Chalkbeat

Indiana cracks down on loophole, counting 1,000 ‘hidden dropouts’

2020-12-10T00:03:03+00:00

Over 1,000 Indiana students who left high school without diplomas will be counted as dropping out, after a state audit cracked down on districts using a legal loophole that a Chalkbeat investigation found inflates graduation rates.

This is the first time the Indiana Department of Education audited schools under a new law designed to ensure the state is accurately tracking how many students drop out. Schools had originally categorized these students as withdrawing to home-school, which would have left them out of graduation rates. But it’s unclear whether they ever continued their education.

The state added back students whose home-school withdrawals weren’t properly documented or those who had fallen behind on credits. The review found that nearly 60% of home-school students audited were behind on credits when they left school, suggesting that many of those who leave to home-school may essentially be dropping out after struggling to pass classes.

“It’s really kind of depressing that it’s that large a number that, unfortunately, were not on target to graduate,” said Rep. Bob Behning, an Indianapolis Republican who chairs the House Education Committee.

Chalkbeat’s investigation found that at some troubled schools, the practice of marking students who leave as home schooling has hidden dropouts for years.

Just over 500 students at the audited schools this year were properly labeled as leaving to home-school, according to the state review. The Indiana State Board of Education on Wednesday approved the results of the audit.

The new audit process is “an opportunity to shine the light” on schools that focus on increasing graduation rates on paper and encourage schools to focus instead on improving outcomes for struggling students, Behning said.

Hopefully, the new process will make graduation rates more accurate in the future by reducing the incentive for schools to mark students as leaving to home-school, state board member Pete Miller told Chalkbeat.

“We need to do a better job of getting 100% of kids to get a high school diploma,” Miller said.

Statewide, schools claimed that about 3,200 Hoosier students who were expected to graduate in 2020 instead withdrew to home-school. The education department reviewed withdrawals at 104 schools that were selected because they had large numbers of students marked as leaving to home-school. Schools can appeal the decisions through an administrative process.

Nearly all the schools that were reviewed will see their graduation rates fall, with a median decline of about 7 percentage points. Lakeland Christian Academy, a 300-student private school in northern Indiana, will see the largest decline in its graduation rate — a drop of nearly 19 percentage points.

The change will also lead to significant drops in graduation rates at some large public high schools. At Northview High School, a 1,000-student campus outside Terre Haute, the graduation rate will drop by 16 percentage points.

Leaders of some audited school systems told Chalkbeat that they hope to keep struggling students in school until graduation and reduce the number leaving to home-school with efforts such as alternative schools and career training.

New Indiana law puts pressure on high schools to reduce home-school withdrawals

2020-11-24T22:39:22+00:00

One in five Indiana high schools are facing scrutiny that could lead to lower graduation rates because they marked a large number of students who didn’t graduate as leaving to home-school.

The state will review over 100 schools under a new law that aims to stem the tide of students who leave without diplomas but are not counted as dropping out. Schools under audit must show that they have properly documented each withdrawal and that the students who withdrew were on track to graduate. Students who were behind on credits when they left will be re-categorized as having dropped out.

Statewide, schools claimed that about 3,200 Hoosier students who were expected to graduate in 2020 instead withdrew to home-school. The total reflected a dip from the prior year. A Chalkbeat investigation found that because the state does not track or oversee home schooling, it’s impossible to say how many of those students continued their education.

The new law aims to prevent students who fall behind in school from withdrawing and disappearing from graduation rates. Indiana data for the class of 2019 showed that more than half of students who left high schools to home-school may have fallen behind on credits.

The growing focus on home-school withdrawals is pressuring schools to provide options for struggling students, such as alternative programs or career training. But it is too soon to say whether state attention will dramatically increase the number of students earning diplomas.

“Home schooling was pretty much a dumping ground for kids until lately,” said Greg Prange, principal at Seymour Senior High School, a 1,500-student school in an agricultural community about an hour south of Indianapolis.

When he began as assistant principal over two decades ago, frustrated students could leave as soon as they turned 16. After the state made dropping out more difficult, some of those students started leaving to home-school, Prange said. Parents who are tired of fighting with their teens about school withdraw them, he added.

At Seymour, the district is relying on new career training programs to keep students engaged in school, including a fledgling agriculture science program that allows students to learn about landscape management, horticulture, and animal science, Prange said. The program also helps students earn diplomas under the state’s new graduation pathways even if they are not able to pass the state exam.

Those efforts seem to be paying off. Seymour will not face a state review this year because the school has drastically reduced the number of students leaving to home-school. Fourteen Seymour students in the class of 2020 withdrew for home schooling, about a third of the number in the prior class.

“We’ve changed so much over the years trying to provide for kids in the community,” Prange said. “We’re not losing those kids.”

But at schools with some of the highest rates of students leaving to home-school, those strategies haven’t shown results yet.

At Lincoln High School, a 700-student campus in southwest Indiana, Principal Steve Combs expects the graduation rate to fall by about 10% because of the new law. Combs was frustrated about the law marking students who are behind on credits as dropping out, a requirement imposed after students in the class of 2020 had withdrawn from school.

“I’m all for accountability. I just would like to know what the rules are,” Combs said.

In the class of 2020, Lincoln had 31 students who were marked as leaving to home-school. Most of them were behind on credits, and about 10 who were on track to graduate will likely be counted as dropouts because of a problem with documentation, Combs said.

When students fall significantly behind on credits, withdrawing to home-school and pursuing a high school equivalency can seem like the best option, Combs said. “That’s difficult to battle against.”

In the long term Combs hopes the school will be able to keep more of those students in school by offering more options. The district launched an alternative high school this year where students can catch up on credits more quickly through online classes with the support of teachers.

Whether students are counted as dropping out or leaving to home-school, when they leave school without diplomas it can have enduring consequences for them and for the community, Combs said.

“I live in this town. I absolutely worry about them,” he said. “But I do feel good about the services that we try to provide while they’re here.”

New policy aims to stop Indiana high schools from writing off students who fall behind

2020-07-09T20:44:04+00:00

A new policy will add extra scrutiny to Indiana high schools’ graduation rates, aiming to stop schools from pushing out struggling students and mislabeling dropouts as home-schoolers.

Nearly 3,700 Indiana students who were expected to graduate in 2019 left high school without diplomas, but it didn’t affect graduation rates because they were labeled as leaving to home-school. A Chalkbeat investigation found that some of those students actually dropped out.

The new policy, which was approved by the Indiana State Board of Education Wednesday, outlines how the board and the Indiana Department of Education will enforce a law passed by the legislature last year that applies to schools with large numbers of students labeled as leaving to home-school. It focuses on whether schools have the appropriate documentation for students who withdraw — and on whether those students were on track to graduate when they left.

“It’s definitely a great move forward,” said Rep. Bob Behning, an Indianapolis Republican who chairs Indiana’s House education committee. “It’s a positive first step. … The light of day always has a way of changing behavior.”

Because of its narrow approach, the law may not get to the root of the problem that high schoolers are leaving school without diplomas and not continuing their education at home. Although it will reduce graduation rates at schools where large numbers of students who are falling behind leave to home-school, it won’t capture problems at schools with small numbers of home-school withdrawals. And it won’t prevent students who are behind in credits from leaving to home-school.

The policy will target high schools with more than 100 students in the graduating class if more than 5% leave to home-school, beginning with the class of 2020. For schools with 100 or fewer students in the graduating class, the threshold is 10%.

If schools meet either threshold, the Department of Education will require them to provide additional documentation to show “good cause” for labeling each student as leaving to home-school. Schools must submit transcripts for students that show how many credits they had earned before withdrawing. If students were not on track to graduate, they will likely be re-categorized as dropping out.

That requirement could result in many students who were behind on credits when they withdrew being added back into graduation calculations as dropouts. In January, a state analysis of the class of 2019 found that more than half of the roughly 3,700 students who left Indiana high schools to home-school may have been behind on credits.

State board member Pete Miller said that by looking at whether students are on track to graduate, the state gets crucial information on schools.

“If most of those kids are on track to graduate, it’s less likely that someone’s trying to game the system,” he said. If many of the students who leave to home-school are behind on credits, however, “that’s a pretty big red flag.”

The regulations also say schools must provide a copy of the home-school withdrawal form parents are supposed to sign when removing their children from high school. If they don’t have that form or it is missing required information, the student could be counted as a dropout. The requirement is similar to the documentation schools must provide if their graduation rate is audited by the state as part of a regular process.

Adam Baker, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Education, said in an email that the home-school review process is different from regular audits of graduation data because it “is more granular in focusing on the ‘on-track’ versus ‘off-track’ students exited to home-school.”

While the new policy will result in scrutiny of high schools with large numbers of students labeled as leaving to home-school, it won’t identify all the struggling students who receive that label when they withdraw. At schools without many students leaving to home-school, the label could be misused without drawing notice.

Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, criticized officials for pursuing a change in policy that still allows parents to home-school without oversight. “This change does not put any onus on home-schoolers,” she said.

“Any change to try to fix some of these problems is good,” said Coleman, but she said, “this shows more interest in the bookkeeping of graduation rates than in the education of students.”

Although Behning had supported more aggressive policy approaches — such as designating all high schoolers who leave to home-school as dropouts when calculating graduation rates — he said that preventing students from withdrawing to home-school is out of step with Indiana’s approach to school choice.

“In a state where we’ve embraced choice, it is a little bit difficult to say, ‘well, we believe in choice, but you can’t exercise that choice to go to home-school,’” Behning said. “I think it will work very effectively and should work to mitigate and actually target the audience that we’re most interested in targeting, which is [school officials] turning [students] away because they’re not on track to graduation.”

Hidden dropouts: Most Indiana students have fallen behind when they leave to home-school

2020-01-31T21:56:42+00:00

More than half of all students who left Indiana high schools to home-school had fallen behind on credits, and just over 40% of them left in their senior year, according to newly released data for the class of 2019.

The information comes from a first-of-its-kind report prepared by the Indiana Department of Education that sheds new light on the nearly 3,700 students statewide who weren’t included in graduation calculations because they were labeled as leaving to home-school — a designation that is obscuring some students who are in fact dropping out.

The report compares the number of students in the graduating class at each school to how many students left to home-school, as well as showing when in the course of their studies students left to home-school and whether they were behind on credits at the time. When students left and if they were on track to graduate are important metrics because they help indicate whether teens may have been miscategorized as leaving to home-school, rather than dropping out.

A recent Chalkbeat investigation revealed that some of the state’s most troubled high schools have large numbers of students leaving to home-school, with no way to know whether students continue their education. Withdrawing students to home-school allows parents to avoid consequences from truancy and schools to boost their graduation rates.

Database: Find out how many home-schoolers were left out of Indiana’s 2019 graduation rates

The problem has received increasing attention from public policy leaders in Indiana, and last year, state lawmakers passed a law that aims to ensure that students are not mislabeled as leaving to home-school. It increases scrutiny of schools with large numbers of students who are behind on credits leaving to home-school.

It is “a bit odd” that so many students who are behind on credits leave some schools, while other schools across the state don’t have the same problem, said Rep. Bob Behning, an Indianapolis Republican who chairs Indiana’s House education committee.

“It just appears that there might be a little bit more than coincidence,” Behning said. “It is very troubling.”

At 50 schools in the report, every student who left to home-school was short on credits. Education department officials, however, caution that the data on how many credits students have when they leave school could be inaccurate because it has not been audited.

About 1,500 of the students who left to home-school exited during their senior year. Nearly 350 left to home-school after April 1, 2019 — just before they were expected to graduate.

The findings will not have consequences for schools. State education officials will begin enforcing the new law for the class of 2020, when schools with large numbers of students who leave to home-school and are behind on credits could see their graduation rates drop.

The law requires high schools with large numbers of students leaving to home-school to demonstrate “good cause” to the State Board of Education before removing them from the graduation calculations. High schools with more than 100 students in the graduating class will face extra scrutiny if more than 5% leave to home-school and those students are not on track to earn diplomas. For schools with 100 or fewer students in the graduating class, the threshold is 10%.

State education officials are still working through the details of how they plan to implement the law. It doesn’t specify how many credits students need to have to be considered on track to graduate or how to judge whether schools have shown “good cause” for marking students as leaving to home-school.

Behning, who led the legislative push, said the new data sheds light on schools that may have a problem. It’s too soon to say whether the new law will help, but “it’s extremely helpful to see this data,” Behning said. The State Board of Education “is going to have their hands full … trying to figure out what’s happening to these kids.”

IPS regains control of 3 schools in a dramatic end to state takeover

2020-01-15T18:33:17+00:00

Nearly eight years after Indiana seized three struggling campuses from Indianapolis Public Schools, the State Board of Education voted Wednesday to hand the schools back, bringing to a close a turnaround experiment that sparked enduring change in the state’s largest district.

The dramatic decision, which passed 6-2, is a significant shift from the state board’s longstanding support for Charter Schools USA, the Florida-based manager hired to improve the schools. It’s also an implicit vote of confidence in Indianapolis Public Schools, a district that has redefined its reputation through its collaboration with charter schools.

The vote means that Thomas Carr Howe High School will likely close. Meanwhile, Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School and Emmerich Manual High School are poised to become innovation schools, managed by charter operators under Indianapolis Public Schools oversight. A local charter school, Christel House Academy South, will move into the Manual building and serve the current students. The district will choose a new operator for Donnan.

Ending takeover: Indiana officials end takeover of Roosevelt, returning it to the troubled Gary district

In the days before the vote, Charter Schools USA scrambled to maintain control of the campuses. The network had hoped to get another chance to win charters to continue running the schools, even after their applications were rejected by the state charter board in December. The group reached out to a second authorizer, asked the state to grant them a year-long extension, and appealed to families from the schools to show their support for the operator at Wednesday’s board of education meeting.

But in the end, Charter Schools USA and its allies were unable to prevent the board from choosing what had become the most expedient way of ending the takeover — handing control of the troubled schools back to the district from which they had been severed.

Before the vote, Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Aleesia Johnson made the case to the State Board of Education that the district would immediately roll out a plan for the students and schools.

“We don’t come to you today lightly,” Johnson said. “We, alongside with our partners, are the only organization coming to you today with an explicit plan that can definitively be executed upon that we believe will serve students well.”

Students, parents, and teachers need “some certainty,” said board member Pete Miller after the meeting. The district plan means they “know what we’re going to do starting in the fall.”

“The vote today was not a repudiation of any of the work done by the turnaround operator,” Miller said.

The meeting was a watershed moment in the history of state takeover. In addition to returning the three schools to Indianapolis Public Schools, the board voted 10-0 to end the state takeover of Roosevelt College & Career Academy in Gary, which was seized at the same time as the Indianapolis campuses. The campus will be handed back to Gary Community Schools, which is also under state takeover, after this school year.

The Indianapolis schools have had mixed performance under Charter Schools USA’s management. Donnan and Manual both have seen their state letter grades rise, and the three schools outperform many district schools on state tests. But enrollment at the campuses dramatically shrunk after the state takeover and has not fully rebounded.

For the students at the schools, however, keeping them with Charter Schools USA offered the promise of stability. At public meetings, students, and teachers spoke about how much they love the schools, the close relationships they had, and the positive outcomes for students who had been struggling. Returning the schools to Indianapolis Public Schools means breaking up those communities and forcing students to undergo dramatic and disruptive changes.

For some Howe students, it will be the second time that they have been forced to find a new school. Junior Alainna Tuyub said that she also watched as her first school, Broad Ripple High School, was closed down by the district.

“Howe has shown me that school is not just a requirement but an opportunity — a gateway to the rest of my life after high school,” Tuyub said. “Howe is family. We succeed as a family, and sometimes we even take losses as a family, but all is worthwhile because we do it together.”

Jeff Breeding, whose son is a senior at Manual, has shown up at several meetings in support of Charter Schools USA.

“It’s really sad that they gave it back to IPS, which failed so many times, miserably, for 10 years,” he said after the vote. Breeding, who is also a baseball coach at the school, said even though his own son is graduating, he cares about the other students on the team. “The rest of them kids are like my own. They don’t want to go anywhere else.”

After the vote, Sherry Hage, who has led the Indianapolis turnaround work for Charter Schools USA and now as the leader of the nonprofit handling day-to-day operations at the schools, issued a written statement describing the decision as a “heartbreaking” loss for the “the most vulnerable students in Indianapolis.”

“This decision marks an unprecedented move backward for the most at-risk children in Indianapolis,” she continued. “Although IPS has given up on these kids multiple times, we will review our options and never give up on serving our students, giving them the hope and encouragement for success they so desperately need.”

It had seemed as though Charter Schools USA would easily win permanent control of the schools when the state board voted last March to instruct the operator to seek charters to continue running the campuses after the takeover ended.

But the organization encountered several pitfalls over the last 10 months.

A Chalkbeat investigation revealed that graduation rates at Howe and Manual exclude many students who left without earning diplomas because they were labeled as leaving to home-school, even though the students weren’t necessarily continuing their education at home. When students are labeled as leaving to home-school, instead of being listed as dropping out, they are removed from graduation calculations — a practice that can boost graduation rates.

In 2019, the graduation rate at Manual fell 21 percentage points from the previous year to 57%, after a state audit found the school did not have the proper documentation for many of the students designated as leaving to home-school.

In a presentation Wednesday, state board staff cited the Chalkbeat investigation as one of the key factors that had changed in the months since the board initially instructed Charter Schools USA to seek charters, after a community task force’s recommendation that the network maintain control of the campuses.

“That investigation is important because the task force relied heavily on the schools’ performance ratings that are obviously heavily influenced by the schools’ overall graduation rates,” said Ron Sandlin, senior director of school performance and transformation.

Indianapolis Public Schools began a campaign to win back the takeover campuses under new Superintendent Aleesia Johnson. Officials raised questions over what would happen to debt if the district transferred the school buildings to a new manager. And the district cut ties with Charter Schools USA, which it had partnered with to open the elementary school at Donnan, and said it planned to select another manager, based in Indiana, for the school — either Phalen Leadership Academies, which runs several Indianapolis schools, or a new charter operator called Adelante Schools.

But perhaps Indianapolis Public Schools’ most important step was finding a new, politically powerful ally. In December, the district announced that if the schools were returned to its control, it would give the Manual building to Christel House Academy, an influential Indianapolis charter network that would relocate its entire south side school to the campus and become an innovation school.

A final blow came from the Indiana Charter School Board. Although it had backing from the State Board of Education, Charter Schools USA would need support from a charter authorizer to keep control of the schools. But in December, the charter board voted 4-3 against granting the charters.

The state charter board rejection returned the future of the schools to the State Board of Education, setting up the vote Wednesday to return control of the campuses to the district.

Stephanie Wang contributed reporting.

Database: Find out how many home-schoolers were left out of Indiana’s 2019 graduation rates

2020-01-13T22:01:50+00:00

Nearly 3,700 Indiana students who were expected to graduate in 2019 but did not earn diplomas were left out of high school graduation rates.

Those students were wiped off the books because they were labeled as leaving to home-school — a designation that helps boost graduation rates for high schools but does not ensure the students are educated at home.

The state total for the latest graduation data is nearly identical to the number in the prior year despite growing attention to the problem. Across the state, 47 fewer students were marked as leaving to home-school in 2019 compared to 2018, when just over 3,736 students in the graduating class were designated as homeschoolers.

The data comes after a recent Chalkbeat investigation revealed that many teens leaving to home-school are clustered at some of the state’s most troubled schools. As a result of the problem, Indiana students who have diminished opportunities because they don’t earn diplomas are left out of state graduation data, creating a hidden dropout crisis at many high schools.

Following that investigation, a state panel called for lawmakers to reconsider how they calculate graduation rates. The panel also released a plan for high school accountability grades to be based largely on whether students are enlisted, employed, or enrolled in post-secondary education when they graduate — deemphasizing graduation rates that some say can be easily manipulated.

The new numbers coincide with rising concerns among Indiana policymakers that students are being improperly labeled as leaving to home-schools. Last year, the legislature passed a law that targets schools with large numbers of students leaving to home-school and requires them to show “good cause” or those students will be designated as dropping out.

The state expects to begin implementing that law with the 2020 graduating class, but Indiana State Board of Education officials have not yet determined how they will measure “good cause.”

Emmerich Manual High School, an Indianapolis campus that was the focus of Chalkbeat’s reporting last year because of its high rate of students leaving to home-school in 2018, saw a significant decline in the number of homeschoolers in 2019. The dip was driven in part by a routine state audit, which found that the school did not have appropriate paperwork for many of the students initially designated as homeschoolers.

In 2019, the high school with the largest number of students labeled as leaving to home-school — and the highest rate among schools serving traditional students — was Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy. At the scandal-plagued virtual school, which abruptly closed in September, 126 students were marked as leaving to home-school.

Find out how many students at your high school left to home-school with our searchable, sortable database. It shows how many students from the class of 2019 left to home-school, dropped out, and graduated.

Manual’s graduation rate plunges after state audit cuts down the number of home-schoolers

2020-01-13T21:54:52+00:00

The graduation rate at Emmerich Manual High School plummeted to 57% last year, after a state audit found the school did not have the proper documentation for many of the students designated as leaving to home-school, according to new data obtained by Chalkbeat.

That’s down from a 78% graduation rate at the Indianapolis school the previous year, a rate that a Chalkbeat investigation found obscured a large number of students who left without diplomas as home-schoolers but weren’t necessarily continuing their education at home.

When students are labeled as leaving to home-school instead of listed as dropping out, they are removed from graduation calculations — a practice that can boost graduation rates. Manual had initially reported 39 students who were expected to graduate in 2019 were removed by their parents to home-school.

But the routine audit by the state determined the school did not have the correct documentation for more than a dozen of the students.

The final tally of students leaving to home-school was 26 — fewer than half the number reported in the class of 2018, when 60 students were marked as leaving to home-school.

As a result of the audit, the graduation rate fell 21 percentage points in 2019.

“It probably calls all the earlier grad rates into question,” said Russell Rumberger, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who directs the California Dropout Research Project. “If they found it in one year, why wouldn’t they find it in other years?”

In an email to Chalkbeat, an official overseeing the school, Misty Ndiritu, questioned why the state flagged so many students in its audit: “There were an inordinately large number of denials accompanied by very vague and generic reasons for denial.”

“At the surface, it certainly seems alarming to see such a drop in graduation rate, however from what we can determine, it appears that the drop is primarily due to a change in process at the Department of Education,” wrote Ndiritu, turnaround school director for Noble Education Initiative, which handles daily management at the Indiana schools.

The school missed the initial appeal window because the “audit results went into junk mail,” and the school is now reviewing whether the denials are correct, Ndiritu wrote.

Adam Baker, spokesman for the Department of Education, said in an email that “we are here to be a resource for schools and if there are any misunderstandings or if clarity is sought, we are happy to have that discussion.”

The decline in the Manual graduation rate is coming at a particularly significant moment. Manual and its sister schools, Thomas Carr Howe High School and Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School, were former Indianapolis Public Schools taken over by the state in 2012, and have been managed for years by the Florida-based Charter Schools USA. The schools are expected to exit state oversight next year, and in order to keep control of the schools, the network must win charters.

The Indiana Charter School Board, however, rejected applications for the schools last month. And Indianapolis Public Schools is making a play to take back control of the schools, with a proposal to bring in new charter operators at Manual and Donnan and to close Howe. The State Board of Education is expected to decide on the fate of the campuses at a meeting Wednesday.

Howe’s graduation rate was 85% in 2019, down from 92% in 2018. The school’s data was not audited by the state in 2019. Howe had an uptick in the number of students labeled as leaving to home-school: There were 19 last year, up five students from the prior year. The number of dropouts also rose to three last year up from zero. Charter Schools USA did not respond to a request for comment on the Howe graduation rate.

The state began auditing graduation documentation with the class of 2017. The Indiana Department of Education typically audits over 100 high schools each year with the aim of cycling through all campuses every four years. The reviews focus on whether schools have the required records for students who are removed from the graduating class, including teens marked as leaving to home-school, transfers to other high schools, and students who are considered missing.

In total, 26 Manual students from the class of 2019 were flagged by the audit and recategorized as dropouts.

State and local authorities do audits of graduation data precisely because graduation rates “can be gamed,” said Rumberger, who described the practice of removing students who leave to home-school from graduation calculations as “kind of an accounting gimmick.”

When students are labeled as leaving to home-school, schools are required to document the withdrawal with a form from the state signed by the parent. If there are problems with the records — such as if the parent didn’t sign, the school used the wrong form, or the documents say that the student is actually seeking a high school equivalency — the student is reclassified as a drop out.

Baker, of the Department of Education, wrote that the audits typically find fewer than 1,000 students each year who are returned to the graduation calculations out of graduating classes that include over 80,000 students statewide.

“We are always working towards ensuring data is as accurate as possible and therefore we view this as a professional development opportunity for schools to learn more about [their] cohort and how the graduation rate is calculated,” Baker wrote.

A law passed last year aims to ensure that students are not inappropriately labeled as leaving to home-school. It requires high schools with large numbers of students leaving to home-school to demonstrate “good cause” to the state board before removing them from the graduation calculations.

The state, however, will not begin enforcing the law until the class of 2020, and officials are still considering how to measure whether a school has shown “good cause.” Indiana State Board of Education staff told Chalkbeat last year their intervention in schools is likely to rely on a paperwork review, similar to that used in Department of Education audits, rather than in-person interviews with students and parents.

After rejection, Charter Schools USA could shop for charters for Indianapolis turnaround schools

2020-01-07T23:30:40+00:00

A month after its bid for charters was rejected by a state authorizer, a nonprofit with ties to Charter Schools USA appears to be looking for another backer — raising concerns that Indiana law makes it too easy to shop around for a friendly overseer.

When the Indiana Charter School Board voted against applications for three turnaround schools — Howe High School, Manual High School, and Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School — it seemed momentarily like a death blow for Charter Schools USA’s plans to remain in the state. But the nonprofit with ties to the charter network could seek approval from several other authorizers across the state, including one of the three others currently overseeing schools in Indianapolis: the mayor’s office, Ball State University, and Education One, an arm of a private college called Trine University, based in northeast Indiana.

“It raises a question around how many authorizers is too many,” said Brandon Brown, CEO of The Mind Trust, a local nonprofit that supports charter schools.

A tweet from the Howe High School account immediately after the rejection vote alluded to the available options — noting that the school was not successful in its application “with this particular authorizer,” but would continue to work with the state.

At least one other potential authorizer has been contacted by Charter Schools USA. Lindsay Omlor, executive director of charter schools for Education One, told Chalkbeat Friday that someone from the organization had already reached out to her, and she planned to visit the schools this week. Omlor said her office had not received a formal letter of intent or application, and she did not have enough information to say more about a potential application.

Charters Schools USA officials declined an interview. But in a statement Misty Ndiritu, of Noble Education Initiative, which handles daily management at the Indiana schools connected to the charter network, pointed to community support for the schools: “We continue to serve the Indiana State Board of Education and the thousands of educational stakeholders who continuously articulate that they want to stay on the current path of success at each school under our leadership and local partnerships.”

It’s an unusual case because the manager seeking a charter had the support of the State Board of Education, which has overseen the three schools for nearly eight years after severing them from Indianapolis Public Schools. Just last spring, the state board instructed the network it had brought on to manage the schools, Florida-based Charter Schools USA, to seek charters to continue running Howe, Manual, and Donnan.

That appeared likely to cement the charter network’s relationship with the schools, but in the months since several new hurdles have arisen. A Chalkbeat investigation revealed that although the high schools had few dropouts, they had some of the highest proportions in the state of students leaving to home-school, a designation that doesn’t factor into graduation rates and doesn’t ensure that students are, in fact, being educated at home. Meanwhile, Indianapolis Public Schools has been ramping up its campaign to win back control of the schools, outlining a plan to bring in new charter partners at Manual and Donnan, although Howe still faces the possibility of closure.

But it was the charter board’s decision to reject Charter Schools USA’s efforts to obtain charters that ultimately put the future of the schools in limbo. In the wake of that vote, the Indiana State Board of Education is expected to discuss the future of the schools at its January 15 meeting.

Ted Feeney, chair of ReThink Forward Indiana, the nonprofit formed to seek charters for the schools, said the organization’s next move hinges on the decision of the state board. Feeney said he doesn’t expect the nonprofit to apply for a charter before that meeting.

Whether other potential authorizers will share the apprehensiveness that led the state charter board to reject the application is uncertain. The staff for the board had recommended granting the charters for shortened, three-year terms. However, the board members went against that recommendation amid a host of concerns, including over enrollment projections, financial sustainability, and the high number of students leaving the high schools to home-school.

Patrick McAlister, who oversees charter schools for the mayor’s office, a charter authorizer, said that his office has not received charter applications for the schools, but if it did, he would share some of those concerns.

“Their enrollment projections aren’t particularly realistic,” said McAlister, who also pointed to uncertainty over the school buildings, which are owned by Indianapolis Public Schools and have debts tied to them. “I don’t see our board approving a charter from them.”

Since Indianapolis is already dense with school options, one of the most important factors in evaluating charter applications is whether there are enough potential students, said Brown of The Mind Trust.

“Local context is just incredibly important,” Brown said. “Frankly, I’m not sure that small colleges outside of Indianapolis necessarily have the right local context in order to make an informed decision.”

For the first decade after Indiana created charter schools, the state had just two authorizers, Ball State and the Indianapolis mayor’s office. But in 2011, Indiana began allowing nonprofit universities to sponsor charters and created the statewide charter school board.

In the years since, Indiana has created laws that aim to prevent chronically failing schools from remaining open and new, weak schools from winning approval, according to Karega Rausch, acting president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. But none of those laws would prevent ReThink from pursuing a charter with another authorizer.

In fact, Indiana law has a specific provision allowing charter schools that have had their proposals rejected to resubmit or to seek a new authorizer.

Marcie Brown Carter, executive director of the Indiana Charter School Network, said it’s common for charter schools that are initially rejected because one piece of their proposal is weak to make improvements, apply again, and win approval. In this case, the state charter board didn’t appear to be encouraging them to reapply, she said.

“If they want to try again — which makes sense because the state board literally told them to go seek a charter — it would make sense to me that they would go approach other authorizers,” she said. “When that happens, authorizers typically … have quiet chats behind the scenes about what they saw as the pros and cons.”

McCormick questions Manual officials about high home-school numbers

2019-12-05T00:48:57+00:00

Indiana’s top education official pressed the manager of Emmerich Manual High School to explain why the Indianapolis campus had the highest proportion of students leaving to home-school of any traditional high school in the state.

“The students who are there, it sounds like good things are happening. But more than half [as many] are leaving to go to home-school,” State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick said at a meeting Wednesday. “There’s no other high school in Indiana that’s … close.”

Manual was the subject of a recent Chalkbeat investigation into the large numbers of students leaving without diplomas.

McCormick’s pointed questioning came during a State Board of Education discussion that was supposed to be focused on Emma Donnan. That Indianapolis middle school, like Manual, is managed by the Florida-based Charter Schools USA and expected to exit state takeover at the end of this school year. The board voted 8-1 to instruct Charter Schools USA to pursue a charter to continue running Donnan.

The only dissent was from McCormick, who raised questions about student attendance and turnover at Donnan and zeroed in on the high number of students leaving Manual. Sixty students who were expected to graduate in 2018 left Manual to home-school. The class had 83 graduates and six dropouts.

Because the state does not track whether students who leave to home-school continue their education, there’s growing concern among state leaders that the designation is distorting graduation rates and masking students who are, essentially, dropping out.

Charter Schools USA officials acknowledged the high numbers of students leaving to home-school, and said they are working to keep students in school.

Some board members applauded the work Charter Schools USA has done at Donnan, Manual, and Howe High School, a third campus in state takeover.

“The data is overwhelming. This is a success story,” said board member David Freitas. “We can nitpick and find little things, but we didn’t create Charter [Schools] USA to be the perfect system. But they have turned around the school.”

Wednesday’s vote was a victory for Charter Schools USA and a rejection of Indianapolis Public Schools last-minute proposal to hand management of Donnan to another charter operator under district oversight. But it is just one part of a longer process, and in order for a nonprofit associated with Charter Schools USA to keep control of the school, it must win approval from the Indiana Charter School Board.

The charter school board is expected to vote next week on charter applications for Donnan, Manual, and Howe. If the board does not approve the charters, the future of all three schools would end up back in the hands of the State Board of Education, which could give control back to Indianapolis Public Schools, close the schools, or pursue another option.

At the meeting, Donnan officials previewed the case they are likely to make to the charter board, focusing on the school’s strong test results. Passing rates on the combined math and English ILEARN exams at Donnan exceed district averages. Indianapolis Public Schools officials did not dispute the academic outcomes. Instead, they pointed to other factors they consider concerns, such as high teacher turnover and shrinking enrollment.

If IPS wins back control of Manual, the district would maintain oversight of the campus, but Christel House Academy, a nearby charter school, would move into the building. The proposal gives Indianapolis Public Schools an ally in their battle for control of all three schools — as Christel House is a long-standing and politically powerful charter network.

Charter Schools USA, however, is in a strong position because they have the support of many teachers, families, and alumni at all three campuses. The company’s CEO, Jon Hage, said that the schools are not perfect, and when it comes to students leaving to home-school, no one was trying to “scam the system.”

“There’s no evidence of wrongdoing purposely,” Hage said. “I mean, I don’t know if home-school is always the best choice, but it might be in some cases and parents do have to know the information.”

Manual administrators work directly with families who leave to home-school, knocking on their doors to follow up, said Mistry Ndiritu, who was principal of Manual until last year and is now turnaround school director for Noble Education Initiative, a nonprofit tied to Charter Schools USA.

When Manual families plan to leave to home-school, Ndiritu said, administrators provide information about homeschooling and “other opportunities within our community that allow them to attend on campus as well.”

IPS finds a powerful charter ally in its 11th hour bid to win back takeover schools

2019-12-04T03:00:56+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools has a powerful new ally in its last-minute campaign to win back control of three schools taken over by the state — and prevent a Florida-based charter manager from running the schools indefinitely.

Christel House Academy, a politically influential Indianapolis charter network, wants to relocate its southside school to Manual High School if oversight of that campus is returned to the district, IPS and Christel House officials told Chalkbeat Tuesday. Christel House would take over the campus through an innovation partnership, allowing the network to manage the school while the district monitors performance and gets credit for its enrollment and academic results.

“We’re going to work very hard over the next couple of weeks as these major decisions are made to show how committed we are,” said Bart Peterson, the president of Christel House International. “We want to provide an excellent education option to the current students and have the opportunity to grow on the southside — expand our footprint, have a bigger impact on children.”

Christel House’s southside school, which would relocate from its current campus less than a mile from Manual, currently serves about 650 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and runs a dropout recovery program for adults. Using the Manual campus to serve all ages could help fill a building that has space for significantly more students than roughly 700 it currently enrolls — and potentially make it more financially sustainable in the long-term.

Manual and two other schools — Howe High School and Emma Donnan Middle School — were taken over by the state in 2012 for poor academic outcomes. All three schools are expected to exit state control at the end of the school year.

A nonprofit associated with the current, state-appointed operator, Charter Schools USA, is seeking charters to continue running the schools under direction from the state board of education. The Indiana Charter Schools Board is expected to vote on the charters next week.

The district, however, is hoping that those charters will be denied. A recent Chalkbeat investigation cast significant doubt on the accuracy of the graduation rates at Manual and Howe, and the charter board may be persuaded that the proposal from Indianapolis Public Schools is a better alternative to the operator tied to Charter Schools USA.

District Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said that working with Christel House is a “really exciting opportunity for IPS” because of that school’s long history on the southside and “strong, consistent academic performance.”

IPS has not yet unveiled a plan for Howe, and Johnson said it “remains to be seen” what the district would do with that campus. But the revelation the district has found a potential partner at Manual suggests the IPS board might be open to a similar arrangement at Howe. And if the district regains control of Donnan, it would likely choose one of two charter managers to run the campus: Phalen Leadership Academies or Adelante Schools, IPS portfolio officer Jamie VanDeWalle said Monday.

Support from Christel House could be crucial in helping the district make the case that it should regain control of all three campuses lost to state takeover. One of the state’s longest-running charter networks, Christel House holds significant political sway because it was founded by local businesswoman and philanthropist Christel DeHaan and it is now led by Peterson, a former mayor of Indianapolis.

In addition to its southside campus, Christel House runs a charter school on the westside and a global network of private schools. The vast majority of the students at their Indianapolis schools come from low-income families, most are children of color, and more than a quarter are English language learners. The southside school currently has a C grade from the state, while the westside campus has a D.

Charter Schools USA, meanwhile, has received strong support from families and teachers in its bid to keep control of Manual, Howe, and Donnan. At a hearing held by the Indiana Charter School Board, roughly 50 speakers said they wanted the current operator to remain, while a small handful of opponents submitted written statements.

“My daughter gets up every day excited to go to school,” said Kim Hamilton, a parent at Howe. “The staff is wonderful.”

Some residents have also expressed concern that IPS would close Manual if it was returned to district control.

Indeed, Indianapolis Public Schools leaders have long suggested they would close the high schools if they were returned to district control. It was only later that a new IPS superintendent hinted that district leaders were open to innovation partnerships. And in March the state board of education approved a plan for the high schools to pursue charters and for Donnan to be managed through an innovation partnership between its current operator and the district.

But in the months since, Charter Schools USA has faced unexpected obstacles. In September, a Chalkbeat investigation revealed that both high schools have relatively large numbers of students labeled as leaving to home-school, which can help boost graduation rates.

At Manual, the class of 2018 numbered 83 graduates, six dropouts, and 60 students who left at some point during their high school years to be home-schooled. The state does not monitor whether the students leaving to home-school are continuing their education or have, essentially, dropped out.

Johnson said Chalkbeat’s reporting was one of the reasons she is concerned about Charter Schools USA. “I have questions around the level of integrity, quite honestly, that was demonstrated,” she said.

Last month, IPS announced that it would cut ties with the Charter Schools USA — which was running Donnan in partnership with the district — because of concerns, including high teacher turnover and shrinking enrollment.

A spokeswoman for Charter Schools USA, Colleen Reynolds, dismissed concerns raised by IPS in a lengthy statement issued last month. She said that Donnan had strong outcomes on state tests, and the district is willing to disrupt the lives of students and teachers for “political gain.”

If the Indiana Charter School Board does not approve the charters, the state board of education will reconsider what to do with the schools. If the district regains control of Donnan, it would go through a partner selection process to choose a replacement for Charter Schools USA.

One option, the Indianapolis-based Phalen charter network, is a well-known district partner: It was chosen to lead the first overhaul of a failing neighborhood campus as an innovation school. It now runs three schools on the eastside, including two in partnership with the district. And it’s four Indianapolis campuses have A grades from the state. The network, which brands itself as a turnaround operator, has expanded to 20 schools across the country, according to the website.

When VanDeWalle revealed the potential operators Monday, a teacher at Donnan refuted the implication that Phalen would be a better manager than Charter Schools USA.

“Don’t give us Phalen,” said Angie Hood, a second-grade teacher at Donnan. She pointed to the school’s state test results, which outpaced the district in students passing rate on the combined math and English ILEARN exams. “Look at our test data. They don’t want to talk about that, because it’s good,” Hood said.

The other potential manager, Adelante, is brand new. It would be the first school from Eddie Rangel, an Indianapolis educator who most recently led an elementary school in the Tindley charter network, and Matthew Rooney, a native of Indianapolis who previously led a charter school in New York City.

Charter Schools USA finds support for charter applications as critics stay silent at public hearing

2019-11-26T23:34:30+00:00

For nearly three hours Monday night, staff, parents, students, and alumni made the case that the operator of three Indianapolis schools that were taken over by the state should be granted charters to continue running them.

As one supporter after another spoke and the crowd slowly dwindled, the mood of the remaining people seemed increasingly buoyant, with students laughing and cheering as their classmates stepped up to the microphone in the Manual High School auditorium.

“My daughter gets up every day excited to go to school,” said Kim Hamilton, who has three children who have attended Howe High School. “The staff is wonderful.”

Although the roughly 50 speakers at the meeting were uniformly supportive of the schools receiving charters, the decision is controversial. Members of the Indiana Charter School Board, who were not present at the hearing, will receive public comments and those submitted in writing.

Howe, Manual, and Emma Donnan Middle School are expected to exit state takeover at the end of this school year. With that transition about six months away, the futures of the schools are still in limbo.

Monday’s hearing focused on whether the state charter board should grant approval for the schools to continue under the management of a group tied to Charter Schools USA, which would essentially cement their separation from Indianapolis Public Schools. The state charter board is expected to vote on the matter at a December 13 meeting.

If the charters are not approved, it is unclear what will happen to the campuses. The options, which would likely be left to the state board of education, could include returning the campuses to IPS control or closing them altogether.

Officials from IPS and the mayor’s office who had initially signed up to speak against the charters — as well as a contingent of neighbors who are critical of Charter Schools USA — submitted written comments.

IPS spokeswoman Carrie Cline Black said district staff decided written statements would be “more efficient” since the charter board members did not attend the hearing in person.

Ahmed Young, IPS chief of external affairs and general counsel, wrote in his statement that “IPS and countless community members wish for there to be local control of the buildings governed by the locally elected IPS Board of School Commissioners.”

Last week, IPS leaders scuttled a plan for the future of Donnan that would have allowed Charter Schools USA to continue managing the campus in partnership with the district. Now, IPS is seeking permission from the state to take control of the school and potentially bring in a different charter manager.

Young’s statement did not answer the crucial question of what IPS would do with the high schools if they were returned to district control. IPS officials have previously said they would close the campuses, but more recently, district leaders have hinted they may be willing to keep the campuses open — potentially, under the management of a different charter network.

Many of the speakers, however, feared the district would close the schools if it took control of them. Alice Glover, a 1961 graduate of Manual who is president of the alumni association, said that if Manual is not available to students, “a lot of them won’t graduate high school.”

“I don’t trust IPS to keep Manual open,” said Glover.

Even if the schools receive charters, however, they could face continuing challenges. Patrick McAlister, director of the mayor’s office of education innovation, said that if the schools had applied to his office for charters, he would have recommended rejecting them.

“I am concerned that the schools are not financially sustainable,” he wrote. “In Indiana, dollars follow the student. It’s not clear that CSUSA will come anywhere close to meeting the enrollment goals in its applications.”

The high schools are also facing additional scrutiny because a recent Chalkbeat investigation revealed that large numbers of Manual and Howe students have left without diplomas. Both high schools maintained higher graduation rates, however, because those students were categorized as leaving to home-school and left out of the state calculation.

That was one of several concerns about the school’s management raised by Laura Giffel, the president of the Bates-Hendricks Neighborhood Association, which is near Manual.

“I am fearful of their lack of honesty in our community,” wrote Giffel in a statement to the board that she shared with Chalkbeat. “The administration has proven itself loose with the truth.”

Charter Schools USA wants permission to stay in Indianapolis. Now is your chance to weigh in.

2019-11-22T23:31:13+00:00

Indianapolis residents will have the chance Monday to offer input on the fate of three city schools ahead of a decision that could determine if they remain in the hands of a Florida-based charter company.

The Indiana Charter Schools Board is expected to decide next month whether to grant charters so the schools can remain with the state-appointed manager, Charter Schools USA. If the board does not grant those charters, the future of the schools is uncertain — state officials could return them to Indianapolis Public Schools, close them, or find another solution.

The three schools — Howe and Manual high schools and Emma Donnan Middle School — have been under state control since 2012, and they are expected to transition out of takeover next year. Before the charter board decides whether to approve charters for the schools, Indianapolis Public Schools plans to make a last-minute plea to the state board of education for the return of Donnan, so the district can bring in a new, local manager. But IPS officials have been less clear about what role they hope to play at Howe and Manual.

In order for the charter network, known as CSUSA, to continue managing the schools, they must win the endorsement of the charter board. One potential concern is the strikingly high number of students who left Howe and Manual without diplomas, as uncovered in a recent Chalkbeat investigation.

Both schools have disproportionately large numbers of students labeled as leaving to home-school, and if those students had been included in the state graduation calculations, graduation rates likely would have plummeted. In the class of 2018, for example, Manual reported 83 graduates, six dropouts, and 60 students who left at some point during their high school years to be home-schooled. But many of those students may not be continuing their education at all, since the state does not track home-schooling.

Those numbers signal that “the distinction between home-school and dropout is really disappearing,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, in an interview with Chalkbeat earlier this year.

CSUSA officials told Chalkbeat that parents decide whether to home-school their children and attributed the high numbers to the “high-risk students” the schools educate.

The network will need to make the case to the charter board that it is serving students well, and the large numbers of students leaving Howe and Manual without diplomas could be a red flag.

Another potential hindrance came up this week. Indianapolis Public Schools abruptly decided to end its existing innovation partnership with CSUSA at Donnan — throwing a wrench in the plan for the collaboration to continue.

It’s unclear whether losing the alliance with the district will diminish CSUSA’s chances of gaining approval for its plan from the charter board.

“We are still trying to figure out what impact, if any, it has on our decision,” said James Betley, executive director of the Indiana Charter School Board. “It is a moving target right now.”

Betley said he is seeking more information from the district about why it wants to cut ties with CSUSA and how proposals from Howe and Manual to lease district buildings for $1 could financially affect IPS.

IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson, who described the large numbers of students leaving Howe and Manual to home-school as “very concerning,” said at a press briefing Tuesday that leaders are wrestling with what the future of the schools means for the district financially, what the community wants, and how the outcome will impact the stability of families.

IPS board member Diane Arnold said that at this point, the decision about the future of Howe and Manual is out of the district’s hands.

“We would like to have control of those facilities back,” Arnold said. “Then we will have to decide what the best course of action is — whether we’re looking for new innovation partners or whatever may come.”

The charter board will hold a hearing to gather public input at 5:30 p.m. on Monday at Emmerich Manual High School. It is expected to vote on the charters at a meeting on December 13.

Find how many students left your high school to home-school

2019-11-12T21:09:26+00:00

A loophole in state law could be masking high dropout rates at schools across Indiana.

More than 3,700 Indiana students who were expected to graduate last year instead left without diplomas. And most of them were clustered in just 61 of the state’s 507 high schools.

Those young adults were officially counted as leaving to home-school and were removed from the graduation calculations altogether. But Indiana officials don’t know which of those students are genuinely continuing their education at home and which are essentially dropping out. As a result, some schools continue to post top graduation rates even when dozens of students leave without earning diplomas — diminishing their future opportunities.

A Chalkbeat investigation into how schools can write off struggling students as home-schoolers featured an Indiana mom who said her son intended to drop out of Manual High School in Indianapolis, but was instead categorized as a home-schooler. And in Muncie, where officials say they are aiming to reduce the number of students leaving to home-school, the high school principal said students who intended to pursue options such as online or adult education had previously been labeled as leaving to home-school.

Many of the schools with large numbers of students leaving to home-school relative to graduates are alternative schools designed to serve struggling students and virtual schools in which classes take place online. But others are comprehensive high schools in communities across Indiana. For example, Northview High School, outside Terre Haute, reported that its class of 2018 numbered 181 graduates, one dropout, and 65 students who left at some point during their high school years to be home-schooled, according to data from the Indiana Department of Education.

In other words, for every 50 Northview students who graduated, 18 left to home-school — one of the highest rates in Indiana.

Our searchable database shows how many students from the class of 2018 left to-home school, dropped out, and graduated.

Source: Indiana Department of Education

*The department of education did not provide data for some schools to protect student privacy.

Over 1,000 students have left this Indiana district to home-school. Can it solve its hidden dropout problem?

2019-11-12T21:07:12+00:00

On paper, Muncie Central High School appears to be rising to the challenges of Indiana’s changing economy. As education becomes more essential for finding good jobs, the high school posted a graduation rate of 94%.

But because of a loophole in state law, that figure hides the fact that more than 100 students who were expected to graduate last year left the school without diplomas.

That group — though officially classified as leaving to home-school rather than dropping out — likely included struggling students who were not on track to graduate and teens the school incorrectly categorized when they left for alternative education options, according to state and Muncie school officials.

Out of all high schools in the state, Muncie Central recorded the highest number of students in the class of 2018 leaving to home-school. If those students were counted as dropouts, Muncie Central’s grad rate would fall to 68% — a drop of about 26 percentage points.

This problem is creating an underground pipeline of teens who aren’t prepared for careers and fueling the economic struggles of a city hollowed out by the decline of auto manufacturing in Indiana. Changes in technology and the economy mean that middle-class careers in Muncie now require education, leaving young adults who lack diplomas with limited opportunities.

“You are getting a set of students who are not going to be prepared to thrive in a 21st-century economy,” said Muncie School Board President James Williams. “They are going to be on the fringes of our economy.”

Even as Indiana policymakers say they want to hold high schools more responsible for preparing students for college and careers, a Chalkbeat investigation has revealed that state education officials have no way to monitor how many of these teens slip through the cracks — and leaders have allowed the problem to persist for years in schools such as Muncie Central.

Nearly a decade ago, The Star Press in Muncie revealed that a spike in the number of students leaving to home-school helped boost the graduation rate in the district. Between the classes of 2006 and 2009, the paper reported, the number of Muncie students leaving to home-school rose from 11 to 146.

Despite that scrutiny, however, the high numbers have persisted — with more than 1,000 students who were expected to graduate in the years since 2010 instead leaving to home-school. Those students were enrolled in Muncie Central and Muncie Southside High School, which is closed.

Now, Muncie schools have new leaders — including Williams — who were installed after state lawmakers handed control of the financially troubled district to Ball State University in 2018. And those officials have already started putting in place procedures to stem the tide of students leaving to home-school.

Lee Ann Kwiatkowski, the district’s newly hired CEO, outlined in emails the steps the district is taking this year to educate high schoolers who are struggling and ensure that parents who withdraw their children to home-school have education plans — going beyond state requirements.

“Parents have the right to choose the best option of schooling for their child,” Kwiatkowski wrote. But she described Muncie Central as “an excellent option for students” with strong teachers, extracurricular activities, diversity, and several pathways for students to prepare for college or careers.

Muncie Central, which has a C rating from the state, is one of dozens of high schools where significant numbers of students left without diplomas over the past several years.

A Chalkbeat analysis of Indiana Department of Education data found that most teenagers who left to home-school were clustered in just 61 of the state’s 507 high schools in the class of 2018. Other campuses on that list include alternative schools designed for students who struggle and troubled schools under intense pressure to improve, such as Howe and Manual high schools, which were the focus of the recent Chalkbeat investigation.

Indiana lawmakers passed legislation earlier this year that aims to reduce the number of students labeled as leaving to home-school at some schools and improve the accuracy of grad data. But education officials have not implemented it yet, and it’s unclear whether it goes far enough to significantly reduce the problem.

Grad rates are one of the most public measures of success for high schools and drive their state evaluations, making results high stakes. That’s especially important for Muncie, which loses hundreds of students to neighboring districts.

Muncie Central Principal Chris Walker said in an interview with Chalkbeat in June that the school does not mislabel students as leaving to home-school to inflate the Muncie grad rate, but he did acknowledge the pressure Indiana high schools face.

“One of the charges I have as principal of the high school is to ensure, obviously, that the largest number of students we possibly can are graduating,” said Walker, who took over in 2016. “But we also need to make sure that we have as high a graduation rate as we possibly can.”

Walker said students who planned to pursue other educational programs — including high school equivalency preparation, virtual schools, or adult education — were labeled as leaving to home-school, which he believed was appropriate. Very few students are “just coming in and giving up and saying, ‘Hey, I’m withdrawing. I’m done. Count me as a dropout,’” Walker said. “They’re wanting the next alternative.”

But those withdrawals should not be coded as home-schooling, according to the Indiana Department of Education. Some of them, such as students who pursue high school equivalency preparation, should be categorized as dropping out. Others should be labeled as transfer students, who are removed from the graduating class if they enroll in another school.

Kwiatkowski said that since she took over the district in July, she cannot speak to past practices. But she said the district has reviewed the exit codes and is using them correctly.

Another Muncie official attributed the departures from school in part to the city’s working-class history, built by generations of manufacturing workers who didn’t need high school diplomas to secure good jobs. That culture takes time to change, said Jo Ann McCowan, the district director of career, curriculum, and assessment, who has worked in education for over 30 years.

“When a parent and a student come in to withdraw from school, you can’t hardly talk them out of it,” McCowan told Chalkbeat in June. If school officials refuse to let a student drop out, she added, “Many of the parents will tell you on their own, ‘Well, we’re going to home-school.’”

For parents to withdraw their children to home-school, Indiana law only requires them to submit a form.

Located about an hour outside of Indianapolis, Muncie is a former industrial hub where the population has been declining for decades. Ball State, a campus with about 23,000 students, and IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital are the largest employers.

The remaining manufacturing industry has changed: In 1970, more than two out of five U.S. manufacturing jobs went to employees without high school diplomas. The majority of manufacturing workers now, however, have at least some college.

“We still have a strong manufacturing industry, but it’s different,” said Jay Julian, president and CEO of the Muncie-Delaware County Chamber of Commerce. “The days of graduating high school and going into a low-skill, high-wage job are gone.”

In Muncie, the median household income is $33,000 — more than $23,000 below the state average, according to census data. High school graduates earn just $22,000 per year. And nearly a third of adults without high school diplomas live in poverty.

It’s a struggle Jordan Harris has lived through. In high school, he expected to graduate and get a job at General Motors. But in 2004, he became so discouraged he dropped out to work at Taco Bell. With Muncie’s low cost of living, working in fast food can pay the bills — but just barely.

“I haven’t been saving up for retirement. I have no medical insurance. My dental health is failing,” said Harris, 33, who recently returned to school to earn his diploma and become a pharmacy technician. “You get your head underwater — it’s really hard to get it back above.”

With the changing demands of the economy, it’s essential for students to have a high school education and many students who leave Muncie Central to home-school are not on track to graduate, said Williams, the school board president appointed by Ball State in 2018.

“Statewide, we have too many kids, in my view, who are checking out of public education for all the wrong reasons,” said Williams, a former circuit court judge. “It’s frankly unacceptable.”

The issue came to a head earlier this year. At the state level, policymakers began to scrutinize distorted grad rates and passed the law designed to tackle the problem. Meanwhile, Williams was troubled to learn from a district enrollment tally how many juniors and seniors in high school were leaving to home-school.

This year, Muncie school officials have begun a new approach designed to keep more students in school. Kwiatkowski said by email that the school system is overhauling programs for students who might consider leaving and the process for students to withdraw to home-school.

Muncie Central created an alternative program with a flexible schedule to help students graduate that enrolls about 35 students, according to Kwiatkowski. The district also modified an online learning program to require students to come to school weekly to meet with an instructor.

At the same time, officials have made it more difficult for students to leave to home-school. If parents wish to withdraw their children from Muncie schools to home-school, the district asks them to provide the curriculum plan for math, English, science, and social studies, according to Kwiatkowski. School staff discuss possible supports and “reiterate that we believe Muncie remains the best option,” she wrote.

Even in the first few months, the approach has drastically cut the number of students leaving to home-school, according to Kwiatkowski. Last year, 53 students left to home-school between the start of the school year and October 7.

During the same period this year, zero students left to home-school.

Hidden dropouts: How Indiana schools can write off struggling students as home-schoolers

2019-09-17T22:00:17+00:00

Almost from the start, Tyris struggled at Indianapolis’ Emmerich Manual High School.

His teachers continually wrote him up for transgressions like using his phone, refusing to do work, and putting his head down on his desk. There were a few bright spots — a teacher he was close with, a gym class he liked so much he purposely flunked it to take it again. By the spring of his junior year, however, Tyris had failed so many classes that he had earned just 16 credits, a fraction of the 40 needed to graduate.

“It did break my heart,” Tyris’ mother, Candy, said after finding out in the spring that he had stopped attending regularly. “I think at that point, whatever he decided to do I was OK with.”

So Candy, who never finished high school herself, reluctantly went to the school office and filled out the paperwork she assumed would let her son drop out.

But in the eyes of Manual High School, Tyris did not drop out. According to records Candy obtained from the school at Chalkbeat’s request, Tyris was recorded as leaving Manual to be home-schooled, a designation that could help boost the school’s graduation rate.

A Chalkbeat analysis of Indiana Department of Education data found that of the roughly 3,700 Indiana high school students in the class of 2018 officially recorded as leaving to home-school, more than half were concentrated in 61 of the state’s 507 high schools — campuses where the ratio of students leaving to home-school to those earning diplomas was far above the state average. Those striking numbers suggest that Indiana’s lax regulation of home schooling and its method for calculating graduation rates are masking the extent of many schools’ dropout problems.

“There’s no accountability or follow up or monitoring” of students who leave public education to home-school, said Robert Kunzman, managing director of the International Center for Home Education Research and a professor of education at Indiana University. “That’s clearly working against children’s interests.”

When students are recorded as leaving to home-school in Indiana, they’re left out of a school’s graduation calculations, as though they never attended at all. This can improve schools’ graduation rates, which can help them earn higher letter grades on Indiana’s accountability measures and avoid intervention. At the same time, Indiana does little to ensure children and teens are genuinely educated at home. Home-schoolers don’t need to register, take state tests, or provide documentation of their education.

Put simply, there is no way to know how many Indiana students recorded as leaving high school for home schooling are getting any kind of education — and plenty of opportunity and incentive for schools to take advantage of the system.

Indiana lawmakers have taken steps this year to increase scrutiny of schools with large numbers of students leaving to home-school, but critics say a new law doesn’t go far enough. A handful of other states have faced the issue as well, though the scope of the problem is unknown, and advocates disagree about what should be done.

It’s unclear why Tyris — who asked that his last name not be used — was recorded as leaving Manual to home-school. Officials with Charter Schools USA, the for-profit operator that has run Manual since low test scores led to state takeover in 2012, would not comment on specific cases, citing privacy reasons.

The school stood out in Chalkbeat’s analysis of students leaving high school for home schooling. Manual reported that its class of 2018 numbered 83 graduates, six dropouts, and 60 students who left at some point during their high school years to be home-schooled.

“What? Yeah, there is no way,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, when presented with the data on Manual. “It sounds like the distinction between home-school and dropout is really disappearing,” she added.

Charter Schools USA officials and former school leaders stressed that no one is urged to leave, that home schooling is a parental choice, that the school lays out a range of options, and that parents often choose home schooling to avoid consequences from truancy or behavioral issues.

Colleen Reynolds, a company spokeswoman, attributed the high number of students exiting to home-school at Manual and at another low-performing Indianapolis school the company operates, Thomas Carr Howe Community High School, to the schools’ “exponentially high number of high-risk students.” Still, officials are concerned about the large numbers and introduced a new initiative this year to address them, Reynolds wrote in an emailed response to questions.

“Our ultimate goal,” she wrote, “is to have every student graduate.”

Rising grad rates — and more home-schoolers

Manual is one of the oldest high schools in Indianapolis and was once known for its vocational education. But it was hit hard by enrollment declines that rippled across Indianapolis Public Schools and lost about half its students between 2005 and 2011.

After years of low test scores, Manual was one of several campuses the state seized control of in 2012. Indiana officials brought in Florida-based Charter Schools USA, which operates 87 schools in six states, to attempt to improve Manual, Howe, and an Indianapolis middle school. The campuses are not charter schools, but the state severed them from the district and took on oversight.

Tyris enrolled at Manual four years into this experiment.

He started having problems almost immediately, according to records Candy shared with Chalkbeat that catalogued his behavior and attention issues. “Tyris refused to do his work today. He put his head down and wouldn’t respond,” wrote a teacher in the spring of his freshman year. “This behavior is becoming routine.” Yet there were glimmers of hope. A report described Tyris as polite, and his gym teacher called him a “model student.”

Tyris received special education services at Manual. He was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, oppositional disorder, and depressive disorder, according to a special education case conference report from 2017. Candy said Tyris also has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

In his sophomore year, Tyris had a teacher he was especially close to, and that made school better, he recalled. He liked talking with her, and she would make sure he knew what he needed to do to pass classes, Tyris said. But she eventually left for another job.

From Candy’s perspective, Manual failed Tyris. Staff were constantly calling her over what she considered petty disagreements with him, asking her to pick him up from school, she said.

“They didn’t care enough,” Candy said.

Though Candy urged Tyris to take online credit recovery classes to catch up during his junior year, he saw little hope in continuing at Manual.

“I felt like there was no point in me going, because I wasn’t going to pass,” Tyris said.

After the school called to let her know his absences stretched into weeks, Candy decided to let her 17-year-old drop out. At least then, she reasoned, he could get a job.

Manual High School in Indianapolis recorded the highest proportion of students who left to home-school, compared to 2018 graduates, out of all traditional high schools in the state, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

When students want to leave Manual, school staff walk families through their options, then-principal Misty Ndiritu told Chalkbeat in an interview in May.

As required by the state, Ndiritu said the school informs prospective dropouts of the negative consequences of that choice, including that students who drop out earn significantly less money, are more likely to land in prison, and cannot get a driver’s license until they turn 18.

When students leave to home-school, staff tell parents they are taking on the responsibility to educate their children, Ndiritu said. Manual does not label students as leaving to home-school to boost its graduation rate, she said.

“A family has a choice to go through and sign dropout forms, to sign out to home-school, to transfer out of state, to transfer to adult ed,” Ndiritu said. “We just do our best to educate them on what options they have and listen to what issues may be causing them to leave our school and make recommendations to them.”

According to Candy, that didn’t happen the day she withdrew Tyris. She said the school receptionist gave her paperwork to sign, and she was done in minutes. Only later, Candy said, did she learn that Tyris was recorded as leaving Manual to home-school, after she sought her son’s educational records at Chalkbeat’s request.

In fulfilling her records request, the school provided Candy a form saying Tyris was leaving to home-school. The front page of the form includes her name, Tyris’, and their contact information. In a box saying where he is transferring, someone wrote in “homeschool,” and the bottom of the page outlines the legal requirements for home-schooling, such as that students have 180 days of instruction. Candy said the handwriting on the form is not hers, although she said the back does bear her signature. The space for the principal’s signature is blank.

Reynolds of Charter Schools USA wrote that while she cannot discuss Tyris specifically, under the previous policy, the registrar would customarily complete the “demographics section” of withdrawal forms.

“No parent is required to sign a home school form,” Reynolds added. “If a parent signs a form, it must be legally assumed that they have read and agree with whatever is on the form.”

Candy, however, said she does not recall seeing the form before getting it with Tyris’ school records, and she did not discuss home schooling with any staff from Manual.

“There’s no way in a million years I would agree to home schooling,” said Candy, who says she has a hard time helping her children with homework. “What am I going to do to be able to help them?”

Another Manual parent and educator told Chalkbeat the school pushed the home schooling option on his family. Kevin Leineweber was a teacher at the school in 2016-17 when he said his foster son, a Manual student, briefly ran away. Leineweber said he got an email from a school official asking him to withdraw him to home-school.

“I obviously wasn’t withdrawing him for home schooling because I didn’t even know where he was,” said Leineweber, who ignored the suggestion. He also ignored another withdrawal form he received in the mail that summer, which he said was filled out and awaiting his signature.

Ndiritu, the former Manual principal, declined to discuss specific cases. She left the school this summer to take on a new role: She is now turnaround school director for Noble Education Initiative, a nonprofit with ties to Charter Schools USA that is the day-to-day operator of the company’s Indiana campuses.

In the seven years since the state took over Manual and turned management over to Charter Schools USA, some problems persist: Teachers continue to rotate in and out, and many students have discipline problems, are persistently absent, or transfer in or out mid-year, according to state data.

There have, though, been gains in that time. Most notably, the school’s state letter grade has risen from an F to a C. One factor in that grade is graduation rates, which have improved at Manual to 78% in 2018 up from 69% in 2012, the year before the school was taken over.

Manual achieved that increase while having the highest proportion of students who left to home-school, compared to graduates, out of all traditional high schools in the state, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

If every student on the books as exiting for home schooling were counted as a dropout, Manual’s graduation rate could have plummeted to 50%. If even one-third of them were counted as dropouts, the school’s graduation rate could have dropped to 66%.

High stakes for Charter Schools USA

For many families, home schooling is a welcome and effective alternative to traditional schools.

About 1.7 million children are home-schooled in the U.S., according to a survey from the National Center for Education Statistics, a number that grew rapidly during the early 2000s. The same survey found that 15% of children who are home-schooled don’t have a parent who has completed high school. That’s a shift from a time when families who home-school were typically more educated, said Coleman of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.

Nationally, it’s impossible to draw broad conclusions about outcomes for students who are educated at home because it is so loosely regulated and tracked.

Concerns about whether students recorded as leaving to home-school are truly getting an education, meanwhile, have arisen in a handful of other states. They include Texas, where advocates have repeatedly raised alarms that the state is undercounting students who drop out; Kentucky, where a state report last year found the number of students leaving to home-school climbed when districts raised the dropout age from 16 to 18; and Florida, where the state department of education recently reprimanded a district leader for allegedly instructing staff to inaccurately code students who withdraw as moving to home-school.

In Indiana, the number of high schoolers recorded as leaving to home-school has been declining in recent years. But at some schools, including Manual and Howe high schools, the numbers are rising.

While the number of graduates at Manual has fluctuated over the last six years under Charter Schools USA’s management, the number of students leaving to home-school has more than tripled.

The other Indianapolis high school managed by Charter Schools USA, Howe, also saw a big increase in its graduation rate, accompanied by a large number of students leaving to home-school.

The graduation rate at Howe jumped to 92% last year, the highest rate in over a decade. But if students who left to home-school are included in the calculation, the rate could have dropped 17 percentage points. The school had 56 graduates, 14 students who left to home-school, and zero dropouts in the class of 2018, according to state records.

Of the 14 students who left Howe to home-school, 13 were seniors.

In an interview this spring, then-Howe Principal Lloyd Knight said school officials never suggest students withdraw, and many families are familiar with leaving to home-school as an option from prior schools.

When parents are cited for truancy, they will often withdraw their children to home-school to avoid having to go to court, said Knight, who left Howe this summer for a job with another Indianapolis charter network.

But Knight also said there are situations where it might be appropriate for a student to leave to home-school. “If a student is struggling with behavior at a mighty rate, and there’s other interventions that have been put in place and things like that, there have been times when we say, ‘Hey, you know, home-school may be an option for you,’ ” Knight said.

Reynolds, the Charter Schools USA spokeswoman, attributes the unusually large numbers of students leaving to home-school to the population of the schools. “They unfortunately have the highest number of students who either have been transferred to us from other institutions or who believe we are the last chance,” she wrote. “Usually this decision is made based on personal situations such as pregnancy or need to work to support the family.”

But several campuses with comparable populations don’t report nearly as many students leaving to home-school as Howe and Manual. At nearby Arsenal Technical High School, 335 students graduated, 57 dropped out, and six left to home-school from the class of 2018. At Roosevelt High School, a campus in Gary that was taken over by the state at the same time as Howe and Manual, 51 students graduated, 36 dropped out, and three left to home-school.

Reynolds said Manual instituted a new policy this school year requiring parents to meet with an administrator before withdrawing their children to home-school. She said school leaders “recognized that there were some potential gaps” after meeting with state officials in light of a new law singling out schools with high numbers of students leaving to home-school.

It’s a pivotal time for both Manual and Howe. State oversight of the schools is coming to an end. And in a show of confidence in Charter Schools USA, the state board of education voted in March to instruct the company to seek charters that would allow it to continue running the campuses next year.

Although state education officials oversee the schools, state education board Chair B.J. Watts said he was not aware of how many students at Howe and Manual were leaving to home-school until Chalkbeat requested an interview for this story. He described the numbers as “alarming.”

“That’s a big number, and we want to make sure that we understand what’s happening there,” Watts said.

As the schools pursue charters, however, they could draw new scrutiny. The large number of students leaving to home-school could cast doubts on the high schools’ improvement, said former Indiana schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz, a Democrat who campaigned against state takeover in 2012.

“They’ve been showing improvement on paper,” Ritz said. “But it doesn’t give a clear picture of, perhaps, what’s going on.”

‘Our system has failed them’

The number of Indiana students, particularly high school seniors, leaving to home-school has captured state lawmakers’ attention. A bill last legislative session would have changed graduation rates to count those students as dropouts.

“Our system has failed them,” said Rep. Bob Behning, an Indianapolis Republican who chairs the House Education Committee. “Their opportunities in life are going to be significantly diminished, especially when it comes to income, by not having a high school diploma.”

Ultimately, however, lawmakers substantially weakened the bill. Home-schooling supporters don’t want families who provide a thorough education to be lumped in with those who let their children drop out of school. At the same time, traditional public school advocates are worried schools will be penalized when students leave to home-school, which could hurt the accountability grades of high schools.

Lawmakers instead approved a much narrower plan that requires high schools with large numbers of students leaving to home-school to demonstrate “good cause” to the state board before removing them from the graduation calculations. High schools with more than 100 students in the graduating class will face extra scrutiny if more than 5% leave to home-school and those students are not on track to earn diplomas. For schools with 100 or fewer students in the graduating class, the threshold is 10%.

State officials are still working out how they will determine “good cause” and enforce the new law. But they say their intervention in schools is unlikely to include the kind of in-person interviews with students and parents that would reveal the experience behind the paperwork.

“At the end of the day, we are not going to interfere between a conversation or communication between a school guidance counselor and a parent or family,” said Ron Sandlin, senior director of school performance and transformation for the state board of education.

Instead, lawmakers and officials say they hope shining a light on the issue will be enough to deter any potential abuse and push communities to pay attention to how many students are leaving their high schools without diplomas.

Indiana’s legislation may be a politically palatable way to mitigate the problem, said Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, which conducts research and provides support for increasing graduation rates. But he believes focusing on whether schools fulfill paperwork requirements is not good enough.

“The state needs to really be invested in getting accurate measures of how many people are actually earning diplomas,” Balfanz said. “If our public education system is not graduating our kids positioned to support families, that undermines whole communities.”

For Tyris, the future remains uncertain. When he turns 18 this fall, he plans to get a job in landscaping or working in a warehouse. And recently, he started talking about enrolling in virtual school, which gave his mom a little burst of hope and pride. But he’s still far from graduating.

Charter Schools USA officials say school staff follow up with Manual students who leave to home-school to encourage them to finish school, whether at Manual or an alternative program.

Candy said she heard from the school several times during the summer break, but they weren’t checking in on Tyris.

They were calling to recruit her younger son, who was entering ninth grade.