in an Oct. 21 statement. “Secretary McMahon is fully committed to protecting the federal funding streams that support our nation’s students with disabilities.”

Opponents of the move say the department is turning its back on students with disabilities.

“This isn’t about handing power to states,” Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said last week during a call with reporters. “It’s about walking away from our responsibility to children and hoping that no one notices.” 

For families, the past several months have created confusion over whether their children will continue to receive the services they need, and advocates have discovered broken links and missing documents about civil rights investigations and state monitoring reports on the department’s website. 

“Moving [the department’s] digital infrastructure to another agency could mean months — or years — of lost access to critical records,” Callie Oettinger, an advocate in Virginia, wrote this week in her blog, . 

But some parents say states might be more responsive than the federal government when conflicts with districts arise.

“I feel like if you push the oversight closer to the community, then you can get better results,” said Tricia Ambeau, an Arkansas mother of two whose eighth grader Emma has Down Syndrome and autism. A conservative, she previously served on the board of Disability Rights of Arkansas, but stepped down during the pandemic. State officials, she said, “can make a two-hour drive to a school district and knock on the door and say ‘What’s going on here?’ You’re never going to get that at the federal level.” 

2. Food stamps

While the Department of Agriculture, not Education, runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the shutdown and a court battle over whether the government would distribute full benefits has caused stress and chaos for families with school-age children. 

The end of the shutdown means recipients’ electronic benefit transfer cards should be refilled as normal. 

School districts across the country, like and , increased efforts to distribute food to needy families and served additional meals. encouraged parents to apply for free- and reduced-price lunch if their kids were not already on the program.

“It is important to remember that these families were not given the opportunity to plan and budget for this moment. How do you shop for groceries without knowing how many days or months you need the food to last?” Chastity Lord, president and CEO of the Jeremiah Program, said in a statement. The nonprofit supports 2,000 single mothers across nine cities.

3. Proposed rule change on racial disparities in special education

While the government was closed, the department continued to receive comments on a proposed to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The department wants to lift the requirement that states submit data on racial and other disparities in special education services, including whether students with disabilities disproportionately receive harsher discipline.

In the announcement, the department said the change would “reduce the burden on respondents when completing the annual state application.”

Data shows that Black students are for some special education categories, like intellectual disabilities and behavioral disorders, but underidentified for other services like dyslexia and autism. Students with disabilities are also suspended and expelled at higher rates than other students, government . The department’s recommendation would align with Trump’s that discourages schools from focusing on equity in school discipline and using less-punitive practices like conflict resolution. 

The department received over 100 comments on the proposal, with many opposed to the idea of suspending the requirement. The current rule “ensures transparency and promotes fairness in educational opportunity for all students,” EdTrust, an advocacy organization, wrote in .

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, has for policies that remove disruptive students from the classroom. 

“But the answer is not to kill the data collection,” he said.

4. Charter school grants

One way that McMahon has promoted the administration’s school choice agenda is by highlighting and increasing spending on charter schools. Weeks before the shutdown, the department awarded $500 million in grants to charter schools, which included an additional $60 million over the current $440 million for the Charter Schools Program.

But just as the funds went out to states, charter networks and schools, the shutdown began, cutting off new grantees’ access to start-up support during a “crucial window,” said Brittnee Baker, communications director for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

In , which received $30 million, the disruption has delayed progress toward launching several new schools and expanding others. But some critics argue that the department is boosting funding for the sector at a time of slowing growth and charter closures. 

“Politics, not need, now drives program expansion,” said a from the Network for Public Education. Diane Ravitch, a former Education Department official during the H.W. Bush administration, co-founded the advocacy organization.

5. Prayer guidance

The shutdown also interrupted work on school prayer guidance that President Donald Trump said the department would issue as part of a on “protecting our religious freedoms.”

Officials last following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy vs. Bremerton, which held that a Washington school district could not stop a football coach from praying on the 50-yard line after games. 

The document clarified that school employees have a right to personal prayer or other forms of religious expression, like wearing a cross, during school hours, but they cannot “compel, coerce, persuade or encourage students” to participate.

The 2023 guidance has “served to help schools and community members understand their rights and responsibilities under the First Amendment,” said Maggie Siddiqi, senior fellow at the Interfaith Alliance, a nonprofit counteracting the religious right. She worked on the update when she served as director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the department during the Biden administration. 

As the Trump administration appeals to Christian conservatives, it “does not have authority to do away with the First Amendment” through guidance, she said and warned that parents and educators should watch for any language that allows schools to impose “one specific religious view on their entire student body.” 

As a refresher, AASA, the School Superintendents Association, addressed the topic in its . The issue features a on religion in public schools from the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit focusing on First Amendment rights. With the administration and state leaders often emphasizing Christianity over other faiths and some states passing laws that set aside , the document answers 23 questions about what the law says. 

6. McMahon’s 50-state tour

The secretary still has 40 states to go on her “Returning Education to the States” tour, which kicked off in August. 

While she primarily highlights charters and private schools on her visits, she has hit a few district schools on her route, including in Clinton, Tennessee, and in Bozeman, Montana.

McMahon said she’s gathering examples of promising practices for on issues such as literacy and school discipline, that the department will issue to states. But Cara Jackson, immediate past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy, said the department wants to “take credit” for some of the work that was in progress when it canceled funding for research. The association was among the groups that to the Institute for Education Sciences and the termination of regional education labs. The cases are ongoing, but of the contracts were later reinstated.

Proponents of eliminating the department don’t see the point.

“The information might be useful, but it is contradictory to shutting down the U.S. Department of Education,” said Neal McCluskey, director of educational freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Why do it if you don’t think the department should exist at all?”

��ǰ����𳦳پ��Dz�:��An earlier version of this article misstated the number of comments made on a proposed rule change to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was provided by a government website. The correct number of comments was 100.

Meanwhile, a friendlier bid for schools to voluntarily cooperate has enlisted a few participants — a microschool chain, Indianapolis charter schools and schools in and near South Bend. 

The first proposals from the panel tackling the issue, the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, will be presented later this month, with recommendations to the city and state legislature due in December.

But families, education advocacy groups and the Indianapolis school board are already at odds over hot-button issues such as which students should be offered school buses, or whether district or charter schools get to use old and empty school buildings. 

There’s also conflict over whether any more charters should open in Indianapolis, or whether the school board, the Indianapolis mayor or some new panel should referee competing claims for assets.

To some, the entire process is an attack on the Indianapolis school district and an attempt to dilute its power in favor of charter schools. 

“Few of us want to feed the goals of the far right MAGA legislators who want to divide and ruin Indianapolis schools,” resident Kate Scott told the panel last month. “This gives them an excuse to strip us of our rights to make community decisions, and to then force an all charter and voucher landscape… and floods of public funding for privately run religious schools.” 

Others view the effort as overdue, since more than half the students in Indianapolis attend charter schools. Most Indianapolis charter schools do not offer buses to students, saying that paying for them could mean cutting teachers.

“We need to listen to what the families want for transportation,” resident Kim Graham told the panel at its October meeting. “It doesn’t need (the district) or charter running the bus system. We need to elect a whole new board that does know transportation, that will be able to figure out how our children can get to school.”

Meanwhile, a separate push by the legislature to encourage schools to share resources is advancing in a much friendlier way since it’s voluntary and not an order. The Indiana Department of Education gave the OK in October for three partnerships between charter schools and districts — in Indianapolis, South Bend and one a microschool network that hopes to expand statewide — to start sharing services as a three-year pilot starting in the fall of 2026.

In the higher stakes charter vs district debate in Indianapolis, the alliance has two task forces, one looking at transportation issues and the other at school buildings, which have been meeting privately and will share their recommendations with the full panel Nov. 19.

The thornier matter of who would oversee sharing is also in play. The board heard Oct. 22 from representatives from Denver and Washington, D.C., about how those cities put single boards in charge of funding, school quality, transportation and creation of new schools for both charter and district schools.

Looming in the background are several real threats, including legislators that proposed wiping out the school district in favor of charters, a declining population that leaves schools fighting for students to stay afloat, and the district’s budget woes. The Indianapolis Public Schools has closed several schools in recent years. A tax that brings in about $40 million a year will expire in 2026, needing voter approval to continue.

One incentive for the sides to strike a deal is that voters with children in charter schools could be more willing to pass a tax for the district if their children also benefit.

Varying groups have pressed dueling requests to the Alliance, including the IPS school board, which called Oct. 3 for a moratorium on new schools starting in the city, in response to 9,000 seats in charter and district schools sitting open.

“There are currently 103 schools serving approximately 41,000 students,” the . “Too many schools competing for a limited pool of students and resources undermines the health of our entire system.”

“We do not need any more schools in the IPS boundary,” the board continued. “The long-term success of Indianapolis students depends on right-sizing the number of schools within the boundary—ensuring we have the right number of schools, in the right places, to serve all students effectively.”

Other requests include:

• The pro-charter advocacy group Stand For Children delivering to the Alliance in September calling for transportation for all students and for a new school board to oversee charter and district schools.

• RISE Indy, another pro-charter advocacy group, has also to make sure charter school interests are considered.
• The district’s calling for a moratorium on new charter schools, for the elected school board to keep its powers, for repeal of a state law allowing charters to buy closed school buildings for $1 and for other limits on charter school power.
• The Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America against any control of the district going to the mayor or any new appointed panel.

The second effort to have Indiana schools share resources is moving forward too with three partnerships, though without the same debate.

The Indiana Microschool Collaborative, which started this fall and hopes to offer an efficient way for microschools to launch across the state, will be one of the three. The model, created by the Eastern Hancock school district, calls for the microschools — independent schools with only a few students — to save money by using the Eastern Hancock central office for its human resource and other administrative needs.

The second has the Mishawaka school district near South Bend collaborating with the Career Academy Network of five charter schools in South Bend and the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Northern Indiana Corridor.

The charter schools and district already have students attending the same afterschool and summer programs, said Jeremy Lugbill, CEO of the charter network. And the Boys and Girls Clubs help run one of the network’s schools located at a Boys and Girls Club facility.

The schools will likely all participate in a joint school for students with academic troubles, among other ways of collaborating.

“I’m optimistic,” Lugbill said. “Have we done it before? No, but I believe that people are starting to see the value in collaboration. The bottom line is that a rising tide lifts all boats. We can make each other better.”

The third partnership already has 54 charter schools in the Indianapolis area joining together under Andrew Seibert, the former executive director of the KIPP Indy charter schools who left in September to join the TogetherEd nonprofit for this effort.

Seibert said cooperation between schools already happens, with some charter schools already sharing the same building or sharing with district schools. 

Schools, Seibert said, could share buses if they are close by, possibly just for afterschool programs or for homeless students or students with disabilities. Schools that have a good gymnasium or auditorium could let other schools use them for events.

“There are certainly discrete examples of success that we can point to and to learn from,” he said. “But in a lot of ways, this is going to be new ground that we’re breaking.”

The partnership is also sparking speculation, however, that TogetherEd is positioning itself as the body that could take control in the larger Indianapolis effort to share buses and buildings between charters and the Indianapolis Public Schools.

Seibert said it is too early to know what the Alliance will recommend and what TogetherEd’s role will be, but that it is important to start a culture of cooperation between schools now.

“Whatever the future state that we’re building towards is like, we have to start building muscle and getting experience now on it,” Seibert said. “What I’m hopeful…is that by establishing the environment where collaboration is happening and it’s happening consistently with concrete outcomes… we can learn important things and contribute to whatever the shape of the future landscape needs to look like.”

From cutting social safety net programs and enacting unaccountable voucher programs at the expense of public schools to limiting access to financial aid for higher education, these stormy waters are setting American students adrift, eliminating important protections and creating ever greater barriers to an equitable education that sets young people up for success as adults. 

It’s more than just money; as Congress and the Trump administration have instituted perilous funding cuts that reduced support for nutrition programs, limited undocumented students’ access to important programs and dialed back enforcement of civil rights laws, federal agencies have eliminated and undermined vital data and education research. Without this information, there is no way to know how schools are working to address academic and opportunity disparities — particularly for Black and Latino students, multilingual learners, students with disabilities and those from low-income backgrounds. 

The U.S. Department of Education by inviting states to seek waivers from the that have, for over two decades, required annual student testing and public, disaggregated reporting of those results. Allowing states to alter established assessment systems and hide data on school quality will leave parents, educators and policymakers without important information they need to help students succeed. 

In order for this to work, the federal government will need partners in states to do the dirty work. Unfortunately, history shows they’ll be amenable. 

At least three states have already begun the formal process of asking for waivers from accountability. 

Oklahoma, which already lowered the bar for proficiency on its state assessments, wants to and replace them with a series of as-yet unidentified tests throughout the year to measure student achievement in language arts and math or the Classic Learning Test, which covers a more limited knowledge base — primarily the Western and Christian canons — and has been used primarily for homeschool and private school students. The Oklahoma waiver would also mean the state could stop providing testing accommodations and alternate assessments for students with disabilities and English learners. Together, this would make it impossible to measure the academic progress of all students.

Indiana wants to redirect federal funding away from migrant students, at-risk kids, multilingual learners, children in rural areas and the lowest-performing schools. State leaders also seek to change how they rate schools, in a way that would tell families, advocates, policymakers, and others little because of the proposed methodology.

Like Indiana, Iowa wants the power to redirect federal funds away from underserved student groups. But Iowa goes a step further, asking the department to reinterpret the law to let it stop prioritizing federal funds for schools with the highest poverty levels. Not only would this be overreach by the Department of Education — legally, it can’t allow this type of change without congressional approval — it would change the rules for all states, undermining the objective of Title I to increase financial support for students in high-poverty school districts.

It remains to be seen what other ideas states will cook up under the guise of promoting innovation and reducing administrative burdens, and how those initiatives will endanger students’ educational opportunities. But the leaders of 12 states wrote to Washington earlier this year, requesting not only a robust use of federal waiver authority, but a strong deference to state law and a consolidation of federal education funding. 

To be sure, there is a place for federal flexibility. The Education Department in the first Trump administration wisely gave a year’s reprieve on annual testing when the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools. The Biden administration offered flexibility for Montana to test a new, innovative assessment model, while maintaining civil rights protections. Current federal law already allows states to experiment with innovative assessments and funding, although few states have taken advantage of these initiatives.

This isn’t some wonky technical issue; annual assessments provide important information that helps parents make educational decisions for their children, teachers to adjust classroom practices and policymakers to craft laws and allocate resources. Strong accountability measures force adults to take a hard look at how schools are serving the most vulnerable students and take action. Targeted funding provides additional opportunities for students from backgrounds long marginalized by America’s education system. 

This waiver program is just one in a series of decisions that is putting students and the country’s future at risk. Ending the collection of this data will limit everyone’s ability to see the long-term consequences of other harmful policies.   

The Education Department should reconsider its stance on waivers and instead do what’s right for students: ensure that states remain accountable for improving outcomes. Real students’ futures — and America’s future as a nation — are at stake.

Parents navigate charter schools, vouchers and a growing marketplace of education options every day. For some families, these opportunities open doors that traditional systems have long kept closed. For others, they widen gaps, creating new advantages for those with time, knowledge, or resources to navigate complex systems. 

That’s the fork in the road: Will school choice become a lever for equity or another layer of inequality? What happens next depends less on whether choice exists and more on how leaders, policymakers and practitioners choose to design, regulate and support it.

As a principal of a nontraditional high school in Tennessee built to give juniors and seniors a second chance at graduation, I saw firsthand how transportation made “choice” inequitable. Our school was open to all students in the district, but the catch was that families had to provide their own way there.

Over time, as the demographics of our community shifted, we saw more students enrolling from affluent schools while fewer came from inner-city and Title I schools — the very students who stood to benefit most. Day after day, I sat with families who desperately wanted the opportunity but were unable to access it. The lesson was clear: Choice without infrastructure only stands to reinforce privilege rather than broaden opportunity.

The strongest critiques of school choice aren’t about the principle of offering families more options; they’re about access. For choice to deliver on its promise, access has to mean more than an open seat. It has to mean that every family, regardless of income, language, or need, can truly participate. Without that, choice stops being an opportunity and starts being just an illusion of opportunity. 

Transportation is just one of the barriers, affecting families without cars, flexible jobs or reliable public transit. Enrollment processes add another layer of inequity: complex paperwork, limited multilingual communication and opaque lotteries often shut out families who already face systemic disadvantages. For students with disabilities and English learners, the inequities deepen. Research shows charter schools often provide patchy services with weak oversight, while private schools in voucher programs may decline to serve these students altogether since they aren’t bound by the same legal protections.

Funding and accountability form the final fault lines. When dollars follow students out of neighborhood schools without adjustments, budgets destabilize and fewer resources for the children left behind. And even within schools of choice, oversight is inconsistent. Too often, leaders track test scores but not who is being served, allowing schools to avoid providing the services students need.

These patterns suggest that the risks of choice lie not in the idea itself, but in how unevenly families can access and benefit from it, and how lightly systems hold schools accountable for equity. The way forward isn’t to fight the existence of choice but to shape its design. Equity has to be built into the foundation: guaranteed transportation, simplified and fair enrollment systems, real accountability for serving all students, and funding models that strengthen rather than destabilize public schools. Otherwise, choice risks reinforcing the very divides it claims to close.

If school choice is going to expand, policymakers have a responsibility to make equity part of the design, not an afterthought. That starts with four commitments:

• Transportation Access: Guarantee funding and infrastructure so families without cars or flexible work schedules can actually reach the schools they choose. In Indianapolis, for instance, some public charter schools pay as much as $1 million a year to provide bus services. A law that passed in April requires Indiana school districts to work with charters on transportation and facilities plans. More states should follow suit.

• Equitable Enrollment & Family Support: Simplify and standardize application processes, require multilingual communication, and provide “choice navigators” or resource centers so families with less social capital aren’t left behind. Some school districts, particularly, and Philadelphia, provide strong lottery systems with support from navigators in several languages. But such support shouldn’t depend on individual districts. It should be built into state and federal policy.

• Special Education & Student Services: Hold charter and private choice schools to the same expectations as public schools when it comes to serving students with disabilities, English learners, and students requiring additional support that schools of choice do not always provide.
  
• Accountability & Funding Fairness: Track not only test scores but also who is being served. Are low-income families, English learners, and students with disabilities represented equitably? Are schools counseling students out? And are funding models strengthening, not destabilizing, the public schools that remain?

School choice is not going away, but its future shape is still undecided. 

Public education has always been the surest path to opportunity, and I see it as the key to unlocking success for all kids. Whether school choice narrows or widens opportunity is up to all of us. If the goal is equity, then the focus has to move beyond fighting choice itself and toward shaping policies that make it fair, accessible, and accountable. That’s the only way to ensure choice strengthens, rather than fractures, the promise of public education.

If policymakers, advocates, and practitioners want choice to be more than a slogan, they have to design it with equity at the center. That means treating transportation, special education, family support, accountability, and funding fairness not as side issues but as nonnegotiables. 

The future of school choice is being written right now. It can open doors, or it can reinforce walls.