Chalkbeat

Work first, college degree later: Indiana wants students to consider a new postsecondary model

2026-08-20T11:00:00+00:00

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Driving a school bus allowed Carly Kendall to see her daughter off to school every day, while balancing her service in the National Guard.

But once her daughter was older, Kendall wanted to start a career. She found one via an apprenticeship program for veterans at First Merchants Bank that allowed her to leverage her military experience in HR. This month, Kendall was promoted to a role overseeing the bank’s apprenticeship programs, including a new one led by the Financial Services Academy that’s rolling out in 20 Indiana high schools this fall.

Kendall said banks are well-suited to guide students through apprenticeship pathways because they offer a variety of roles and departments, as well as room for growth.

“You expect that you’re going in there to deposit your checks and get money out,” said Kendall, who’s also pursuing associate and bachelor’s degrees. “With the apprenticeships, the goal is that they’ll see there are so many different opportunities.”

Training on the job is also the foundation of Indiana’s new vision for postsecondary education. The state’s goal is to help more students land high-paying jobs without debt in fields that are projecting workforce shortages, such as manufacturing and healthcare.

Instead of going directly to college, the state wants more students to immediately enter the workforce through apprenticeship and internship programs that they begin in high school. Their employers would not only pay to train those students for entry-level jobs, but also possibly for continuing education, like credentials or training that could lead to promotions. Degrees would come later — as a means of advancement, rather than a prerequisite for employment.

Indiana is considered a national leader in this approach, as more employers seek workers with specific skills and training, said Taylor White, director of postsecondary pathways for youth at New America’s Center on Education and Labor.

But the state’s vision requires buy-in from students, families, and employers. While there’s bipartisan support for apprenticeship, in practice, these models have struggled to attract the thousands of students they promise. And not every industry is prepared to hire students who don’t have college degrees.

Indiana officials think the state can do better. This school year, schools and employer associations will launch the first Indiana Career Apprenticeship Programs, or INCAP, to train high schoolers and adults for jobs in fields like banking, construction, and advanced manufacturing.

This launch dovetails with a new mission for Ivy Tech Community College that will focus on workforce development and growing more programs that are paid for by employers.

To support these initiatives, the state is also pursuing a new framework to ensure that students who get workforce training can go to college later — akin to passing a baton in a relay race, said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

“How can we ensure we’re not dropping as many batons as we’re dropping today?” Jenner said. “What does that handoff look like so that students can … be on a path that makes sense for them?”

First, help students graduate directly into the workforce

Since the state approved new graduation requirements in 2024, Indiana high schools have been ramping up programs that allow students to earn work experience.

INCAP adds to those offerings through paid two- and three-year apprenticeships in which students spend several days every week training on the job with an employer. The curriculum is developed by one of INCAP’s Industry Talent Associations, which are made up of businesses in fields like construction, advanced manufacturing, and healthcare.

“The big differentiator for these INCAP programs is that they are developed by industry, and so they are reflecting what Indiana employers say that they need today and think they’re going to need down the road,” said Claire Fiddian-Green, president and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, which is funding and leading the development of INCAP.

Students who complete the INCAP high school pathway will earn the state’s new Employment Honors Plus seal on their diplomas, as well as the INCAP Apprenticeship Program credential

— which INCAP envisions as being transferable not just to other employers, but to state universities, much like advanced coursework.

In the banking pathway, high school apprentices will earn a retail banking certificate, allowing them to immediately compete for the same jobs that a recent college graduate is applying for, said Chris Fisher, CEO of the Financial Services Academy. (Kendall oversees INCAP at First Merchants Bank.)

After graduating high school, students can also stay in the INCAP pathway and earn a degree that’s equivalent to a four-year college degree, said Fiddian-Green.

These new degrees will derive their equivalency from the Indiana Qualifications Framework, a forthcoming system that will categorize every degree and credential program in the state into levels that show what skills students have.

The framework is Indiana’s answer to questions about how students who enter apprenticeships and career-training programs will get recognition for their skills from other employers, or transfer them to colleges and universities later.

“We want to make sure that we’re not creating a pathway where there are dead ends,” Fiddian-Green said.

Nationally, more employers are touting this kind of skills-based hiring, said White of New America.

In some industries like healthcare or advanced manufacturing, that’s relatively straightforward, White said. But in industries where skills are less technical, the transition has been less smooth.

“Companies say that’s a great idea, and we’re on board, but the data says they’re hiring people with bachelor’s degrees anyway,” White said.

Later, help workers get a degree without debt

Starting work first likely doesn’t mean skipping college entirely.

Under Indiana’s plan, students could earn a degree later — and their employers might pay for them to do so.

A good degree pathway for older students would give them credit for work experience, said Beth Doyle of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning. Without that, returning students can find themselves in classes for skills they already have, potentially adding years to their education and making it more difficult to earn the credential.

Tuition paid upfront by an employer also helps with costs — the biggest barrier to higher education for many students, Doyle said.

“As things accelerate technologically and in other ways, people are going to need ongoing training, and we can’t assume that they’re going to leave high school knowing what they want to do for the rest of their life,” Doyle said.

White, of New America, said research suggests that young people are increasingly skeptical of a four-year degree, but more open to shorter courses of postsecondary education.

“None of us think you don’t need any college at all — that’s naive,” White said of researchers studying the future of work. “Apprenticeship, when linked well, can be a sort of different route into postsecondary education that allows young people to get different skills before they’re asked to make very expensive and consequential decision.”

A new mission for Ivy Tech Community College could play a role alongside INCAP’s apprenticeship credentials.

Earlier this year, lawmakers codified Ivy Tech’s role as the “workforce engine” of the state.

College leaders say that means aligning existing programs to employer needs, as well as expanding Achieve Your Degree programs, in which companies pay upfront for their employees to take approved courses that can lead to a degree from Ivy Tech.

The program is not new — Cook Medical, a manufacturing company, has sponsored more than 500 Ivy Tech students through its AYD partnership since 2016, with around 127 earning credentials. But college leaders see more students taking this path as a way to make postsecondary education more affordable and meaningful.

“I don’t think the future of college is necessarily this linear pathway of two years, then four years. I think it can be students wanting to get those stackable credentials, get into the workforce, make some good wages, possibly continue on at Ivy Tech with an associate’s degree, and then somewhere down the road, a bachelor’s degree,” said Martin Pollio, Ivy Tech’s president.

At least some schools with a college preparatory focus are trying to balance both.

Herron-Riverside High School, a college preparatory charter school in Indianapolis that focuses on classical education, is launching a workforce training partnership with Vincennes University in fields like aviation, welding, cybersecurity, and advanced manufacturing. The school is also part of the Riverside Education District, which is in the midst of a $137 million investment in career training and literacy.

Head of school Emanuel Harper doesn’t see career training as contrary to the school’s classical education philosophy of helping students to understand culture and history in order to become productive members of society, Harper said.

“One of the ways to do that is to go to college to continue to deepen one’s understanding of self and society,” said Emanuel Harper, Herron-Riverside’s head of school. “Another even more immediate way to be a productive member of society is to go to the workforce to apply those skills … in the career field.”

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

Why the Classic Learning Test, which embraces Aristotle but spurns calculators, has caught Indiana’s eye

2026-04-03T11:00:00+00:00

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

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

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

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

The elevation of the CLT follows state leaders’ decision in 2024 to mandate “intellectual diversity” in Indiana higher education, a move seen by many as a boon to conservatives on campuses, as well as previous years’ efforts to change history instruction that could make students feel guilt or blame for the past. This year, lawmakers also required higher education leaders to explore alternative university accrediting options — in line with other conservative states.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do Classic Learning Test scores stack up?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the CLT factors into school quality, college readiness

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

A handful of private colleges in Indiana — along with around 300 nationwide — already accept the CLT scores, and the U.S. military academies soon will too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indiana colleges and universities eliminate or merge hundreds of degrees

2026-04-01T19:07:35+00:00

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Indiana’s public colleges and universities will eliminate or suspend 210 degree programs due to low graduation rates, higher education officials announced Wednesday, as part of a state-mandated review of degrees that don’t attract enough students.

The Commission on Higher Education and all seven public universities in Indiana reviewed more than 1,000 degree programs that failed to graduate enough students as defined by a 2025 law. Almost half of these programs will be allowed to continue while they build enrollment.

But 210 programs will be eliminated or suspended, and another 370 will be merged or consolidated into similar degree programs as part of the process prescribed by the law, HEA 1001. The goal is to align programs to student interests, officials said.

“We all know that students have been voting with their feet since the Great Recession,” said Matt Butler, senior associate commissioner and chief academic officer, who presented the degree recommendations to the commission.

The number of students affected by the changes is relatively small. In total, the 1,056 programs officials reviewed enroll only around 4% of Indiana’s college students. The nearly 600 programs targeted for suspension or elimination enroll just 0.6% of all students in Indiana.

Programs were targeted for review based on a three-year rolling average of their number of graduates. The threshold was set at 10 graduates for an associate’s degree, 15 graduates for a bachelor’s degree, seven graduates for a master’s degree, and three graduates for a doctorate.

Students who are currently enrolled in programs targeted for suspension will be allowed to complete their degrees, but the programs must stop enrolling new students. Programs are typically eliminated after these teach-outs are complete.

See the list of all degree programs affected by institution below.

The vote on Wednesday builds on a voluntary decision last summer by state universities to eliminate, suspend, merge, or consolidate around 372 programs — a process that Butler described as “clearing the cobwebs.”

In total, since June 2025, universities have taken some kind of action on 1,279 programs — most of which were under-enrolled. By the end of the 2026-27 school year, 661 programs will be streamlined, according to the presentation to the commission — around 58% are mergers or consolidations, 26% are suspensions, and 17% are eliminations.

Indiana’s public universities will still offer around 1,700 degree programs after 2026-27, officials said.

“Students and their families invest significant time, money, and trust into postsecondary education, and they deserve confidence that programs are viable, aligned with student interests and workforce needs, and positioned to deliver real outcomes,” Education Secretary Katie Jenner said in a release. “By right‐sizing degree pathways across the state, we can continue to strengthen higher education in Indiana through increased transparency and improved alignment with student interests and real career opportunities.”

The review of programs with few graduates is separate from a forthcoming review of low-earning programs in Indiana as mandated by legislation adopted this year, SEA 199.

The state expects to begin that review after finalizing the enrollment review. But the timeline depends in part on when the federal government provides a list of programs that fail to raise graduates’ earnings above those of a typical high school graduate’s. The state expects that list in 2027.

Jenner — who oversees both K-12 and higher education in the state — said she expects the commission to allow some low-earning programs to continue after that review.

Many of the low-earning programs flagged by the U.S. Department of Education will come from for-profit institutions in Indiana, which the commission does not oversee, she said.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that 210 degree programs were eliminated or suspended.

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

As Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars program grows, there are new higher education challenges

2025-10-07T11:00:00+00:00

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Before she became a career coach at Vincennes University or graduated from the University of Southern Indiana, Raychel Geiser got crucial help from a state program that’s over three decades old: 21st Century Scholars.

Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars program allows students who meet eligibility requirements to receive a two- or four-year scholarship that pays up to 100% tuition at a public Indiana college or university and partial tuition at private colleges.

Geiser, 28, whose family struggled with finances and substance abuse, said that not only has she benefited from the program, but so have her six siblings. All of their lives, she said, “have been changed drastically because of that opportunity.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to go to college” without the scholarship, Geiser said. “That’s how I got my degree and then landed my current job.”

Since it began in 1990, the 21st Century Scholars program has helped more than 50,000 Hoosiers earn a college degree, according to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

Recent changes to the program have allowed it to dramatically increase the number of students it serves in high school. At the same time, there are significant challenges for the program and those who oversee it.

The state’s college-going rate is dropping after several years of being stagnant. Policymakers are placing more emphasis and career and technical education, which might lead more students away from traditional higher education. And high school attendance can affect coordinators’ ability to keep in touch with students and make sure they’re on track to meet program requirements.

All that means state officials, K-12 educators, and others are keeping a close eye on how the program and institutions of higher education can adapt to the changing environment and students’ needs.

Officials applaud college scholarship program’s results for students

Seventh and eighth graders who are Indiana residents, U.S. citizens, and meet certain income eligibility requirements can start participating in 21st Century Scholars. For a household of four, for example, the maximum annual income is $59,478.

According to the commission, there are currently 150,000 enrolled scholars in high school and 15,000 active scholars in college across Indiana.

Since 2011, students have had to complete 12 steps as part of the Scholar Success Program during high school to earn scholarships. Requirements include participating in an extracurricular or service activity, getting workplace experience, and filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

Students must also meet terms outlined in a Scholar Pledge, such as achieving a cumulative GPA of at least 2.5 in high school and complete at least 30 credit hours each academic year in higher education.

“As long as students hit all of those benchmarks, then they will be eligible for a life-changing amount of financial aid,” said Zachary Cullum, assistant director for K-12 outreach at the commission.

However, one of the most recent and significant changes to 21st Century Scholars was a 2023 law that enabled the commission to automatically enroll all financially eligible students into the program.

Since implementing automatic enrollment, outgoing Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery said the cohort numbers have doubled.

Lowery touts the college-going rate of 21st Century Scholars as one of the program’s successes. Around 80% of scholars go to college, compared with nearly 52% of all Indiana high school graduates. Lowery also said scholars complete college at a higher rate than their peers from low-income backgrounds.

“The requirements to stay a 21st Century Scholar give that extra motivation,” said Carter Jones, a senior math major at Indiana University.

Vincent Isom, director of the 21st Century Scholars Program at Indiana University, believes that despite the statewide college-going rate dropping from about 60% pre-COVID, the college-bound rate for 21st Century Scholars will remain strong.

“The percentage of 21st Century Scholars going to college now is higher than any other group in the state," Isom said. “On the horizon, it’s a matter of making sure that students are educated so they can make a choice for themselves.”

Jakahi Freeman, a media advertising major at Indiana University, said the experience has inspired him to pay it forward.

“With the skills that I built with this [21st Century Scholars] internship, as well as my schooling program, media advertising, I’m hoping to get into the education field and continue the work that I’m doing,” said Freeman, a senior.

Automatic enrollment in scholarship program ‘a huge blessing’

Automatic enrollment into the 21st Century Scholars Program not only put more students on the college path, but it also relieved the commission from one of its greatest challenges: tracking down and enrolling eligible students.

“[Automatic enrollment has] allowed us to focus our efforts on helping the students who are enrolled in the program with our Scholar Success Program activities that we have and doing financial aid nights,” said Cullum. “It’s been a huge blessing to us.”

However, Cullum said one of the current challenges for regional outreach coordinators is getting scholars to meet in person. Chronic absenteeism rates remain high in grades 9-12, and nearly 1 in 3 Hoosier students was chronically absent during their senior year, according to the 2024-2025 state data.

“Once they get in front of us, it’s easy to guide those students through the process and make sure that they’re eligible,” Cullum said.

Ensuring students meet each deadline in the Scholar Success Program, such as filing the FAFSA, is another struggle.

The commission announced in August that the state reached the 60% FAFSA filing goal set for high school seniors in the class of 2025, including more than 72% of 21st Century Scholars.

Even if students get a job right after high school, it’s still important to ensure “that they’re still meeting all their steps just in case that higher education is going to be an opportunity for them and leaving themselves open to not shutting the door on themselves,” Cullum said.

Lowery believes that the push for work-based learning opportunities in Indiana is another important piece of the education puzzle that can be blended with higher education and the 21st Century Scholar experience.

In July, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation awarded nearly $13 million to eight Indiana organizations for apprenticeship programs. And the Indiana Department of Workforce Development secured $6.25 million in federal funding to grow Registered Apprenticeship Programs across the state.

“The reality is that most research firms, think tanks, and others say that by around 2030 to early 2030s, 70 to 80% of our population is going to need something beyond a high school diploma. And all of those things fit in concert. It’s not one or the other,” Lowery said.

Though Lowery’s last day as commissioner is Oct. 10, and Secretary of Education Katie Jenner will be the new commissioner of higher education, Lowery remains excited to see how automatic enrollment into the 21st Century Scholars Program will impact more students, particularly in 2027.

That’s when the first group of students who were automatically enrolled will graduate, so it’s the first year “we have made certain with the automatic enrollment and other shifts that we’ve done everything to make sure we don’t miss students and to make sure that students are getting to do the Scholar Success Program,” Lowery said.

Colleges and universities must also prepare for how automatic enrollment will lead to more students on campuses, Isom said.

He said it’s important that “a program or universities like mine are prepared with the human resources and the financial resources, that universities are conscious of the needs of this population.”

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Indiana’s K-12 schools leader poised to also lead higher education system pending a vote

2025-08-20T20:18:25+00:00

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Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner will likely take on a dual role overseeing the state’s college and university system along with its K-12 schools following a Friday vote.

The Indiana Commission on Higher Education will hold a special meeting on Friday to vote on whether Jenner will become the next Commissioner for Higher Education, according to a news release from the Commission on Higher Education sent Wednesday. Jenner would retain her current role as the head of the Department of Education in charge of the state’s K-12 schools.

The move is part of an ongoing effort by GOP Gov. Mike Braun to streamline state government, giving cabinet heads like Jenner more responsibilities. In a December announcement reappointing Jenner to the top K-12 job, Braun said her role would include “establishing a unified, student-centered vision across the full spectrum of education, from Pre-K and K-12 to college.”

“As we continue to identify ways to better serve Hoosier taxpayers, having a proven, consistent leader directly overseeing both K-12 and higher education is the logical next step and will ensure that the best interest of our students remains top of mind every step of their educational journey,” Braun said in Wednesday’s announcement.

Current Commissioner of Higher Education Chris Lowery announced in July that he would leave the role in October.

“The logical next step of Secretary Jenner assuming the role of Commissioner will offer clarity and consistency for the Commission, while continuing to drive our mission and deliver better results for Indiana students, employers, and our state,” Lowery said in the announcement.

Neither the Department of Education nor the Commission on Higher Education immediately responded to a request for comment from Jenner. If the commission votes for her, she will begin her new role on Oct. 11.

Jenner will not receive a pay raise for the new role, according to Department of Education spokesperson Courtney Bearsch. Any future structural changes to the higher education commission would require legislative action, Bearsch said.

As the head of both the K-12 and higher education systems, Jenner would focus on higher education accessibility and affordability, the successful implementation of the state’s new high school diploma requirements, and teacher preparation programs, among other initiatives, according to the announcement.

Jenner is the state’s first appointed secretary of education, assuming the role in 2021.

The commission will meet on Friday at 1 p.m. at its Indianapolis office. The meeting will also be livestreamed.

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

Over 240 Indiana high schools exceed FAFSA completion target as state moves closer to 60% goal

2025-06-02T13:47:32+00:00

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When it comes to getting students to apply for college aid, Principal Jason Ridge thinks his school is ahead of the curve.

Two years ago, Indiana adopted a requirement for students to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, with some exceptions. The state set a goal for 60% of high school seniors to file the FAFSA by April 15, the deadline for preference for state aid — but in Blackford County, where Ridge leads Blackford Junior-Senior High School, 82% of students filed it.

Organizations such as Heavin College & Career Readiness Services and INvestEd provided significant help. They and school counselors were available to Blackford families throughout the school year to discuss the FAFSA process. And promoting broad awareness of the FAFSA requirement was also key, Ridge said, even though 70% of Blackford students ultimately don’t pursue higher education.

“If you’re going to get that many kids to complete it, you’re going to have to get buy-in from your superintendent. You’re going to have to get buy-in from classroom teachers. The best thing they did is they set it up as a graduation expectation that you’re going to get that done,” he said.

Blackford County is well above the statewide FAFSA completion average, but Indiana higher education officials are still celebrating the rise in FAFSA filings for the 2025-26 cycle.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education, or CHE, reported that 55% of Hoosier seniors filed it before the state’s priority deadline of April 15, with 241 Indiana high schools exceeding the 60% statewide goal by that date. As of May 14, CHE’s dashboard showed 57.4% of students had filed it. And 68.6%of 21st Century Scholars — students who can receive free tuition at in-state public colleges and universities under certain conditions — had filed. Last year, as of mid-May, nearly 43% of all seniors had completed it.

“The completions we have achieved at this point in the cycle we typically wouldn’t even see at the end of June,” the commission said in a statement. “This year’s success has shown that achieving 60% overall by April 15 is possible.”

The federal deadline for this FAFSA cycle is June 30, 2026. As of May 23, Indiana ranked 11th for FAFSA completions nationwide. The commission and INvestEd, a free FAFSA assistance resource, credited a functioning form and continuous communication for the uptick. Unlike a year ago, the FAFSA hasn’t encountered a host of technical problems.

But higher education officials and advocates are tracking changes at the federal and state levels that could have an impact on financial aid, including President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, which oversees the FAFSA.

CHE said “states and institutions are awaiting federal budget updates to be finalized before knowing how the Pell Grant, other federal grants, Federal Work Study and federal student loans will ultimately be impacted.”

Bill Wozniak, vice president of communications and student services at INvestEd, believes that there will eventually be clarity about the federal situation.

“Every year, there’s something. The only constant in financial aid is change,” Wozniak said.

At the state level, lawmakers cut operating budgets for CHE and public colleges by 5%. However, Indiana’s two largest need-based financial aid programs, 21st Century Scholars and the Frank O’Bannon Grant, were untouched by legislators.

CHE’s estimated allocation for fiscal 2026 Frank O’Bannon grants will be $175 million, down from the estimated $225 million for fiscal 2025. But the commission reported that the $175 million would still be higher than the amount awarded three years ago.

FAFSA form free of big glitches this year

Higher education officials said the 2025-2026 FAFSA cycle has progressed much smoother than last year’s.

For example, this year, the form was available in November instead of December, and current data was accessible on the agency’s dashboard and ScholarTrack, according to CHE. The state, colleges, and universities received student data quickly and with only “minimal glitches” unlike the previous year, the commission said.

Wozniak said the latest version of the form, which is supposed to be easier and faster to complete than the previous document, is meeting expectations.

“The form was working most days, and the things that over the last couple of years were put in place to make the form filing simpler now were working,” Wozniak said. “The processing is happening. The schools are getting the information. The state is getting the information from Washington, and we’re back to normal business.”

Even though Indiana’s first-come, first-served deadline of April 15 for state funds has passed, Wozniak said families will continue to file, and the number of completions will keep increasing until this cycle ends at the end of June next year.

“We’d like everybody to have it all done on April 15, but that’s never the case,” he said. “There are people on June 20 that say, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m going, and I’m going to file that FAFSA,’ because they were certain they weren’t going.”

Reach Chalkbeat Indiana at in.tips@chalkbeat.org

Students will get automatic admission to Indiana public colleges if they earn new diploma

2025-04-02T21:34:12+00:00

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Students will be automatically accepted to all seven of the state’s public colleges and universities if they complete advanced courses and work experiences to earn Indiana’s new Enrollment Honors Plus diploma, state leaders announced Wednesday.

Additionally, students who complete one of the state’s other new pathways leading to employment or enlistment in the military will be eligible for other opportunities, like interviews and apprenticeships with large companies and trade organizations based in the state, or the Indiana National Guard.

Wednesday’s announcement represents the next step for the state’s new diplomas, which the State Board of Education adopted last December to go into effect for the Class of 2029. The guaranteed acceptances and job interviews will be available only to students who earn the second-tier “plus” level of the new diplomas, which require more advanced courses and work experience.

The emphasis on work in Indiana’s new high school graduation requirements originally drew criticism from the teachers and families of college-bound students, who said it would be difficult for college-bound students to juggle work and advanced classes. The compromise was two levels: an Honors Enrollment diploma, which does not have a work requirement, and a second-tier Honors Enrollment Plus diploma, which requires 75 hours of work experience.

The automatic admission policy puts Indiana on a short but growing list of other states like California, Idaho, New York, and Texas that offer automatic admission to public colleges and universities to high-achieving students.

But while some of those states limit students to certain campuses depending on capacity, Indiana students will be able to choose which campus they attend, according to Indiana University President Pamela Whitten and Purdue University President Mung Chiang, who attended a joint press conference Wednesday with Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

Ball State, Indiana State, Ivy Tech, University of Southern Indiana, and Vincennes University are also participating in the automatic acceptance program. Private colleges have also indicated interest, according to Wednesday’s announcement.

The state currently offers a pre-admission initiative based on students’ SAT scores and GPA. But it does not include all campuses, like the main branches of IU and Purdue, for example.

The new diplomas will be required beginning with the Class of 2029, but schools can opt-in to offer them earlier. According to Jenner, they can also opt to initially offer the diplomas only to students who want them.

College officials said they’ll begin to accept applications from students with the Honors Plus seal as soon as students can earn the new diplomas.

Students who earn the Employment Honors Plus, meanwhile, will receive what leaders called “dedicated career support.” This could mean interviews with companies like Community Health Network, Cummins, and Lilly, as well as guaranteed apprenticeships with the Central Midwest Carpenters Union.

To earn the advanced employment diploma, students will have to complete 650 hours of work experience, which can be paid or unpaid, in-person, on-campus, or simulated, according to the diploma guidelines. It’s not clear if the work experience can include typical first jobs in restaurants and retail; Jenner said the state will provide more examples of what that experience could look like.

“We have excellent examples around Indiana from urban schools right here in Indianapolis to some of our most rural schools in Perry County,” Jenner said. “They don’t even have a stoplight but most of their seniors have a work-based learning opportunity.”

Students with the Enlistment Honors Plus seal will be “uniquely qualified to join the Indiana National Guard and other military branches,” according to Wednesday’s announcement. Once they join the National Guard, students will have access to veteran mentors and job placement opportunities, according to the diploma guidelines.

The new diplomas — and the opportunities that come with them — are already attracting interest from Indiana students.

By the time junior Rima Bahradine-Bell graduates from Career Academy High School next year, she’ll also have earned her associate’s degree, her Certified Nursing Assistant certification, and her welding certificate.

That’s on top of running track, participating in the robotics team, and working part-time — and Bahradine-Bell said she hopes to clear her schedule enough to take on an internship related to her interest in politics, too. If she has the opportunity to earn the new diplomas, she said she would take it.

She said that beginning in middle school, teachers at the Career Academy Network of Public Schools began to encourage students to explore at least two different future paths.

“Even though I know I want to go to college, I know many of my peers and even my siblings didn’t think that college was for them,” she said. “Having those certifications going straight into the workforce was a great opportunity that my school is already providing.”

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

It’s official: Indiana students will have new graduation requirements

2024-12-11T19:03:11+00:00

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Indiana students could have new high school diploma requirements as early as next year after a State Board of Education vote Wednesday.

The state’s new graduation rules offer three pathway seals that students could earn on top of a base diploma. The pathways lead either to enrollment in college, employment, or enlistment in the military. The rules also allow students to complete more work experience or more rigorous academic requirements to earn a second “plus” tier of each seal.

The board’s vote came after months of controversy over the state’s plan to overhaul existing graduation requirements. A first draft of that plan would have required more students to complete work experience in high school as part of the state’s push to bring more career training to grades 10-12.

But in August, the Department of Education scrapped that version of the proposal in favor of the revision featuring the three pathways.

These changes addressed many of the criticisms from parents, educators, and the state’s top colleges and universities that the original plan would have left students unprepared for higher education.

The revamped diploma requirements will go into effect for all Indiana students by 2028-29, but schools could adopt the revised requirements as early as 2025-26.

The final version approved by the board Wednesday cleaved closely to the state’s second draft from August, with minor tweaks to emphasize students’ options for meeting each pathway’s requirements.

By offering more flexibility, education officials hope to encourage more students to develop a post-graduation plan, especially as data indicates a spike in absenteeism in high school, and stagnant college enrollment rates.

“The vast majority of what we hear in focus groups from students is that they don’t see the value,” Jenner said. “So how might we better support them, depending on their unique goals and aspirations, support them into their next step, so that they most certainly see the value?”

No changes were made to the core credits students will be required to earn, despite lingering concerns from educators that foreign language, fine arts, and world history have been de-emphasized compared to the current graduation requirements.

Rather than requiring five credits of directed electives that include fine arts, world language, and career technical education, the new diploma will require students to earn 12 personalized electives, encouraging them to align those courses to their readiness seals.

Education officials have pointed out that Indiana does not currently require world language courses other than for students earning the Academic Honors diploma. Students wishing to earn the new Honors Enrollment seal will still have to complete four world language credits.

For fine arts, Jenner said she would encourage districts to consider creating local graduation pathways that emphasize performing arts. She also said students may use fine arts in the updated requirements to demonstrate communication, work ethic, or other skills.

Some of the other key changes from the August draft include:

Requiring 75 hours of work experience for students who want to earn the Honors Plus Enrollment seal, rather than 100 hours. This change was made because the state’s CTE requirements are in 75-hour increments.
No longer requiring college-bound students to pass the exams related to their Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or Cambridge courses.
Requiring 150 work hours for students who want to earn the Honors Employment seal, rather than 100 hours. (Students wishing to earn the Honors Plus Employment seal still need 650 hours of work experience in an apprenticeship or other opportunity related to their intended career path.)
Additional ways that students can earn the Honors Employment seal, including through a locally approved graduation pathway, or through a work opportunity paid for through Career Scholarship Accounts.
Additional ways that students can earn the Honors Plus Enlistment seal, including acceptance to a service academy, or enrolling in collegiate-level ROTC.

The graduation requirements also now specify that students can pivot between enrollment, employment, and enlistment pathways as needed. Students who wish to graduate early must also complete a seal.

The final draft of the plan earned support from a long list of organizations and universities, including the groups representing Indiana teachers, principals, superintendents, and school boards.

“If we … say we’ll just keep doing what we’ve done with the Core 40 and not change anything, then we believe we are missing a golden opportunity for our students,” said Steve Baker, a member of the Indiana Association of School Principals.

In a letter submitted to the Department of Education, the Indiana School Counselor Association, whose members have expressed concern about the increased workload for counselors to manage these new pathways, called the final draft of the diplomas a “positive step forward.”

The organization also called for a statewide system to track students completing diploma requirements and seals.

The new diploma rules now need signatures from Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and either Gov. Eric Holcomb or Mike Braun, the governor-elect, once he takes office next month.

By early next year, education officials also have plans to roll out lists of courses, work-based learning opportunities, and credentials that students could use to meet the requirements. Jenner said the department will also seek during the next legislative session to align school funding with the new seals, so that schools will be incentivized to help students earn a seal.

Later in 2025, the department intends to seek proposals to develop a counseling tool to help students choose a pathway and measure their progress through it.

Education officials also said they’ll seek flexibility on who can teach high school and college courses, as well as a new accountability system aligned to the diploma requirements.

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

Interest in student apprenticeships is growing. Will Indy businesses step up?

2024-11-27T18:36:38+00:00

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This article was originally published by Mirror Indy.

When Cristina Llamas-Gonzalez landed an apprenticeship at Plastic Recycling two years ago, she was the only Spanish-speaker in the human resources department.

The Indy teen’s presence brought confidence and comfort to Spanish-speaking staff as they navigated their employee benefits, Chief Personnel Officer Chad Smith said. Now, as she enters her third and final year of apprenticeship, Llamas-Gonzalez is assisting a 22-year veteran of the company to set up a retirement account.

“She became the advocate voice for our Spanish-speaking employees,” Smith said. “When she walks into the plant — at any of the plants — they flock to her.”

Llamas-Gonzalez, who is now in college, secured her role through a program offered by Ben Davis High School and EmployIndy, a workforce development organization that helps a dozen Indianapolis schools place students with related education experience in apprenticeship positions with local businesses.

“It’s opened my mind to just how drastically different each person’s lives are,” Llamas-Gonzalez said. “You never know what somebody’s going through.

The paid apprenticeships through EmployIndy could serve as a roadmap of what’s to come for other Indiana high schoolers. Next month, members of the Indiana State Board of Education are expected to approve new high school graduation requirements that more greatly incentivize work-based learning.

However, as calls for more job training grows, EmployIndy says it needs more local businesses to participate. The organization has turned away students in past years because of a lack of available positions to fill.

How does EmployIndy’s apprenticeship program work?

Through the Modern Apprenticeship Program with area schools, the organization focuses on seven industries — advanced manufacturing, business operations, construction trades, education, financial services, health care, and information technology — and recruits students out of high school career and technical education programs.

To participate, students must be on track to graduate high school and able to coordinate their own transportation. Program coordinators will also consider a student’s school attendance, disciplinary record and teacher’s recommendation when deciding who is the right fit for an apprenticeship.

No other past work experience is required. Students accepted into the program receive coaching on how to build a resume, apply for a job and interview for a position.

Apprentices commit to spending three years in the program. In their first year — usually completed as juniors — students take a couple classes at school in the morning, then work 10 to 16 hours a week in their apprenticeship. As seniors, the time at their apprenticeship escalates to 20 to 24 hours. And, the program continues after high school, with some students choosing to divide time between their apprenticeship and college classes, if attending school locally.

Students are paid for the work. Companies cover the cost of their apprentice’s hourly pay, which starts at $13 and increases incrementally, along with a $2,000 annual support fee to cover backend costs for EmployIndy managers and any training affiliated with their student’s job.

For some students, the program may force a difficult choice. A regular apprenticeship schedule, for example, could run from 1:30-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, conflicting with after-school activities like clubs and sports.

Apprentices in the program, however, say the experience beats working other minimum wage jobs, and they encourage their peers to seek it out.

“Definitely take this,” said Liliana Valdez, a Ben Davis University High School senior working in Ivy Tech Community College’s finance department. “It’ll apply a little more than, let’s say, a fast food job in the future.”

As an apprentice, Cristina Llamas-Gonzalez works for Plastic Recycling, Inc.'s human resources department. The teen is now a freshman at Marian University.

How Indy businesses can start apprenticeships

EmployIndy runs two hiring cycles a year to place students in apprenticeships.

The next cycle opens in January, though EmployIndy staff say they’re looking to make connections with new or interested businesses now.

EmployIndy’s team works with partnering businesses to write job descriptions for each apprenticeship. Students then use a jobs board to apply for positions. Companies can interview multiple students before making an offer to the best fit.

EmployIndy assigns an onboarding manager to help companies design the apprenticeship experience and handle paperwork, such as registering the position with the U.S. Department of Labor. The organization also assigns a youth apprenticeship manager to check in regularly on progress and serve as a liaison between the company and high school.

EmployIndy organizers say partnering businesses can experience both short- and long-term benefits from investing in teens.

The program helps companies secure three-year employment commitments at a time when some industry leaders say they’re struggling to find enough skilled workers to fill open positions. The apprentices also help companies create a more diverse workforce — 88% of apprentices in the program are students of color and 44% are women.

And, for some businesses, the program is helping create a pipeline of future employees. At least one student has a job waiting for them when they finish school, said Wendy Parker, a business development manager with EmployIndy.

Some students, however, may choose to move on after their apprenticeship. Llamas-Gonzalez is starting her third year with Plastic Recycling while also taking classes at Marian University. She thinks she might want to travel or pursue law school next.

“I’d love to stay with (Plastic Recycling), but there’s a world to explore,” Llamas-Gonzalez said. “I don’t know if I want to travel or find new adventures somewhere away from Indiana maybe, but I definitely know I’m interested in HR and want to continue that.”

And Smith, her boss at Plastic Recycling, says that’s OK. Over the last two years, the company has already gained so much.

“She brings a whole different perspective to our department,” Smith said. “More perspectives allow us to make better decisions at the end of the day.”

Companies that are interested in learning more about the Modern Apprenticeship Program can visit EmployIndy’s website or email Parker at wparker@omplyindy.org.

Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.

Indiana students encouraged to set up Federal Student Aid accounts ASAP after FAFSA debacle

2024-11-11T12:00:00+00:00

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When Lisa Noble recalls trying to help students get financial aid packages last school year, many of her memories aren’t so great.

Due to the botched and delayed rollout of the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, Noble, a counselor at Tell City Jr.-Sr. High School in the Tell City-Troy Township School Corporation, often struggled to explain these delayed packages to students during the spring, right as they had to make decisions about going to college.

“There were very few financial aid award letters that I saw that I was able to help students go through and interpret to help them understand,” she said.

This year, the federal government has once again delayed the FAFSA’s availability. The U.S. Department of Education was supposed to release the 2025-26 FAFSA on Oct. 1, but now the final form might not be available until Dec. 1; right now, people are testing it in small groups.

In the interim, Indiana education organizations are encouraging families to set up Federal Student Aid accounts, which are a required first step to receiving aid, as soon as possible.

Doing so will help more families be ready to go when the new FAFSA becomes available, and will make it easier for students to understand their financial aid options. Even with the form’s recent woes, state higher education officials say Indiana’s push last year for families to set up these IDs relatively early was successful.

In fact, while FAFSA completion rates for the Class of 2024 nationwide fell nearly 9% so far compared with a year ago, Indiana’s had fallen just 1.6% as of Oct. 25, the smallest decline of any state.

The strategy of focusing on setting up those student aid IDs is something Indiana’s higher education community wants to replicate this year with events for students and families, said Michelle Ashcraft, chief program officer at the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

“While federal delays in processing the FAFSA are not within the control of the states, encouraging students and families to create their FSA IDs as early as possible is one way to be proactive in the process from causing a preventable delay on an already delayed process,” she said.

School events planned about Federal Student Aid IDs

As of Oct. 25, Indiana ranked 27th among the 50 states for the percentage of the Class of 2024 that had completed the FAFSA — 50% of students had done so, according to the National College Attainment Network.

Indiana ranked 38th among the 50 states for the percentage of students in the Class of 2023 that completed the FAFSA, and 26th in year-over-year change, with an increase of 1.8%.

This past summer, colleges continued to have difficulty getting financial aid correct and sending the information to families, said William Wozniak, vice president of communications and student services at INvestEd, which provides free FAFSA help in-person and via phone.

However, he and Ashcraft believe their organizations made the best of the 2024-25 FAFSA filing situation under the circumstances.

“Despite all of the challenges last year, we feel like all of our outreach efforts, in combination with having the new requirement for seniors to file, mitigated some of those challenges,” said Ashcraft. “We are going into this cycle feeling pretty positive.”

In the weeks before the 2025-26 FAFSA release, the state Commission for Higher Education is reaching out to stakeholders and partners across the state to get the message out about creating Federal Student Aid IDs.

INvestEd is working with schools to turn previously scheduled events focused on completing the FAFSA into FSA ID creation events.

“At those events, we also sit and have time to talk with the families about questions they have about the FAFSA that’s going to launch in a month or two,” Wozniak said. “Getting their ducks in a row, getting other things set, questions that they have about how to fund education with the least debt.”

Noble, the Tell City counselor, sends an INvestEd document to seniors and their families every year to get them started on the FAFSA.

“It has a place where you can put in the student FSA ID and then the parent FSA ID usernames and passwords. So it’s all in one spot,” she said. “And it has a lot of useful information on, here’s what you need when you go to file the FAFSA, these are all the documents you need to have on hand.”

INvestEd is also scheduling new events at schools after Dec. 1 to help families fill out the 2025-26 FAFSA once it’s released.

Tina McCloud, a counselor at Mt. Vernon High School in the Metropolitan School District of Mt. Vernon, said she’s also focused on helping students and parents create FSA IDs now and planning events after the form goes live later.

“We will also host a parent session in January or February where parents can come in, and we will have staff available to help them complete the application. Students can receive help with the application process throughout the school day,” she said.

Ashcraft, who previously worked at Purdue University, believes the timing of the form’s availability on or before Dec. 1 might actually be beneficial, even though it represents a delay for the 2025-26 FAFSA.

“We used to see, at least for the current college students who were filing, large numbers of students who would wait until the holidays or winter recess to file,” she said. “So [Dec. 1] being the kickoff may play in our favor, not just as a state, but as a country, just because people will be close to their families.”

Officials share hopes for this year’s FAFSA

Besides promoting FSA ID creation and reminding people that April 15 is Indiana’s priority deadline, Ashcraft stresses that despite hesitancy about filing the FAFSA, “more students than ever before are qualifying for aid. And for all of those who are qualifying, more students are qualifying for maximum financial aid.”

Wozniak, meanwhile, said he’s pleased the U.S. Department of Education is testing the 2025-26 FAFSA ahead of public release to ensure it works properly for families, Indiana, and colleges: “We’re going to have amazing filing numbers this year. And no Hoosier is going to be left alone or have to pay for help.”

For Noble, financial aid packages coming out on schedule this time around would be a great benefit.

“We just want to be able to help students the best that we can and understand what that financial aid means. And it’s all timing, being able to do that. The earlier the form can be completed, the sooner the schools are able to do their part and then they can keep up with their deadlines, too,” she said.

Contact Chalkbeat Indiana at in.tips@chalkbeat.org

Indiana’s new high school diplomas may be accepted at IU, but not Purdue, letters say

2024-07-31T18:37:05+00:00

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Indiana’s proposed new diplomas for the Class of 2029 and beyond may not meet the entrance requirements at Purdue University, but students who take an academic path may still make the cut at Indiana University, according to letters from each school.

Indiana’s two largest universities offered feedback this month on the state’s proposed redesign of its high school diplomas, which place more emphasis on work experience in high school. Under the proposal, the Core 40 diploma and its Academic Honors and Technical Honors distinctions would end. Instead, the state would offer the GPS and GPS Plus diplomas, with seals indicating that a student is ready for enrollment, enlistment, or employment.

A July 22 letter from Purdue, as first reported by WFYI, says the new diplomas will not meet admission requirements in math, science, social studies, and world languages. But a July 30 letter from IU indicates that the university supports the proposed “enrollment ready seal” that would be designed to meet minimum entry requirements to state universities.

The Indiana Department of Education is working with the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and higher education institutions on the enrollment-ready seals, but it’s not clear which institutions are involved.

Both IU and Purdue in their letters to the state emphasized the importance of rigorous curriculum and college-level classes for high schoolers to demonstrate their postsecondary preparedness.

“Not all students will attend college; however, all students should clearly understand college admission requirements and be offered the coursework needed to be admitted to and succeed in college,” Purdue’s letter said.

Purdue points out credit, test deficiencies

The proposed diplomas, which the State Board of Education must approve by the end of the year under state law, have faced significant pushback from educators, parents, and students who say the lower-tier GPS Diploma is less rigorous than the current Core 40 offering, while the higher-tier diploma’s emphasis on work is not appropriate for all college-bound students.

Purdue University indicated in its letter that neither the GPS or GPS Plus diplomas would meet the university’s admission requirements in math, science, social studies, or world languages.

Both GPS diplomas prescribe 20 credits across subjects that students must earn in ninth and 10th grade; but in later grades, they allow students to choose how they will earn 20 more credits. In subjects such as math, science, and social studies, students need to earn fewer credits under the GPS diploma than the current Core 40 diploma.

Purdue also pointed out that the new diploma requirements do not include the SAT or ACT; the university expects its applicants to have one score or the other, according to its website.

In a follow-up letter on July 26, the university suggested that the state create two tiers of the proposed Enrollment Ready seal.

The first tier would be based on the current Core 40 diploma requirements, including six credits each of math, science, and social studies.

The second tier in Purdue’s proposal would resemble the Core 40 with Academic Honors diploma and align with the “course requirements for competitive applications” to Purdue campuses in West Lafayette and Indianapolis.

These requirements would include eight credits each of English and math, as well as a recommended eight credits of lab science for competitive majors. They would also include six credits each of social studies and world languages, as well as SAT or ACT exams, and AP exams for all AP classes.

Purdue’s letter further says that the diploma seals should include a statement encouraging students to work with their counselors to complete specific requirements for their chosen programs of study.

IU supports enrollment seal proposal

Meanwhile, in a letter, Indiana University president Pamela Whitten said IU supports the inclusion of the enrollment-ready seal in the new requirements. But the letter also indicates that the university wants students to take rigorous classes in high school to demonstrate their college readiness.

Both schools’ letters said students who take some advanced classes in high school perform better in college than those who don’t.

IU agrees with the department’s proposal that the enrollment seals should be developed in conjunction with the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and higher education institutions, meet the minimum entrance requirements for the majority of state higher education institutions, and have a defined set of courses.

Additionally, the letter encourages the department of education to include higher education institutions in the development of the employment ready seal.

“Many industry pathways circle back to postsecondary education, and/or individuals may wish to pursue postsecondary education as adults. In both cases, it is imperative that such individuals do not lack basic preparation for an on-ramp into higher education at a later point,” Whitten’s letter said.

University spokesperson Mark Bode also said officials have shared “specific feedback and concerns” with state officials about the diplomas.

In a statement to Chalkbeat Wednesday, Butler University officials say the school “shares concerns” expressed by other universities that the minimum diploma requirements do not meet the university’s admission requirements.

“As the Indiana Department of Education weighs feedback from interested stakeholders and revises its proposed plan, we recommend that it consider providing high school students with a prescribed pathway for college admission that takes into account both academic rigor and curricular choice—similar to the current Academic Honors/Core 40 requirements,” the statement said.

The department has not yet released details on what each seal will require. A revised draft of the diploma proposal is expected at the August State Board of Education meeting.

Chalkbeat has reached out to other universities throughout Indiana for input on the new diploma requirements.

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

Indiana FAFSA filings hold steady so far this year

2024-06-21T19:50:56+00:00

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Roughly the same number of Indiana high school seniors filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid this year as in 2023, despite this year’s rough rollout.

Indiana ranks first in the country for the least amount of year-over-year change in FAFSA submissions. As of June 14, the National College Attainment Network, or NCAN, tracker showed 39,800 FAFSA completions in the Hoosier State, down just 1.1% from 2023.

Delays and glitches have plagued the FAFSA filing process since a new version was fully released in January. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education and INvestEd worked with students and parents for months to complete as many submissions as possible before the state’s April 15 priority deadline.

“We are just a percentage away from matching last year’s filing, which is amazing when you think about the three-month shorter window and all the hurdles that families had to jump through,” said William Wozniak, INvestEd’s vice president of communications and student services.

Did Indiana meet FAFSA goals?

As of June 14, Indiana was no. 21 in the nation for the percentage of seniors completing FAFSAs with 44.7% — about 15 percentage points shy of the commission’s 60% goal. Earlier in May, CHE announced the state was in the top 10 for FAFSA submissions and completions, which was another goal.

The third goal, a 5% overall state increase in FAFSA filings, has not been met yet, though numbers are up, said Michelle Ashcraft, chief program officer at CHE. That statistic included high school, current college, and adult students.

Wozniak and Ashcraft said several factors contributed to the state’s FAFSA results, including extensive communication, the pre-admissions initiative, and a new state law requiring students to file.

“[Despite the delay], we still ran our typical event schedule in the fall. We focused on creating FSA IDs instead of filing the FAFSA. A lot of our communications throughout the semester were, ‘Hey, this thing is coming. We can at least help you take the first step to get ready.’ So when it opened fully in January, most of our students across the state were ready to go,” said Ashcraft.

“The commission was very active in reaching out to students and families about filing. We were thrilled that our contact information was included in that messaging so families could give us a call,” added Wozniak.

In the four days before the state deadline, INvestEd received more than 1,000 calls for FAFSA help, he said.

What counts toward April FAFSA deadline

Since students and parents submitted FAFSA information separately this year, Ashcraft said the commission used the student’s submission date for the deadline. This decision allowed parents to make edits and corrections later without affecting priority financial aid eligibility. When the government started sending files to the states and schools, errors were discovered that affected CHE’s ability to pinpoint the number of students who filed before April 15.

“We have had to go through two rounds of federal corrections that are separate from the typical process that individual students might have to do to correct their FAFSA,” Ashcraft said.

Once CHE can assess how many students filed before April 15, they can determine how much funding is going out, how much is left, and whether they can extend the priority deadline.

“Last year, we were able to extend the guaranteed funding deadline to June 30. The year before that it was August 31, and the year before that it was May 30. We try to award as far out into the summer as we can until we’ve exhausted the funding allocation for that year,” said Ashcraft.

Lingering issues with Social Security numbers

Ashcraft said one lingering FAFSA issue is helping students affected by Social Security number glitches. Another priority is helping students who filed a paper FAFSA to ensure they met the April 15 deadline. The federal government didn’t start processing those applications until June.

Anne and Mike Vandall of Fishers started the FAFSA filing process with their daughter, Emily, in February and didn’t finish until May. Emily plans to attend Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College.

“The biggest challenge was navigating once we were able to get in,” said Anne Vandall. “We did it intermittently because we would get to a certain point, and sometimes it would kick us out. But when we tried to go back in to resume, we weren’t sure where we were supposed to go.”

Ashcraft encourages families that had trouble filing or haven’t filed to complete the process as soon as possible because they’re still eligible for state and federal aid.

“We’re back to normal processing times,” she said. “It’s about a one- to three-day turnaround from the time the student files for that information to get to states and the institutions.”

Still time to fill out FAFSA for federal deadline

The federal FAFSA deadline is June 30, but that cutoff date is for the 2023-24 award year. The 2024-25 deadline is June 30, 2025.

“Let’s say somebody was going to school in January 2025. They weren’t going to go in the fall, but they’re going to go in the spring. The FAFSA has to stay open for the whole year,” said Wozniak.

As for the 2025-26 award year, Ashcraft said she thinks more participation in the pre-admissions initiative and the state law requiring FAFSA filing will boost submissions.

“I am grateful for the progress we’ve made in spite of all the challenges. It gives me hope that next year, if it opens on October 1 with no issues, we can make significant progress on that [60%] goal,” she said.

Wozniak added that families should stay ready for next year’s FAFSA form.

“We want them to have the best experience possible,” he said. “And we’ll be ready no matter what it looks like.”

Correction: July 1, 2024: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Indiana met its third goal, a 5% increase in overall FAFSA filings. Numbers are up, but the state hasn’t reached that goal.

Mitzi S. Morris is a freelance journalist. Contact Chalkbeat Indiana at in.tips@chalkbeat.org.

High schoolers learn leadership skills and live college life at Butler’s immersive camp

2024-06-18T18:03:51+00:00

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On a recent Wednesday well into summer vacation, Indiana high school students sat in a college classroom and brainstormed how they set the tone in their communities.

“I would say, be the best leader you can,” a student said, “so everyone can follow your good example.”

That day, the students considered not just how to lead others to success, but how to succeed themselves. They were attending Butler University’s BU: BeReal camp, a college immersion experience designed to introduce high schoolers to college life and give them the tools to thrive there.

One of BU: BeReal’s defining features is how it provides scholarships for students who are from low-income backgrounds or will be first-generation college students. For a week on Butler’s campus, they live in a dorm, learn about different areas of study, and get accustomed to the idea of daily life as a college student. It’s one effort among many to boost not just college-going, but college completion, something many Indiana students struggle with.

But the grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. that funds tuition assistance for 58% of the campers will end next year, leaving administrators looking for ways to sustain a central part of the camp’s mission. (Chalkbeat receives funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc.)

Students in Butler University's BU: BeReal camp try out different seasoning ratios during a session on cooking and health science. A focus of the session was healthy eating habits.

“Some may have never set foot on a college campus before,” Associate Director of Camps Administration Jessica Meister said. “Their parents or grandparents haven’t gone through the college process, so it’s really important that we provide learning opportunities and experiences.”

By the end of this summer, 136 high schoolers will have gone through Butler’s program.

Camps like this one, such as the Summer Success Camp at the University of Indianapolis, arose out of the Lilly Endowment Inc.’s initiative to increase Indiana’s higher education enrollment rate — which hovered around 53% in 2020, 2021, and 2022 — and the number of adults with a postsecondary credential.

During BU: BeReal, which has separate weeks for underclassmen and upperclassmen, students explore different subjects to understand what pathways they can take in college. The sessions range from philosophy to business to dance improv. They also hear survival tips from current students.

“A lot of students my age, like they know they want to go to college,” said camper Wura Olorunfemi, a rising senior at Anderson High School. “But they also don’t know how to do it.”

BU: BeReal campers cook chipotle turkey tacos. The camp is designed to give students a sample of different disciplines.

The staff are exploring funding options for 2026, so they can continue providing robust financial assistance, Meister said. They have talked with administration as well as considered outside grants.

“I want to keep the focus and the ethos of the camp the same, so serving our 21st Century, first-generation college students who have been traditionally underserved by higher ed, but also being fully integrated with students from all over the state of Indiana,” Meister said.

Many of the academic sessions serve two purposes: They give students a sample of the discipline, as well as a concept or tangible skill to take away.

In an afternoon session focused on cooking and health science, students learned how to make chipotle turkey tacos. At each table, kids sauteed the ground turkey and experimented with seasoning.

They took turns taste-testing. Overcooked and not enough salt, one group agreed. They threw in the salt, plus garlic and a little water.

“I’ve learned to adapt to new people,” said Nicolette Dukehart, a rising junior at North Central High School. “Normally I’m with the same group of people, but now I’ve made more friends.”

Olorunfemi said the variety of sessions challenged her to try out new disciplines. In the social media session, for example, she got to think creatively.

“I want to be a doctor or a neurosurgeon, so that side of the world is kind of closed off to me,” Olorunfemi said. “I don’t usually let myself open myself up to that.”

BU: BeReal students attend leadership training on June 14. The camp aims to build high school students’ leadership skills while introducing them to the college experience.

Faculty members working at BU: BeReal said they saw how rewarding the experience was for students.

Alexander Carter, an assistant professor of strategic communication, was once a first-generation college student, like many of the campers. He said an experience like BU: BeReal helps kids realize there is a place for them in higher education.

“I had no idea what college was going to be like,” Carter said. “I heard these horror stories from teachers, like ‘they’re never going to let you do this in college and never let you do this in college.’ And I go to college, and it’s very different.”

In the future, Meister said, the staff hope to increase the number of weeks of the camp and serve hundreds of students each summer.

Haley Miller is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Haley at hmiller@chalkbeat.org.

Teacher Prep Academy brings teaching career experience to high schoolers

2024-06-12T20:46:53+00:00

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Elley Kropp wasn’t sure at first if her family would approve of her becoming a teacher.

She knew she might make more money as a nurse or a cosmetologist. And she had faced challenges in school; in the eighth grade she was diagnosed with learning disabilities.

But the possibility of helping students like her drew her to the field of education. The final push came when her father, a plumber, gifted her tool caddies to repurpose for her future students’ supplies.

“Knowing I could be a teacher who helps a kid who’s struggling, I want to be that person for someone,” said Kropp, now an elementary education major at the University of Indianapolis School of Education.

Kropp started her teaching training in high school through the university’s Teacher Prep Academy, a free summer program now in its second year that lets high schoolers live on campus for a week and take a transferable dual credit course in education.

The academy seeks to address a core issue of Indiana’s teacher shortage: More teachers are retiring while fewer students are enrolling in teacher prep programs, resulting in a net decline in the number of teachers.

The need for more new educators comes as the state enacts sweeping changes to curriculum that will require more teachers to be trained in dual credit programs and reading science practices.

By connecting students to the profession in high school, the program hopes to put them on track to study teaching and eventually step into those open roles. The academy allows students who are interested in teaching to meet and bond, creating a supportive environment for would-be educators.

Getting young people to consider teaching

While the Indiana Department of Education doesn’t track teacher vacancies and open positions year over year, there were over 2,200 open teaching positions on the state’s teacher job board as of June 11, as well as over 600 open student support roles — numbers comparable to previous years.

Schools anecdotally report ongoing hiring challenges, especially in hard-to-fill subjects like career and technical education, science, and math.

The most recent state data shows that in 2022-23, there were 61,409 teachers teaching in a content area for which they’re licensed, down from 63,232 the year before.

A number of factors have dissuaded students from pursuing a teaching career, including the negative rhetoric directed at education, and concerns about pay, said Kelley Carnagua, coordinator of the Teacher Prep Academy, which is funded through a state grant.

The university is also using a portion of this grant on a marketing effort to change how students and their families view the teaching profession, Carnagua said, including sharing stories of the impact that educators have.

“Whatever path they choose, they have to get an education first,” Carnagua said.

Inside the Teacher Prep Academy

Some students are there to follow in the footsteps of a teacher who made a positive impact on their lives. MacKenzie McKinney, a rising junior in Clark-Pleasant schools, named her middle school choir director and her chemistry teacher as two of her inspirations.

Others want to change the educational experience for students who come after them, Kropp said. Kropp this year serves as a mentor to the high school students in the Teacher Prep Academy.

This year, the academy has enrolled 24 students from 11 school districts in central Indiana, who spent a week on campus in June.

They took field trips to an elementary school to help with summer school, as well as the Indianapolis Children’s Museum to talk about learning experiences outside the classroom.

Of all the experiences, students are usually most excited about classroom visits, where they can work with students on experiential lessons in science- and technology-related activities and garden clubs.

“That’s what lights their fire,” Carnagua said.

On a recent Thursday on campus, students were split into two classrooms — one discussing the external factors that affect schools, like communities and funding, and the other learning about what goes on inside the classroom.

In the latter, John Somers, director of graduate studies at the School of Education, walked students through the ABCs of behavior — antecedent, behavior, and consequence. One wanted to know: Do real teachers know about this?

“They do if they went through our program,” Somers said.

Students had designed posters about other topics they had covered that week, like multi-tiered systems of support, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and incorporating elements of hip-hop into pedagogy.

Anye’ Watson, a rising senior in Wayne Township schools, said she had seen those concepts put in practice in her own education, even if she didn’t yet know what they were called. What resonated with her was that good classroom relationships were at the heart of each lesson.

“It’s about building bonds,” Watson said.

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

Indiana’s college-going rate remains stuck at generational low

2024-05-10T18:09:06+00:00

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This article was originally published by Mirror Indy, and is republished through our partnership with Free Press Indiana.

Indiana’s college-going rate was unchanged for the third year in a row, matching the generational low reached in 2020, the Commission for Higher Education announced during a meeting May 9.

In 2015, 65% of Indiana high school seniors were going on to college. Five years later, that number had fallen by 12 percentage points.

Fifty-three percent of the Indiana class of 2022 enrolled in college immediately after graduation — roughly the same rate as in 2020 and 2021. The college-going rate measures long-term certificates, associate and bachelor’s degrees.

Indiana’s college-going rate was unchanged from 2020 and 2021, according to a screenshot from the Commission for Higher Education.

While Brooke Kile, the commission’s associate commissioner for business intelligence, framed stability as a positive, the lack of improvement is clearly a blow for policymakers who have been working to entice more Indiana students to go to college.

2023: Indiana’s college-going rate holds to previous year

Further, more high school students graduated in 2022 than in 2021, meaning less students actually went to college as compared to the previous year. Of the students who did go onto college in 2022, 8% went to schools outside Indiana — the highest number in several years. That increase is a concern for the commission which wants to promote Indiana as a place to stay to build a career.

“One year is not a trend, so we are not necessarily sounding the alarm,” Kile said, “but we are definitely looking at what sort of early indicator data we can get from 2023 and 2024 cohorts to see if we need to evolve or do any sort of special initiatives to encourage students to stay in Indiana.”

The data runs about two years behind, so class of 2023 results likely won’t be released for another year.

Chris Lowery, commissioner for Indiana Commission for Higher Education, delivers the State of Higher Education address April 15, 2024, at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.

State leaders want to send more students to college

From 2019 to 2020, the college-going rate declined by five percentage points. Since then, the Commission for Higher Education has been working to get more students into college immediately following their graduation.

2023: Growth in Indiana college enrollment marks largest increase in 13 years

These efforts include sending high school students “pre-admission” letters that detail all the colleges in Indiana the students are eligible to attend based on grades and test scores and expanding state-approved college credit courses called the Indiana College Core.

Thanks to a 2023 law, the commission also now automatically enrolls income-eligible students in the 21st Century Scholars program by the end of eighth grade. Eighty-one percent of scholars from the class of 2022 went to college as compared to 30% of their low-income peers.

Scholarships, FAFSA, and transcripts: Three laws aim to help Hoosier students reach college

The first group of automatically enrolled 21st Century Scholars will graduate high school in 2027.

Despite the unchanged college-going rate, students who do attend college are staying in school, Kile said.

For the class of 2021, 77% of those students stayed enrolled in college for a second year — as compared to just 73% for the class of 2020. That’s the highest rate in over a decade, according to the commission.

Claire Rafford covers higher education for Mirror Indy in partnership with Open Campus. Get in touch with higher ed reporter Claire Rafford at claire.rafford@mirrorindy.org or on social media @clairerafford.

Want to finish the FAFSA before a key Indiana deadline? Here’s what you should know.

2024-04-02T11:00:00+00:00

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With a key deadline for Indiana students to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, less than two weeks away, roughly one-third of the Class of 2024 had finished the form as of late March.

The National College Attainment Network’s tracker shows that 32.6% of the class had submitted the form as of March 22, or roughly 29,000 Indiana high school seniors. That’s more than 6,000 fewer Indiana students than at the same time last year, and slightly below the submission rate of 33.7% for this year’s high school class nationwide.

Filling out the FAFSA is considered an indicator of college-going, and Indiana leaders are pushing ways to increase the number of students going to some form of postsecondary education. Students who submit the FAFSA by April 15 get priority for state financial aid.

This year, the FAFSA has changed in multiple ways and has been completed at lower rates across the U.S.. The federal rollout of the new FAFSA has been marked by delays and glitches, including for students who have undocumented parents.

Colleges have also pushed back enrollment deadlines and expressed concern over the amount of time needed to process delayed data from students to award aid packages.

And at the same time, a new state law requires students, with some exceptions, to fill out the financial aid form starting with this year’s graduating class. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education set a goal of 60% completion for the Class of 2024. Last year, nearly 48% of students in Indiana’s high school Class of 2023 completed the form, per a state dashboard.

But McKalaih Legault, director for postsecondary program implementation at the commission, said she’s still feeling optimistic about reaching the 60% goal as the state’s deadline approaches.

The state, schools, and nonprofits are working together to share resources with students and help, she said.

Still planning to fill out the FAFSA? Here’s what to know:

Why should I fill out the FAFSA?

The form is a “key that unlocks all different opportunities,” Legault said.

Filling it out is how students are considered for federal financial aid like grants, loans, and scholarships, as well as some state aid and aid from individual colleges. Plus, students can also access a Next Level Jobs Workforce Ready Grant for a short- or long-term credential.

More than $400 million in state aid is available to students, per the commission. Higher education advocates have stressed that students are leaving money on the table by not filling out the form and seeing their financial options.

What do I need to fill out the new form?

While students and families continue to struggle with the new form, commission leaders said they’ve also heard the opposite: that the new form can take 10 minutes to fill out.

One big change from last year is that students and parents need to create their Federal Student Aid ID, which serves as a digital signature needed for the FAFSA, in advance.

What happens if I miss the April 15 deadline?

State financial aid is on a first-come, first-served basis after that deadline, per the commission. However, it’s still possible to fill out and submit the FAFSA after that deadline, and there is an appeals process for those who missed the deadline and still want to be considered for state aid, Legault said.

Where can I go for help to fill out the FAFSA?

Community organizations and schools have ramped up efforts to help with the form.

Indianapolis Public Schools has two upcoming FAFSA Family Filing Nights from 5 to 7 p.m. April 3 and 10 in the cafeteria of Arsenal Tech High School.

Legault also recommended contacting the commission’s outreach coordinator in your area. You can find yours and send them a message here.

Additionally, InvestED helps students and families across the state with FAFSA. You can also reach out directly for free, expert help. Call 317-715-9007 or email outreach@investedindiana.org. InvestED also hosts FAFSA events at high schools around Indiana. See a full schedule here.

And the U.S. Department of Education has email and live chat help, as well as a helpline: 1-800-4-FED-AID.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Community college can be a gateway to a 4-year degree. Indiana has one of the worst success rates.

2024-03-15T17:47:34+00:00

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This article was originally published by WFYI.

Community colleges are often touted as an affordable start for students who aim to earn four-year degrees. And it’s for good reason: The average annual tuition and fees for two-year colleges is less than $4,000.

But fewer than 1 in 10 Indiana students who enroll in community college go on to earn degrees from four-year institutions, according to recently released federal data. Indiana has the third-lowest success rate in the country.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Tyre’k Swanigan, a former Ivy Tech Community College student from Indianapolis. “It pisses me off honestly, because I was at Ivy Tech. And this is me. Like, this number — I’m a part of that.”

Community colleges offer two-year degrees and short-term certificate programs that can help students get good jobs. But bachelor’s degrees can ultimately lead to higher incomes. And about 80% of U.S. community college students say they plan to transfer to four-year schools.

Swanigan, 23, knew he wanted a bachelor’s degree when he enrolled. He started at community college because it was flexible and convenient. “I could still have my full-time job and then make it to my classes on time,” he said.

He did well at first, but Swanigan said he struggled when the pandemic pushed classes online, and he eventually withdrew.

Swanigan’s difficulties are part of a national problem. Last year, the U.S. Education Department released data from students who received federal financial aid. It found that just 13% of those who enrolled in community college in 2014 graduated from a four-year institution within eight years. The rate in Indiana is about 7%.

About 7 percent of Indiana community college students earned bachelor's degrees

Community colleges offer crucial access to higher education because they have open enrollment and low tuition. Nationally, community colleges educate about 40% of undergraduates. Those students are diverse — including first-generation college students, single parents, and adults returning to school.

“The community college transfer pathway has long sort of held this potential as a more affordable and accessible route to a bachelor’s and graduate degree,” said John Fink with the Community College Research Center. “More recently, with the sort of increasing costs of college generally, a lot of students have been turning to community colleges as that on ramp to a bachelor’s.”

About a quarter of recent high school graduates who enroll in an Indiana public college or university start at community college, according to the latest state data. The vast majority go to Ivy Tech, a statewide system that enrolled nearly 54,000 full- and part-time students last fall.

Students face challenges when transferring

While most community college students plan to earn bachelor’s degrees, fewer than a third transfer to four-year schools. Students who do transfer still face barriers, like struggling to get credit for classes they already took. And many students don’t get enough advising and support at four-year colleges.

These days Swanigan works in a K-12 school. He wants to help lead a school one day, and he needs a bachelor’s degree to do it. Still, he has struggled to find a college that works for him.

Last year, he briefly transferred to a private, four-year university. That school told him they wouldn’t accept all his community college classes.

Swanigan, who’s gay, didn’t feel welcome at the Christian college, and he withdrew. Now, he’s headed back to Ivy Tech.

Tyre’k Swanigan walks in the hall of the Indianapolis K-12 school where he works. He wants to work in school leadership one day, but knows he needs a bachelor's degree to do it.

Losing credits is a common barrier for transfer students. Neka Booth, 40, returned to school after years working in dialysis because she wanted to become a social worker. Ivy Tech was free for her. And it helped her transition and prepare for a four-year university, she said. “I would tell everybody they should start at Ivy Tech,” she said.

After Booth earned an associate degree in 2022, she transferred to a private college to pursue a bachelors. The new college required her to retake three classes, Booth said.

When students lose credits like Booth did, they’re forced to take extra classes, said Lorenzo Baber, director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Office of Community College Research and Leadership. That’s time-consuming and expensive.

“That’s money,” he said. “That’s a couple thousand dollars, which matters.”

Indiana lags far behind other states

Experts say that policy can improve success rates for transfer students. Community college students in Illinois are more than twice as likely to earn bachelor’s degrees compared to Indiana, according to the federal data.

Illinois made improving transfer success a priority more than three decades ago. In 1993, higher education leaders created a statewide “articulation initiative” to help students transfer without losing credits. More recently, state law has pushed institutions to grant transfer credit and guaranteed admission to four-year public colleges for qualified community college transfer students.

Indiana has one of the lowest community college to four-year degree success rates in the nation.

But even in Illinois — one of the top states in the nation — only about 16% of community college students earned bachelor’s degrees, according to the federal data.

Experts say one reason why improving transfers is challenging is because many community college students have responsibilities outside the classroom.

If students need to care for their family or have a medical problem, that can derail their education. For states to improve college completion rates, they need to support people throughout their lives, Baber said.

“You could have the best designed programs,” Baber said, “but that gets rendered meaningless if somebody needs to stop out because they need to take a job to pay the bills of their household.”

State pushes to improve degree rate

Indiana leaders know there’s a problem, and they have made policy changes to make it easier for community college students to earn four-year degrees.

In 2013, lawmakers required state colleges and universities to create transfer pathways for students who complete associate degrees. If students earn associate degrees in nursing at Ivy Tech, for example, they can transfer to a public four-year university without losing credits, said Mary Jane Michalak, vice president of legal and public affairs for Ivy Tech.

“Whenever possible we direct students into those pathways,” Michalak said, “because by state law then those credits are supposed to transfer seamlessly as long as it’s within the same program.”

Ivy Tech Community College is a a statewide system that enrolled nearly 54,000 full- and part-time students last fall.

There’s a similar program, known as Indiana College Core, to help students who take a year’s worth of classes at community college or while in high school.

Ivy Tech has also worked with universities to make transfer easier. In February, Ivy Tech announced its latest partnership: dual admission to Indiana University in Indianapolis. The aim is to connect students to IU, with counseling and events, while they earn associate degrees at Ivy Tech. Similar models have been successful in other places.

During a recent interview with WFYI, Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery pointed to the Ivy Tech and IU Indianapolis partnership and the state’s focus on transfer pathways as examples of how the state is tackling this problem.

Because the new federal data followed students for eight years, the people it tracked started back in 2014. Michalak said it doesn’t capture the impact of the improvements the state has made.

“Ten years is a long time,” Michalak said. “There have been a lot of changes since then, both in state law and in the operation or in the administration of institutions.”

But the transfer system is still complicated and it can be hard for students to navigate.

A spokesperson for the Indiana Commission for Higher Education said the office plans to release data on transfer students in the near future. When that data comes out, it will be the first time in more than six years that the state publishes details on how many community college students transfer and complete four-year degrees.

Without that data, Indiana doesn’t know whether policy changes are working.

Contact WFYI education reporter Dylan Peers McCoy at dmccoy@wfyi.org.

Conservative-friendly higher education bill advances at Statehouse

2024-02-08T16:43:41+00:00

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This article was originally published in the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

A sweeping bill tightening lawmaker oversight of Indiana’s public colleges and universities for “intellectual diversity” purposes drew opposition Tuesday in the Senate but easily cleared the chamber along party lines.

“The number of Hoosier students and parents who view higher education as monolithic echo chambers — (that) coddle students with minority but scholarly viewpoints or ostracize faculty … or students with different viewpoints — is significant,” Sen. Spencer Deery said on the Senate floor.

Deery has called his Senate Bill 202 a “reform” effort intended to reverse those “declining views” of higher education.

“Infringing on academic freedom is a red line we should not cross, but we don’t need to give up on these values to curb the excessive politicalization and viewpoint discrimination that threatens our state’s workforce goals,” he said.

Opponents, however, argued the proposed changes could harm students and faculty members, or would overly burden public institutions.

Those include Ball State University, Indiana University, Indiana State University, Ivy Tech Community College, Purdue University, the University of Southern Indiana, and Vincennes University.

Senators passed the legislation in a party-line vote of 39-9, with all Democrats voting against.

On Wednesday, Indiana University President Pamela Whitten said in a statement that the bill risks unintended consequences for both the university and the “economic and cultural vitality of the state.”

“While we are still analyzing the broad potential impacts of SB 202, we are deeply concerned about language regarding faculty tenure that would put academic freedom at risk, weaken the intellectual rigor essential to preparing students with critical thinking skills, and damage our ability to compete for the world-class faculty who are at the core of what makes IU an extraordinary research institution,” Whitten said in her statement.

Polling students and tweaking boards

Deery and other Republican lawmakers contend that conservative students and faculty members are increasingly ostracized at progressively liberal college and university settings — or at least perceive such shunning.

“Even if some of it is perception, that still matters if it keeps a kid from enrolling in higher (education) or keeps their parents from encouraging them to do so,” Deery said. “Higher (education) should be for all Hoosiers.”

In a 2023 state-commissioned survey of thousands of Hoosier higher education students, about 56% said conservative students can openly express their opinions at school, compared to the 73% who said liberal students can do so. More than 25% of respondents — for both questions — said they were neutral or didn’t know an answer.

Deery’s bill would change up institution boards of trustees by removing appointment power from alumni councils and handing it to House and Senate Republican majority leaders — “with advice” from Democrat minority leaders. It would require boards’ existing diversity committees to consider “intellectual diversity” alongside cultural diversity in employment policies and faculty complaints.

And it would require the committees to make recommendations promoting recruitment and retention of “underrepresented” students rather than the “minority students” specified in current law. That provision drew ire from Minority Leader Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis.

“To … redefine the term ‘minority’ and call them ‘under-represented’ without addressing their issue is offensive,” said Taylor, who is Black. He said both he and his son had been called the n-word as students on I.U.’s campus decades apart.

“The amount of minorities, Black students, going to universities has never been so low,” Taylor added. “… These students still struggle to have the same rights on campus as your conservative students do — and it’s not because of their political views or their ideologies. It’s simply because of an inalienable trait that they had nothing to do with.”

Deery noted his legislation didn’t end existing diversity initiatives and said his single bill couldn’t address every problem. He added that “overwhelmingly” non-white students struggling to access their transcripts are expected to benefit from legislation he authored last session.

‘Abolishing’ tenure?

Deery’s bill additionally re-shapes tenure and promotion policies.

It would require a board of trustees to prevent a faculty member from getting tenure or a promotion if the board thinks the member is “unlikely to foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression and intellectual diversity” and unlikely to offer students scholarly works from a range of “political or ideological frameworks.” Boards would also dock members considered likely to bring up personal political views unrelated to their specific field or class.

Boards would get wide latitude in making those policies. The bill says decisions would be based on past performance “or other determination by the board.”

The bill also mandates that boards conduct reviews of tenured professors every five years based on the above, as well as if faculty members “adequately” carry out academic duties and more. A fiscal analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency notes I.U.’s main campus at Bloomington alone has over 1,000 tenured faculty, meaning its board would have to conduct 200-plus reviews annually.

Deery said he sought to protect tenured faculty by codifying things the board can’t consider in reviews: expressing dissent or engaging in research and public commentary, criticizing institutional leadership, and engaging in political activity outside teaching or mentoring duties.

But institutions would be required to adopt policies establishing disciplinary actions — termination, demotion, salary cuts, and more — for tenured faculty members who fail those reviews.

“Some I have heard from in my community feel that it is abolishing tenure,” said Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Indianapolis. She said the legislation could have a “chilling effect.”

Deery countered that schools like Indiana State University already have post-tenure reviews, and called them “not a new concept.”

His bill additionally requires institutions to establish complaint procedures in which school students and staff can accuse faculty members and contractors of not meeting free-expression criteria.

Institutions would have to refer those complaints to human resource professionals and supervisors “for consideration in employee reviews and tenure and promotion decisions,” according to the bill. They’d also have to keep their boards of trustees in the loop and send complaint-related information to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (CHE) for a report.

Later, the legislation indicates that petitioners unsatisfied with the results of their complaints can get CHE’s commissioner to consider their requests, and guarantees a “final order” within 60 days of receipt.

Democrats pushed back against the bill’s provisions, even as they acknowledged its intent.

“… Senate Bill 202 actually is stifling diversity and debate of differing views, and it will hurt the recruitment of high quality professors, high quality students and the ability to attract and to keep our students and to prepare them for the workforce,” Yoder asserted.

She said the bill is “tying the hands of universities” and called it “heavy-handed.”

Chalkbeat Indiana reporter Aleksandra Appleton contributed to this article.

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

How Indianapolis-area students can earn college credit in high school

2023-12-07T16:10:41+00:00

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This article was originally published by WFYI.

More than a decade ago, only a quarter of Marion County public high school graduates earned college credit. Today, over half of all graduates earn dual credits from Indiana public colleges during their high school years.

The growing popularity of dual credit comes as the price tag of a secondary degree is questioned by debt-averse students, and Indiana’s college-going rate is stuck at the lowest point in a generation.

In Indianapolis, the number of high schoolers going directly to college after graduation fell to about 47 percent in 2021, according to the most recent state data.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, more students than ever were choosing to earn several types of advanced credit that count toward their graduation and can not only streamline the transition to higher education but cut the bill. Nearly 63 percent of Indiana high schoolers who graduated in 2021 had some type of college credit, a slight dip from the previous year.

In the next four years, state education leaders want to ensure that every Indiana high school provides students the opportunity to earn 30 core college credits, covering essential subjects like English composition, introductory biology, and chemistry. That’s called the Indiana College Core — a certificate earned by completing a set of coursework that can be transferred between all Indiana public colleges and universities and some private ones. Today more than 220 high schools offer it.

Proponents of College Core say it’s working. Over 1,800 students from the class of 2021 graduated with the Indiana College Core, and 90 percent of those students went on to attend college.

Those students could also save on the price of a degree. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education estimates the average cost for a year at a state public college at $22,000.

Students can still take classes for transferable college credit that work towards earning the Indiana College Core without taking all 30 credits needed to earn the certificate.

Michael Hansen with the Brookings Institution says many people are rethinking the purpose of college credit — including how it could be a pathway to enrolling in and completing college.

“I think, for many students, it does show them that maybe college isn’t that challenging, after all,” Hansen said. “I think some students just sort of tell a story about their academic ability during school, and they just feel like college is not for me, and so I’m not even going to try.”

High schools in Indianapolis provide various dual credit programs, with some large traditional schools like Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis Public Schools and Lawrence North in Lawrence Township, reporting around 68 percent of graduates earning credits, according to most recent state data.

Here’s how two Indianapolis high schools provide programs for students to earn college credits and, for some, even a chance at an associate’s degree.

Earning credit on a college campus

Rhymz Johnson is a junior at GEO Next Generation High School. He’s been at GEO since he was a freshman. He arrives at the school in the Meadows northeast side neighborhood every weekday morning around 8:30 a.m. A little bit later, he gets on a bus.

Johnson and two other classmates are headed a few miles to Ivy Tech Community College. It’s the first day of a new term in October.

Rhymz Johnson is a junior at GEO Next Generation High School. Johnson attends classes each day at Ivy Tech Community College as part of a program to earn credit or an associate degree that can transfer to an Indiana college or university.

Johnson, 17, said he feels more like a college student than a high schooler. This semester, he only has one class at the charter high school. The rest of his classes are at Ivy Tech, like the design technology class today.

“Every year since freshman year, I’ve basically had more college classes than high school classes,” he said about the Ivy Tech courses that also satisfy his graduation requirements.

Kevin Teasley, the founder of GEO Academies, said getting students on campus to take classes prepares them for the experience of navigating and learning at college.

“So they walk away with not only a bunch of credits, saving themselves and their family a bunch of money, but they walk away with a lot of experience,” Teasley said. “That’s the key. So if they get an associate’s degree, fantastic. But what we really want them to get is that life experience of going off to college.”

Teasley opened a Gary charter school in 2005. The goal was initially to thwart the high dropout rate in the Northwest region. What he found was a way to connect students with post-grad opportunities.

Now two GEO schools in Gary offer dual credit programs at local colleges. At Gary Middle College, aimed at non-traditional students, nearly 80 percent of graduates reported employment or college enrollment a year after graduation in 2020, according to the most recent data available.

The GEO Next Generation High School Indianapolis opened in 2020 and it offers the Indiana College Core. About 180 students are enrolled at the 7-12 grade school, according to state data. In 2022, 85 percent of students graduated.

“We’re in the business of dropping all barriers,” Teasley said. “We want our students to succeed. So if we have to provide transportation we do. We do pay for the tuition. We do buy the textbooks. We do provide academic and social supports. It’s a complete approach.”

The cost per credit hour for part-time students at Ivy Tech is $170.

Multiple times each day a bus transports students from GEO Next Generation High School on the city’s north east side to the campus of Ivy Tech Community College.

For Johnson, the experience at GEO Academy led him to reconsider a plan to take off time after high school.

“I think I’ll just go ahead and stick to it and just take another year at Ivy Tech, at least to try to get my associate’s degree,” he said.

Now, Johnson is considering transferring to a four year university after getting his associates to major in engineering.

College classes at your high school

Ben Davis University is a three-story building just outside the I-465 loop west of downtown. From the outside, it appears to be a traditional high school but is a partnership between the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township and the public Vincennes University.

The curriculum is designed for students to earn a diploma and associate’s degree to ease the path to a four-year college. Students take classes to complete one of four degrees and career paths: liberal arts, business management, information technology, and health careers.

The school district covers all the costs.

Gift Akintomide is a junior who picked IT as her focus. She said the smaller, more intimate educational environment at BDU led to her choosing the school over other options. About 390 students are enrolled at the 10-12 grade school, according to state data.

“There’s a lot fewer people [at BDU] than at other high schools. So you feel like you’re getting a tailored education and you have a more personal relationship with your teachers and your peers,” said Akintomide. “But I will say that the early college did draw me in as well. There are opportunities to grow from it.”

BDU students take college classes every other day from a Vincennes University adjunct professor. This semester, Akintomide is taking an advanced computer science class.

She chose IT because it’s a growing field and the skills she’s learning now will be transferable to whichever career path she lands on.

Vincennes counselors are also in the building to help students stay on track for their degree completion. Akintomide says she learned that if you collaborate with teachers to understand the college coursework, “you will excel.”

In 2022, 100 percent of students graduated. In 2021, nearly 95 percent of graduates reported they were employed or enrolled in college after graduating a year earlier.

Wayne Township offers other dual credit options outside of Ben Davis University. The Early College Career Center at Ben Davis High School offers a program for students to earn their diploma and associate degree in pharmacy technology, culinary arts, or precision machining.

Ben Davis University is part of the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township. Through a partnership with Vincennes University students can earn an associate degree when they graduate with their high school diploma.

“Wayne Township has always had pathway options for students so that they can individualize what they want to do during high school and what they want to do after high school,” said Rebecca Daugherty-Saunders, the district’s Director of College and Career Readiness. “We definitely have seen a growing trend of interest in career certification programs. And so we’re adapting to meet the needs of our students.”

The Area 31 Career Center, also based at Ben Davis High School, offers credentials in welding, cosmetology, and supply chain management. Students get school credit for hands-on work experience.

Akintomide, the junior at Ben Davis University, hasn’t nailed down exactly what she wants to do for her career but wants to go into the medical field. She is considering a major in bioengineering on a pre-med track and then continuing to medical school.

“I think it gave me an idea of what college is. I may not be like physically in an actual college. but it does let me know how the structure works,” Akintomide said about the school. “I also get to talk to the professors, and they let me know how it is at Vincennes University.”

Contact WFYI Marion County education reporter Sydney Dauphinais at sdauphinais@wfyi.org.

How the delayed FAFSA is impacting a new mandate for Indiana students

2023-12-07T11:00:00+00:00

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It’s the first school year that Indiana students are required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA. But they still don’t have access to the form.

The FAFSA is typically released in October. But this year, its release has been delayed as the federal government works on a new version that’s supposed to be easier and quicker to fill out. It’s now expected to be out by the end of the month.

All that change means it’s even more important for resources to reach every student individually, school leaders said.

The FAFSA is how students are considered for federal financial aid such as grants, loans and scholarships as well as some aid from states and individual colleges. Students can also access funds for a Next Level Jobs Workforce Ready Grant for a short- or long-term credential by filling out the form.

The new statewide requirement, which has some exceptions, is part of an effort by state leaders to boost Indiana’s college-going rate, which stood at about 53% for the Class of 2021, the latest data available. That’s roughly the same percentage as for the Class of 2020, although it declined for several years before that.

Filling out the FAFSA is considered an indicator of college-going, and nearly 48% of students in Indiana’s high school Class of 2023 completed the form, per a state dashboard. But the FAFSA delay could create a time crunch; of those students who completed the FAFSA, roughly 60% filled out the form by Dec. 31.

What families need to prepare for the FAFSA

One big change is when students and parents create their Federal Student Aid ID, which serves as a digital signature students need for the FAFSA

As part of creating the ID, they submit personal information to be verified, and the ID can take one to three days, said Bill Wozniak, vice president of communications and student services for INvestEd, which provides free FAFSA help in-person and via phone.

In the past, students and parents could create their FSA ID before sitting down to fill out the FAFSA or at the same time, but the latter is no longer an option, Wozniak said. So families need to have the ID ready before they start the form.

“It really launches the whole process,” said Rebecca Daugherty-Saunders, director of college and career readiness for the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township.

School leaders and others are telling students to create their FSA IDs now. Otherwise, for example, families might come to a FAFSA event in the spring expecting to complete the FAFSA there with experts to help them, but won’t be able to because they don’t have an ID ready to go.

How sports and free dinners help schools boost FAFSA completion

In years past, Wozniak said INvestEd would hold roughly half of its FAFSA events before the new year, in part because there’s typically a group of students who wanted to fill out the form around the time when college applications are due.

Plus, College Goal Sunday, a free event to help families fill out the FAFSA at locations across the state, is typically in October and in February. But this school year, it’s only on Feb. 25, 2024, said Wozniak, who serves as the event’s co-chairperson.

Still, INvestED has more than 900 events scheduled this year at high schools across the state, including ones this semester about the FSA ID and general information.

And districts including Warren and Wayne townships received the College Matters grant to increase college enrollment in Marion County; they are using it to help students fill out the FAFSA.

Both Ben Davis and Warren Central have added experts and support staff from universities and community groups to answer questions and work with students and families on the FAFSA. District leaders said they are looking for ways to make it as easy as possible for families.

At Warren, that means having people available to help before and during the school day at the district’s community resource center, in addition to the evening sessions for filling out the FAFSA.

It also means ensuring there is FAFSA information at events families attend, such as athletic competitions, said Laura Butgereit, coordinator for college and career readiness, school counseling, and family engagement for the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township.

At Ben Davis, the Indianapolis Urban League is providing hot meals for families during the FAFSA nights. That makes it easier for families to attend, Daugherty-Saunders said: “We’re taking time away from families outside of school. It’s their dinner time.”

Reaching all students can be difficult in a high school as big as Ben Davis, but it’s crucial, Daugherty-Saunders said. She added that teachers and counselors both work to reach seniors about their postsecondary plans.

Butgereit agreed that reaching each student is crucial to the new FAFSA mandate’s success.

“It’s going to come down to our counselors [and] support people working through all the seniors,” she said.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Butler University launches two-year college with degrees free to most students

2023-11-03T17:16:48+00:00

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Students can earn an associate degree from Butler University at no cost to them, and continue on to earn a bachelor’s degree for $10,000, thanks to a new program.

On Friday, Butler announced it is opening a new two-year college on campus that will offer associate degrees in business and allied health. The program will start enrolling students in fall 2025.

The program is focused on Indianapolis-area students from low-income backgrounds, including students who are undocumented. The university said in its Friday announcement that it wants to make college more accessible and affordable for previously underserved students, and help them navigate the college-going process.

The program is designed as a commuter school, and its students will have access to the same resources and amenities as other Butler students, officials said Friday. However, students in the two-year program will also have additional support, including small classes, dedicated faculty advisors, mental health services, and financial aid, per a news release.

A majority of qualifying students will also qualify for Federal Pell Grants and the state’s Frank O’Bannon Scholarship. Those two sources of aid will cover the cost of the two-year degree, the university said.

Students who earn a 3.0 or higher GPA in their two-year program automatically qualify to continue at Butler to earn a four-year degree. Students with a lower GPA will be considered on a case-by-case basis, per the university.

If students continue work towards their bachelor’s degree, the Pell and O’Bannon funds will — along with aid from Butler — keep costs to the student to a maximum of $10,000, according to Butler.

Butler’s announcement is the latest effort from Indiana’s institutions of higher education to improve the state’s college-going rate. For the Class of 2021, the latest data available, the college-going rate was about 53%. That’s roughly the same rate as for the Class of 2020; the rate fell for several years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education released this fall showed enrollment in higher education increased by roughly 4,700 students from a year ago. That increase included a roughly 3,200-student increase in two-year schools.

Butler is launching its new college in partnership with the national nonprofit organization Come to Believe Network. The organization works to help colleges and universities start two-year programs as a pathway for students to earn associate and bachelor’s degrees, per a news release.

Butler will be Come to Believe Network’s third partner, joining Loyola University Chicago and University of St. Thomas – Minnesota. More than 80% of graduates from this model transfer to a four-year college or university, and 75% earn a bachelor’s degree in addition to their two-year degree, Butler University said.

Come to Believe credits that success in part to the mix of students having access to the amenities of the four-year campus with added support.

Across the state, Ivy Tech Community College and Vincennes University, which are two-year campuses, offer students the most options for two-year degrees.

However, several other universities and colleges offer a smaller number of associate degrees, per the Commission for Higher Education: Ball State University, Indiana University, IUPUI, Indiana Wesleyan University, Purdue University, the University of Saint Francis, and the University of Southern Indiana.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Growth in Indiana college enrollment marks largest increase in 13 years

2023-10-18T18:29:57+00:00

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More students are going to Indiana’s colleges and universities this fall, and the share of students earning degrees on schedule has also grown in the last few years, the state announced Wednesday.

Data released by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education showed that enrollment this fall increased by roughly 4,700 students from a year ago. That marks the largest year-over-year increase in 13 years, per the state. The commission reported that there are about 244,600 students enrolled in Indiana institutions of higher education this fall.

The new state data shows a move in a positive direction for state leaders, who are aiming to increase the state’s college attainment after years of declining college-going rates. That includes several efforts aimed at college access enacted earlier this year by state lawmakers.

Per the state, the number of undergraduate students increased by nearly 3% over last year; the number of graduate students declined by less than 1%.

The enrollment increase includes roughly 2,500 students from Indiana, a nearly 2% bump for in-state enrollment.

Enrollment increased at both two-year and four-year institutions. For students from Indiana, enrollment in two-year schools is up by roughly 3,200, and enrollment in four-year institutions is down by roughly 700.

The commission also said that more students are completing degrees on time, with a 9% increase over the last five years.

Earlier this year, the state also reported that Indiana’s college-going rate is about 53% for the Class of 2021, the latest data available. That’s about the same as the rate for the Class of 2020; the college-going percentage fell for several years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The changes approved by state lawmakers this year to improve college access include automatically enrolling students into 21st Century Scholars, which covers tuition for qualifying students; requiring all students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to access more funds; and preventing state and for-profit private colleges and universities from refusing transcripts to current or former students who still owe money to the institution.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

You can apply to college for free in Indiana from Sept. 25-29. Here’s how.

2023-09-22T11:00:00+00:00

Indiana students can apply to 36 colleges in the state for free next week, saving them hundreds of dollars in fees.

The fee is waived during College Application Week, which runs from Sept. 25 to 29. The effort is part of a push to increase college-going in the state, which stagnated at 53% of high school graduates from the class of 2021, and was declining before the COVID-19 pandemic.

While some Indiana colleges have no application fee, those that do range from about $25 to $65 per application, so the cost can add up quickly, said Michelle Ashcraft, senior associate commissioner and chief programs officer for the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, who leads the commission’s K-12 outreach team.

The commission has several initiatives aimed at increasing the college-going rate after high school, including automatic enrollment into 21st Century Scholars, which covers tuition for qualifying students; requiring all students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to access more funds; and pre-admissions, where students at participating schools receive a letter telling them which of the participating Indiana colleges they’d be admitted to if they apply.

The application fee waiver next week not only reduces the cost of applying for college, it also means students are researching colleges and applying earlier in the year, Ashcraft said. She added that increases their chances at merit scholarships and helps to meet early deadlines.

If a student hasn’t yet started an application or decided where to apply, Ashcraft said it’s still “very feasible” for students to apply to multiple colleges during College Application Week.

Colleges in the state have worked to streamline their application process, and in some cases, have one-page applications, she said, adding that if a student is undecided about college, this means they have the option for free.

However, Ashcraft said that if students have concerns about affording the application fee after this coming week, they should contact that school’s admissions office and ask if waivers are available.

How to apply to college in Indiana for free:

Below is a list of Indiana colleges and universities participating in College Application Week.

Students should go to the institution-specific application (not the Common App) on that school’s website and fill it out as usual. If a code is listed below, enter that when prompted, otherwise the fee should be automatically waived, Ashcraft said.

List of participating colleges

Anderson University
Bethel University
Caris College
DePauw University
Earlham College
Franklin College
Grace College
Hanover College
Huntington University
Indiana Tech
Indiana State University (Fee waived until Oct. 1)
Indiana University East
Indiana University Fort Wayne (Fee waived from Sept. 15 to Oct. 1. Use code: FWCOLLGO)
Indiana University Indianapolis (Use Code: INCOLLGO)
Indiana University Kokomo
Indiana University Northwest
Indiana University South Bend
Indiana University Southeast
Indiana Wesleyan University
Ivy Tech Community College
Manchester University
Marian University
Martin University
Oakland City University
Purdue University Fort Wayne (Fee waived from Sept. 25 to Oct 8. Use Code: CollegeGo2023)
Purdue University Northwest (Fee waived all of September)
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
Saint Mary’s College
Trine University
University of Evansville
University of Indianapolis
University of Saint Francis
University of Southern Indiana
Valparaiso University
Vincennes University
Wabash College

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief and covers higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

A path to the workforce and a pipeline of workers: Companies go to high schools for career training

2023-09-20T11:00:00+00:00

Every now and then, Ayden Corbett has to explain to surprised homeowners what he’s doing in their front yard.

Since the second semester of his senior year of high school, he has responded to field calls as an employee of the largest underground utility locating company in North America — the Indianapolis-based U.S. Infrastructure Company (USIC). The white truck and multicolored flags marking the location of water, power, and telecommunications lines usually give it away.

“You learn how to work with people,” he said.

Corbett graduated in 2022 from a unique program at the Hinds Career Center in Elwood that trains high schoolers for the little-known underground utility locating industry. As demand for the profession skyrocketed during the work-from-home boom of the pandemic, USIC representatives approached the career center about creating a high school graduation pathway that would lead to a diploma, an industry certification, and a job offer.

While still uncommon in Indiana, partnerships between schools and private companies that lead students directly into employment in highly specific trades are growing — the Hinds Center program is the newest among four that have been started statewide.

“Their goal is to have trained employees ready to enter the field; ours as a career center is to give students the workforce and soft skills to be employable in whatever they choose,” said Jim Pearson, director of the Hinds center.

And creating more of these programs is a top priority for state education officials, who have been charged under a new state law with reworking high school requirements to encourage more students to work and earn credentials before they graduate.

It’s part of an effort to counter Indiana’s declining college going rates by connecting high school students to in-demand and high-paying jobs without the need for postsecondary education.

Ayden Corbett, a 2022 graduate of the underground utility locating program, stands with his company truck.

“Young people are really wanting a variety of options for leading to viable, successful futures. That’s not necessarily a four-year degree,” said Rachel Rosen, senior research associate at the Center for Effective Career and Technical Education at MRDC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

‘Employable in whatever they choose’

The underground utility graduation track at the Hinds Center is a slower version of the standard company training program, hosted inside a former sewing classroom that USIC equipped with a virtual reality system and a wall showing the typical utility connections on a home. The company also provides the two instructors, said Darrin Haynes, senior manager of career and technical education at USIC.

Students study the underground utility maps of Indiana cities like Westfield, where new home construction is booming, and learn to use the equipment that allows them to detect underground utility lines both through virtual reality and in the field. They spend part of the day at the center for career training, but also take traditional academic courses at their home high schools.

USIC has hired 14 of the 16 graduates of the Elwood program over two years, and fielded calls from its competitors looking to hire students as well, Haynes said. As of this year, students will also earn college credit at Indiana Tech upon completing the pathway.

One of the main draws of the track is the opportunity to start working during senior year, said Jacob Wright, another 2022 grad. Students who are at least 18 years old are paid the same rate as new hires to respond to calls to 811, the service that companies and homeowners are supposed to call before digging projects, according to Haynes.

“You get a job out of high school, a (company) truck second semester, and you get paid to take calls,” said Wright.

A hallway inside the Hinds Career Center in Elwood, Indiana, shows the 15 different career technical education paths offered to students.

Programs should connect to college and career

Several other local graduation pathways in Indiana offer students direct links to local companies, including the RV construction pathway at Wa-Nee Community schools, and a now-defunct aviation sheet metal pathway at Decatur schools.

The latter operated for a year before the pandemic created challenges for teaching and recruiting students, said Michael Gehrich, director of aviation at Vincennes University, which worked with Decatur schools on the pathway.

Like the utility locating program, the aviation pathway sought to expose students to a local industry that’s in need of workers, with a lower barrier to entry than existing dual credit aviation programs that require additional college education, Gehrich said.

Other similar programs can be found in New York City’s P-TECH schools, said Rosen, the researcher, which are six-year schools that partnered with companies to allow students to graduate with STEM skills, a high school diploma, and an associate’s degree.

Where vocational schools of the past contributed to inequity by directing low-income and students of color into low-wage jobs, modern career training can give students a window into their options, Rosen said.

“CTE in high school provides students an opportunity to explore what they don’t want to do as much as what they do want to do,” Rosen said. “We may see a failure because the student did not want to go into that field, but higher-resourced students have more opportunity to explore and make mistakes. If they wait till college to explore what they don’t like, there can be a real cost to doing that.”

The goal should be preparing students for a career with mobility, Rosen said.

Haynes said underground utility locating offers that mobility. Graduates can work for municipalities instead, move into management and training roles at USIC, or request to be relocated to another state.

The pathway opens a new option in a community where the college-going rate has dropped, said Haynes.

Darrin Haynes, senior manager of career and technical education at USIC, shows a training wall inside the Hinds Career Center classroom.

State data shows the rate for Madison County dropped 16 percentage points from 2015-2020, mirroring the state’s drop of 12 points in that time period.

Though no students have yet changed their minds about the senior-level course, Pearson said one advantage of the career center is that it has the flexibility to redirect students to one of its other career paths.

Plans to expand in Indiana and other states

Pearson said the Hinds center is open to working with other companies to develop local graduation pathways and meet workforce needs — but that they would need to work closely with educators on curriculum and standards.

The career center would aim to stay away from low-skill, low-pay tracks, but wouldn’t outright reject retail pathways, for example, if they led into supervision and management positions, Pearson said.

Haynes said that other companies interested in creating their own pipeline programs at local high schools need to commit to an upfront investment with a slow return. In addition to a workforce pipeline, one major benefit to USIC is that graduates have more time to absorb the training, and begin working with more experience, often making fewer mistakes than other new hires.

Haynes said the company isn’t working with students who are using Indiana’s new career scholarship accounts, which give students money to take career training outside of their schools. Those students could apply for a job with the company and take the training there, he siad.

A mural in Elwood is dedicated to Red Gold Tomatoes, a major manufacturer and employer in town.

The company plans to continue recruiting in high schools. Haynes said USIC has replicated the high school training program in Oklahoma and New York, and hopes to grow it further throughout Indiana and other states.

“Most of our graduates have moved out, have a place of their own. They start their lives in a way that we all dream of when we’re teenagers,” said Haynes. “We’re putting them on a pathway to do that.”

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

Indianapolis education students share career goals, doubts, and advice

2023-08-21T11:00:00+00:00

Miles Clements’ life took a turn after his parents divorced and his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

He was a student at Fishers High School at the time. His studies began to suffer and his behavior changed, he said, so much that he was issued a detention once.

Things could have turned out worse, if one teacher hadn’t checked up on him, he recalled. He said they didn’t even talk about school. She just wanted to know what was going on in his life. But it was enough for Clements to start taking his learning seriously again — and make a decision about his future.

Clements said experiencing firsthand the impact that a teacher can have on someone’s life made the difference for him. He’s now a junior at the University of Indianapolis, preparing to become a teacher himself.

“If that teacher could do that for me, I can do that for other students,” Clements said. “I just wanted to be that person that can be there to care for them and give them the education that they need.”

Like school systems across the country, Indianapolis districts have struggled to fill their teaching vacancies, especially after the pandemic. Many experienced teachers are leaving the profession, citing inadequate pay or high stress.

But in Indianapolis, a new generation of aspiring teachers are launching or preparing for careers in the classroom, motivated by the opportunities to shape young people’s lives and undaunted by the challenges. In conversations with Chalkbeat, they talked about their decisions to pursue teaching careers, their experiences so far, and how they believe they can make a difference.

At the University of Indianapolis, Clements said he’s had opportunities since his first semester to gain classroom experience. His interactions with students at Central Elementary School in Beech Grove solidified his decision to pursue education.

Clements said he was immediately drawn to teaching skills like literacy, where students can get creative. He knows that classroom instruction relies on knowledge of material and methods, but he said he’s learned there’s a balance to teaching.

“I’ve even said in the past that you could be Albert Einstein and not know how to teach something,” Clements said. “You could be super, super smart, but not have the social skills or the empathy for the students.”

Alexis Britt discovered how critical those social skills are during a combined English and history class at Decatur Central High School, where she worked with students last semester.

The UIndy senior organized a mural project related to Elie Wiesel’s memoir “Night,” where students had to work in groups to pull quotes and draw imagery from the text.

“It was the best moment in my entire life, because I was like, I love that they love it,” Britt said. “Just seeing those students have all this fun doing it really made me happy.”

The prospective teachers said they feel secure in the choice to pursue teaching, either because of positive relationships with teachers in the past or classroom experiences during college. Even so, there are moments of doubt.

Aracely Guerrero-Alonso, a sophomore at UIndy, hopes to teach elementary schoolers, specifically first and second grade. She said when she tells people that she plans to become a teacher, the reactions aren’t usually positive.

She said she knows what she’s signing up for. Guerrero-Alonso said hearing accounts from teachers via social media, like TikTok and Instagram, about their daily life and any struggles they face has prepared her for the realities of education. Still, she said it’s hard having other people in her life tell her to choose another career.

“I feel alone at times,” Guerrero-Alonso said. “No one really supports what I’m doing. They say not to go into it. But if you tell people not to go into it, we’re not going to have any teachers.”

Despite public skepticism, many people are pursuing degrees in education in Indiana. According to data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, in 2021, over 1,700 of the over 33,000 bachelor’s degrees earned at Indiana’s public institutions were in education.

First-year teacher Bianca Winston, who graduated from Martin University in December 2022 wants students majoring in education to know that more than anything, work-life balance is key to success.

There’s a world beyond the classroom and the job, said Winston, who teaches first grade in Indianapolis. “You have a life outside of that. You create your own peace. Don’t let anybody take your peace away.”

Gregory Golden is heading into his senior year at Butler University, during which he’ll do his student teaching at Center for Inquiry School 84. As graduation nears, he’s aware that teaching can feel like a “thankless job.” Golden urged people considering careers in teaching to step into a classroom for themselves to see if education is really for them.

“I see my friends that are going into business and going into health care and doing all sorts of odds and ends that are going to be, you know, to be frank, making a lot more money,” Golden said.

“We are, as teachers, very much so unsung heroes of the workforce,” he said. “Just know what you’re getting into, because it’s something that you should not take lightly. It impacts people’s lives more than a lot of other careers.”

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact the Indiana bureau at in.tips@chalkbeat.org

Indiana’s newest college-going rate holds to previous year

2023-07-13T15:52:17+00:00

The newest college-going rate for Indiana high school graduates is about the same as it was for the graduating class the year before.

Last year, data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education showed the high school class of 2020 had a 53% college-going rate, which was a significant drop even with years of declining enrollment, prompting concern from state leaders.

This year, the commission’s data showed that the college-going rate for Indiana high school graduates in the class of 2021 was a “mild decline,” the smallest decline in a decade, according to Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery.

The class of 2021 went to college at a rate of 52.9%, a half of a percentage point down from 53.4% for the class of 2020. That meant that about 400 fewer high school graduates went to college. This rate is the percentage of students going directly from high school to some form of college — which ranged from less than one-year certificates to four-year degrees.

The 2023 College Readiness Report, which includes data about the class of 2021, has not been released yet, but Lowery previewed the data as part of his report at the Indiana Commission for Higher Education meeting Thursday.

Lowery said he’s hopeful initiatives underway will boost the rate in coming years.

Also included in the preview of the data were college-going rates for several groups of students.

The college-going rate for Black high school graduates in the class of 2021 was 45%, an increase of two percentage points from the previous year, and it was 43% for Hispanic and Latino high school graduates, a drop of one percentage point.

Among 21st Century Scholars in the class of 2021, 80.8% went to college compared with 30.1% of students from low-income backgrounds who didn’t use the scholarship and 59.2% of students from high-income backgrounds.

The 21st Century Scholars program offers up to the equivalent of four years tuition and regular fees at an in-state public university or college to students who meet income and residency eligibility. Students must pledge to follow requirements like maintaining a minimum GPA.

Previously, students had to opt into the scholarship before high school, but a change in state law now means that all students who qualify will be automatically enrolled in the scholarship, but have the option to opt out.

Students in the high school class of 2021 had their junior and senior years of high school, the time when college decisions are made, interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lowery said the full 2023 College Readiness Report is expected within a few weeks.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief and covers higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Indiana focuses state scholarship program on staying in and completing college

2023-07-06T11:00:00+00:00

Coming from a low-income family, Annabella McGinley-King thought Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars program would enable her to afford college.

In middle school, she enrolled in the state-run program, which covers the equivalent of public school tuition at Indiana colleges and universities for eligible low-income students. Like many other students who have enrolled since 1990, McGinley-King was tripped up by the requirements imposed on recipients.

While over 45,000 Hoosiers have received credentials or degrees from the scholarship, according to a 2021 report from the Indiana Commission of Higher Education, recent data indicates that the majority of students struggle to meet the requirements for 21st Century Scholars through high school.

Statewide for the class of 2023, 39% of scholars completed their ninth grade activities, and 7% completed all of the high school requirements by October 2022, according to commission data. The proportion has declined since the start of the pandemic.

To boost those figures and to reverse a decline in college-going among young Hoosiers, Indiana officials are retooling it.

21st Century Scholars must pledge to reach academic and other goals in both high school and college. McGinley-King completed all of the high school requirements, and enrolled at Holy Cross College in northern Indiana, after graduating from Cathedral High School in Indianapolis in 2021.

Following multiple deaths in her family and encountering difficulty adjusting to the school environment, she dropped some classes to avoid failing. But she worried about not meeting the scholarship’s credit threshold. After three semesters, McGinley-King left Holy Cross. Because she was no longer an active student, she lost her scholarship.

Ultimately, the requirements of 21st Century Scholars were too inflexible for her.

“College was the worst I’ve ever done in school,” said McGinley-King, who had always done well in high school. “I’ve just been burnt out for a really long time. Even though I knew what the requirements were, it just wasn’t going to work out.”

Her story illustrates the challenges as Indiana policymakers and educators try to reverse declining college-going rates and to ensure more students benefit from 21st Century Scholars. The state passed a law in May to automatically enroll eligible students at the end of their eighth grade year (they may opt out).

YeVonne Jones manages KIPP Forward, which supports KIPP students and alumni in colleges and careers. A former middle school counselor, she recalled how difficult it was to enroll students.

She always worried, “What happens once they get to high school?”

How enrolled students can access the scholarship

The new law enables educators and others to focus on helping students complete program requirements. But while the law makes enrollment easier, it doesn’t address the challenges of meeting the scholarship’s high school and college requirements.

In order to access the scholarship, enrolled high school students must participate in an extracurricular activity as freshmen, gain workplace experience as sophomores, visit a college campus as juniors, and file the federal student aid application, known as the FAFSA, as seniors, among other requirements.

Although the program lays out annual expectations, it allows students to complete them in any of their high school years.

They can track their progress using an online program called ScholarTrack. But getting personal support is critical, and not all high schools have a counselor available to help, said Berenice Tenorio, an outreach coordinator for 21st Century Scholars at the state’s Commission for Higher Education.

“The commission recommends that counselors meet with their scholars every single year to go over their requirements,” Tenorio said. “But we know that’s not always the case.”

To help, the commission connects with organizations like Starfish Initiative, which offers mentoring and helps students meet the scholarship requirements, by providing opportunities for community service and college tours.

Keeping students on track is a priority, said Starfish Initiative’s Director of Programs Latrice Watson.

“Most students will procrastinate until they have to do something, which is usually at their senior year,” she said. “But it’s getting a lot better.”

Maintaining 21st Century Scholar status throughout college

To keep their scholarship, students must maintain Satisfactory Academic Progress per their college or university, earn 30 or more credit hours per academic year, and file their FAFSA annually. There is also another set of requirements called the College Scholar Success Program, first imposed in fall 2020, that have been paused.

Some campuses, like Indiana University Bloomington, have staff devoted to supporting 21st Century Scholars.

“If a student loses that scholarship, that’s pretty much the end of their pursuit of a degree,” said Vincent Isom, the director of the school’s 21st Century Scholars program. “So it’s important for us to have holistic support for the students, not only the academic piece and not only the career preparation piece, which serves as the motivation for the students to stay on track.”

A student can lose their scholarship if their GPA dips below the requirement, they’ve failed to fulfill the necessary credit hours or haven’t completed their FAFSA. They can appeal if they’re still attending classes and can show extenuating circumstances.

To help, IU’s 21st Century Scholars office hosts study tables Monday through Friday, required for students on academic probation and recommended for students at risk.

He said the office will reevaluate the resources offered as more students may use the scholarship under the new law.

As for McGinley-King, she is working full time to save money to go back to school. She wants scholars to know that it’s OK not to jump into college or university immediately. Scholars have up to one year after high school to start using their scholarship. She advises taking a gap year.

“You have conditions, and you have to meet them, and it kind of sucks sometimes,” she said. “But if you take the time for yourself to figure out what is truly best for you, that’s way more helpful than being in it and being stressed about it.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly listed the GPA required for 21st Century Scholars. It has also been corrected to clarify the requirements for 21st Century Scholars while in college and the requirements for study tables at IU.

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

What the Supreme Court ruling on race-conscious admissions means for Indiana students

2023-06-29T17:19:08+00:00

Colleges and universities in Indiana and across the country can essentially no longer consider race in the admissions process, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The practice, known as race-conscious admissions, is used most often at the most selective colleges and universities in the country. It’s commonly known as affirmative action, but it is a distinct concept: Race-conscious admissions aims to increase diversity, while affirmative action was used to address historic inequities, something courts no longer allow in admissions.

The court ruled that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional and violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars discrimination.

However, Chief Justice John Roberts also wrote the court’s ruling does not mean that universities are prohibited from “considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor described this as a meaningless concession — “nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig.”

The ruling overturns roughly 40 years of precedent and removes what many colleges and advocates of the practice consider to be an important tool aimed at racial equity in higher education.

In Indiana, state leaders and others are already worried about the declining college-going rate, which is especially low for Black and Hispanic and Latino students. The Supreme Court’s decision could impact students’ college plans and whether they see themselves as college material at all. It could also directly affect several of the state’s largest, most influential institutions of higher education.

Here’s what to know about how the ruling impacts Indiana students:

Which colleges in Indiana consider race in admissions?

Chalkbeat examined common data sets for Indiana’s roughly 40 four-year colleges and universities to determine what factors they consider in admissions. If the data sets weren’t available, Chalkbeat reached out to the institutions directly.

About three dozen had data available or responded. A majority said they didn’t consider race in admissions. Additionally, Ivy Tech Community College, the state’s largest postsecondary institution, doesn’t consider race in admissions.

However, nine colleges and universities do, most notably the University of Notre Dame, as well as the main campuses for Indiana University and Purdue University. At those three schools, students of color make up a minority of enrollment, data shows. (The smaller regional campuses of IU and Purdue do not consider race in admissions.)

At Notre Dame, about 13% of undergraduates are Hispanic or Latino, about 4% are Black, and 6% are Asian. Students who are two or more races are also 6% of the undergraduates.

At Purdue, 7% of undergraduates are Hispanic or Latino, 2% are Black, 13% are Asian, and 5% are two or more races. And at IU, 8% of undergraduate students are Hispanic or Latino, 4% are Black, 9% are Asian, and 5% are two or more races.

The other schools that consider race are: Bethel University, Franklin College, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Saint Mary’s College, Taylor University, and Wabash College.

What’s the racial breakdown of Indiana students in college?

The share of Indiana students who go to college began falling before the pandemic and is causing concern among state leaders.

The latest data available on the college-going rate showed that 53% of the high school class of 2020 went to college, per a report released last summer by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

In the Class of 2020, Asian students had a college going rate of 71% and white students had a rate of 56%. But Black students had just a 43% college-going rate. Hispanic and Latino students had a college going rate of 44%.

Boosting the college-going rate has been a priority for many state leaders, including Indiana Higher Education Commissioner Chris Lowery.

Ahead of the ruling, Lowery stressed that the commission will continue to call out “educational attainment gaps” for Indiana, and respond with initiatives including the 21st Century Scholars program, which provides full in-state tuition to students who qualify based on financial need, and more.

“We have a responsibility to not only highlight the challenges that persist but to also ensure all Hoosiers can access the opportunity education and training beyond high school can provide,” Lowery said in a statement to Chalkbeat Indiana.

What does ending race-conscious admissions mean for students?

The Supreme Court decision removes a way for students who are from underrepresented populations to reach campuses, said John Kuykendall, dean of the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Indianapolis.

However, it also could have ripple effects on the way students look at colleges.

Joe Zachery, director of the College Prep Institute at the Center for Leadership Development, an Indianapolis-based organization that aims “to foster the advancement of minority youth in Central Indiana,” said that students could see this ruling and wonder if they’ll be admitted to a college, and if they are, whether they’d be accepted and welcomed on campus.

It is yet another reason that students might think college isn’t for them or that college isn’t affordable, Kuykendall added. He said their perception could be “they don’t want me there.”

Additionally, experts and others have worried about the impact on scholarships and programs that are based on race, as well as what students write about in their college essays.

Plus, it puts a spotlight on the inequities in K-12 education, Zachery said. He said if students go to K-12 schools that lack resources and funding, have fewer counselors, and have fewer Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes, then they are already at a deficit when it comes to applying to college, especially the most selective institutions.

It doesn’t mean that they can’t do it, but they’ll have to work to overcome those deficits, he said.

What will colleges do now?

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, both IU and Purdue University stressed they will follow the law.

IU leaders told students, faculty and staff in a message that they will work to understand the ruling in the coming weeks, while also continuing “principles and values” that shape IU’s campus.

The university also said in a separate statement that it “reaffirms our commitment to fostering a learning environment that is enriched by students, faculty and staff with a broad range of backgrounds and by robust discourse that draws on various perspectives and beliefs.”

Similarly, Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins said in a statement that university leaders will study what the ruling means for admissions, while also stressing the university’s mission “to build a class reflecting the diversity of experiences and gifts of the human family” and its aim to “provide opportunities for a wide range of young people.”

Rose-Hulman also reiterated its commitment to access “for all students in STEM careers and education — especially those who have been historically underrepresented.”

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, it will be even more important for schools to deliver on their promises of being welcoming and inclusive, Zachery said. He added that admissions is one thing, but student retention is another.

Students have to feel like they belong and have a community, or they will be in survival mode, instead of being actively engaged in campus and their education, he said.

This goes for all Indiana colleges and universities, not just the ones that are highly selective, experts agreed.

Kuykendall said students who don’t get into the more selective schools now might go more to the local and regional colleges, so those institutions need to be prepared for — and have appropriate resources for — those students.

“I see it becoming a bigger problem,” Zachery said.

One way that students can find that community is through first-year experience programs and offices, he said. These initiatives can set students up for success from activities to get them engaged and involved, find a community, as well as academic advising, mentoring and mental health, he said.

The reason students leave is that what was pitched to them wasn’t truthful, Zachery said. So in order to keep students and ensure they graduate, not only do schools have to say it, he added, they must “back it up and back it up in spades.”

Chalkbeat national education reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed to this article.

‘Unrestricted’ path for students seeking bachelor’s degrees unveiled by Ivy Tech, Purdue Global

2023-06-22T14:35:54+00:00

Emily Elmore described herself as a “really bad student” at Ivy Tech Bloomington — in fact, she even failed out of the community college at one point. Now, several years later, she’s an Ivy Tech faculty member.

In addition to re-enrolling at Ivy Tech, what helped her turn around her academic and professional career and stay on track was her smooth transition from getting an associate degree from Ivy Tech to getting a bachelor’s degree at Purdue Global, an online university that’s part of the Purdue University system. Instead of studying for another four years to get her bachelor’s, Elmore could use the credits from her associate degree and remove two years from the normal process.

“It was super simple. I think I was all ready to go within a few days of applying for the college,” Elmore said.

Her ability to study online at Purdue Global also made it easier for her to simultaneously work 40 hours a week as a medical assistant. After getting her bachelor’s degree in health care administration last year, she was able to land a job overseeing Ivy Tech’s Medical Assisting Program.

To help more students like Elmore, Purdue Global and Ivy Tech announced a new program earlier this month focused on some of the roughly 350,000 Indiana adults who have some college credit but haven’t obtained a degree, according to last year’s Indiana College Completion Report. Their new Pathways Partnership between the two sizable institutions allows for the “unrestricted transfer” and use of Ivy Tech students’ associate degrees and credits towards Purdue Global bachelor’s degree, they announced in a statement.

The new partnership builds on a longstanding arrangement between Ivy Tech and Purdue Global designed to ease student transfers from one to the other. In addition, the Pathways Partnership will award Ivy Tech Achievement Scholarships to students who earn their associate degrees; the scholarship can be applied toward their tuition for most programs at Purdue Global.

The Pathways Partnership also establishes a tuition incentive for Ivy Tech employees to attend Purdue Global.

Ivy Tech Provost Dean McCurdy said the partnership will increase access to higher education for all Hoosiers.

“For all the Hoosiers out there with some college credit or who have always wanted to earn a college degree, our Ivy Tech and Purdue Global Pathways Partnership provides the support and opportunities to use life experience and credits earned to accelerate the timeline and lower the cost to complete a degree,” McCurdy said in a June 12 statement announcing the Pathways Partnership.

Purdue Global Provost Jon Harbor also said that “this is a partnership best practice that goes beyond removing barriers for students.”

The announcement dovetails with ongoing concerns that affordability and other barriers are driving down the college-going rate of Indiana’s high school graduates. Last year, the state said the percentage of students in Indiana’s 2020 high school class who went on to higher education dipped to 53%, which was 12 percentage points lower than five years before.

Ivy Tech describes itself as the state’s largest postsecondary institution, as well as the “largest singly accredited statewide community college system” in the nation. It served about 177,100 students in the 2022-23 academic year. Purdue Global has roughly 32,500 students enrolled.

The relationship between Ivy Tech and Purdue Global has already benefited Charlie Pendragon, who currently works in health care as a patient care tech and owns his own business. Pendragon, who uses he/him and they/them pronouns interchangeably, first went to Ivy Tech Bloomington after high school, then transferred to Indiana University Bloomington.

As his career plans changed and he experienced health issues, he decided to drop out in 2017. But in 2021, they went back to Ivy Tech to gain their associate degree in general studies with a specialization in entrepreneurship. Now, Pendragon is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in health sciences at Purdue Global. In the future, they hope to be a physician assistant.

Like Elmore, Pendragon said the main appeal of Ivy Tech and Purdue Global’s relationship is the seamless transfer of credits.

“Most other schools, I was going to have to start from scratch on almost everything,” Pendragon said. “And at 26, I did not want to have to start all over.”

Pendragon said out of the institutions he’s attended, Purdue Global has been the most accommodating healthwise.

“It feels like, for the first time, a four-year degree is attainable for me,” Pendragon said.

Elmore and Pendragon said their experience showed them that individuals who have started studying at Ivy Tech, but had to stop for whatever reason, shouldn’t feel discouraged.

“It’s worth at least looking into, and having those conversations with advisors, registrar and financial aid to see if it’s something that you feel is doable,” Pendragon said. “For people who already have an associate’s degree and are thinking about transferring to Purdue Global, I’d say do it. There’s no harm in at least trying.”

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

Scholarships, FAFSA, and transcripts: Three new laws aim to help Hoosier students reach college

2023-05-15T20:15:27+00:00

With an eye to addressing Indiana’s low college-going rate and the perception that college is too expensive, Indiana leaders approved three new laws aimed at improving college access.

The new laws aim to strengthen a state scholarship program, provide more information about financial aid, and limit colleges’ power to withhold transcripts from those who still owe money to institutions.

In 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, the state’s college-going rate dropped to 53%, a decline of 12 percentage points from five years before. And there’s been a similar decline in adults who are looking for postsecondary opportunities, per the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

Improving college-going is about the “removal of barriers,” said Alison Bell, chancellor at Western Governors University Indiana. “There are a lot of complicated reasons why the college going rate is low.”

Plus, the state is coming up on its 2025 deadline to have at least 60% of Hoosiers with a credential beyond high school. When state leaders set that goal in 2009, that number was 33%, said Indiana Higher Education Commissioner Chris Lowery in his 2023 State of Higher Education address. It now sits at 54%, but that includes the addition of certificates that were not originally counted, according to the commission.

Higher education leaders and advocates for these bills stressed that finances are a particularly big barrier for students when they don’t know what’s available to them to help them pay for college.

Here what you need to know about three new laws:

21st Century Scholars program expands

The 21s Century Scholars program offers up to the equivalent of four years tuition and regular fees at an in-state public university or college to students who meet income and residency eligibility, and follow requirements outlined in a scholar pledge.

Previously, students had to sign up for the scholarship in middle school, before a no-exceptions deadline of June 30 after eighth grade.

But with the new law, eligible students will automatically become part of the program. After that, students and their families can decide if they want to continue to meet requirements to stay in it. State data showed that 48% of eligible students enrolled.

“It expedites the process,” said Vincent Isom, director of 21st Century Scholars at Indiana University Bloomington, referring to the new law. He said that students and their parents are no longer dependent on finding out about an application and submitting it.

Students required to seek out financial aid options

Indiana students, with some exceptions, are now required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA.

Advocates of the change said that millions of dollars in aid were being left on the table. Requiring the form would allow students to see their school funding options, they argued, and perhaps convince more students to enroll in postsecondary education.

The form is what students need to be considered for federal financial aid such as grants, loans, and scholarships. Completing the form is also considered a leading indicator of college-going.

States and colleges also use the FAFSA to determine eligibility for their respective aid programs.

Colleges can’t withhold transcripts

State and for-profit private colleges and universities can no longer refuse to provide transcripts to current or former students who still owe money — including fees and student loans — to the institution. They also can’t can’t charge a higher fee for the document for those who owe money.

This change removes a barrier for adult learners who want to finish their degrees, but still have payments to make. It often takes months for someone who is thinking about going back to school to make a decision, and not having access to a transcript can derail them, Bell said.

“When a student learns something, they’ve learned it,” said Bell, who advocated in favor of the change. “Withholding a transcript only removes the university’s verification that they’ve learned it.”

Improvements in college access, but more needed

While higher education experts agree these changes are a big step forward, they said that having the money to go to college is only one piece of access.

Access means having information and resources, not only as students are entering college, but also as a college student, said Maurice Shirley, an assistant professor in higher education and student affairs at IU.

He said that includes knowing things like what applications to fill out and where to find them, housing options, and what is needed for a major or to switch majors. And the information to students needs to be targeted and easy to find, said Shirley, given that there can be an information overload.

The change to automatically sign up students for 21st Century Scholars, the change isn’t a “magic wand,” Isom noted. But he said the new law will allow him and others to work with students to spend more time on benchmarks and staying successful in college, instead of on the scholarship application.

And the information to students needs to be targeted and direct, said Shirley who said there is information overload, so the easier it is to find answers to questions, the better.

Both Isom and Shirley agreed finances is an area that they want to see more improvement.

Isom said that students need to be prepared to handle their finances both during and after college.

Shirley said costs of college still need to be lower. One option is addressing tuition costs. But a second way, he said, is decreasing or providing aid for the fees that come with the tuition bill, from activity fees and housing to general living expenses like groceries, health care and so on, he said.

Gone are the days that a student could afford to pay their way through college by working a summer job and using that money during the school year, he added.

A college degree starts with housing help at this program for single mothers in Anderson

2023-04-27T12:54:41+00:00

Amanda Lowery was driving to school last summer when her phone rang. A few weeks earlier, the 32-year-old had started classes to earn her high school diploma. But what she really wanted was to go to college.

A single mother who dropped out of high school at 16, Lowery was working two jobs when she decided to go back to school. She struggled to balance going to class with working to pay bills and not having child care in the evenings or on weekends.

When she answered her phone, Lowery learned she was one step closer to moving into the Anderson Scholar House in Anderson, Ind. And when a second phone call during her history class made it official, she cried. She had a new beginning.

Anderson Scholar House helps single mothers who want a college degree but need housing and extra support. It doesn’t eliminate bills and other pressures of life, but creates a support system that stops those pressures from derailing college careers.

Participants can attend any college, as long as a majority of classes are in-person, and they have transportation to campus. The scholar house provides stable housing for the women — known as scholars — and their children — known as junior scholars — while also teaching life skills and providing guidance.

The aim is for scholars to leave as college graduates who no longer need the housing vouchers, food stamps, or other government assistance they previously have relied on.

It’s a simple concept, and it’s proven successful elsewhere. Plus it’s slated to grow, with two locations possible in Indianapolis.

Rosemary Baker, the family advocate who helps the scholars navigate day-to-day challenges, said it’s the first program she has seen that “did not put a Band-Aid” on people’s problems, leaving them no better off once it ends.

Instead, she said, once it ends, “you’re a new person.”

Anderson Scholar House provides stable housing for single mothers who are looking to earn a college degree.

Giving scholars the support and privacy they need

Last fall, Lowery was one of the first to move into the scholar house, which is actually a pair of apartment buildings. Four of the apartments are occupied. Renovations are wrapping up on four more, and there are several more to be renovated in the future.

Lowery lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her two-year-old daughter, Aaliyah. It’s a space they’ve made their own, from the jungle-themed bedroom for Aaliyah to the “perfect” two-seat kitchen table Lowery gushes about.

In the mornings, they get ready for school together before Lowery heads to classes and Aaliyah goes to day care.

“I’m like, ‘OK baby, mommy’s got to go to school and you got to go to school, we got to get ready, we got to put clean clothes on, brush our teeth, we’re gonna have a good day, learn new things,’” Lowery said.

In the evenings, they make and eat dinner together before Lowery does homework.

Challenges still happen: Aaliyah gets sick and needs to stay home, or Lowery’s car needs repairs. She balances school with working at Cracker Barrel. She still has bills to pay.

Lowery and the other scholars aren’t entirely on their own when it comes to living expenses. The program uses housing vouchers, so they pay a reduced rent. Many also use other assistance programs such as food stamps, and they have scholarships and grants for their education.

Aaliyah points to her toy box crafted by Doug Eckerty, the executive director of JobSource, which runs Anderson Scholar House.

The scholar house staff and providers help with applications and navigating paperwork. Scholars are urged not just to earn college degrees, but to do so in fields that are in demand and offer high wages.

Lowery said Baker — who works out of the scholar house — is her first point of contact when she wants to talk through a challenge and doesn’t know what to do.

“She can either tell me what I need to do, how to do it, or make a phone call to think it out,” Lowery said.

Baker is quick to say that she doesn’t make decisions for the scholars, and she respects their privacy. But what she won’t do is let them ignore their problems and hope they disappear.

“Sometimes, the decisions [the women] make are not good, but we have to allow them to make that [decision] and fall,” Baker said. “But we won’t allow you to lay there, we’re going to get back up.”

She added that each scholar needs support with different things, and the path isn’t always easy. There are lots of tears, but many are happy ones.

Last week, Lowery completed her Core 40 high school degree at The Excel Center, a free public school for adults. While the scholar house typically requires a high school degree to start, Lowery was taking dual credit courses from Ivy Tech Community College at the same time, which meant she qualified.

On the same day as her high school finals, Lowery registered for classes at Ivy Tech, where she has a full scholarship and plans to earn a degree in medical imaging. She’ll start with one class this summer before attending full time in the fall.

Scholars get help with academics, finances, mental health

Anderson Scholar House is modeled after Family Scholar House, which started nearly three decades ago in Louisville, Ky. But the idea of bringing it to Anderson started three years ago.

In early 2020, Doug Eckerty, executive director of the community action agency JobSource, wanted to expand social services in Madison County with something new to the area.

So Eckerty looked for ideas, and that’s when he learned about Family Scholar House.

It started in the 1990s, but opened its first residential campus in 2008. Since then, those living at the now five Family Scholar House campuses have earned nearly 780 college degrees for a graduation rate of 86%, said Cathe Dykstra, chief possibility officer, president, and CEO of Family Scholar House.

She added that of the residential scholars, 99% have exited to stable housing, 81% have exited with stable employment, and 66% have been able to move out while continuing their education, usually graduate school.

“When I first came across them, it seemed too good to be true,” Eckerty said.

After doing his research, Eckerty worked to bring the program to Anderson, which is now one of multiple affiliates of the Family Scholar House across the country. JobSource purchased a pair of apartment buildings in early 2021, and uses the Family Scholar House programming, but adjusts it as needed.

Anderson Scholar House has a staff of four as well as a slew of providers and volunteers who work with the scholars. They work with other community organizations for services like mental health, financial aid programming, and academic coaching. with other community organizations for services like mental health, financial aid programming, and academic coaching.

Volunteers provide babysitting and help with painting and furnishing apartments. Scholars have guidance and workshops on meal planning, appliance maintenance, and tax preparation. Financial classes help them prepare for housing after graduation.

There are monthly financial check-ins, midterm grade reports, and apartment checks. Not because the staff is nosy, but to make sure scholars are staying on track, Baker said.

Rosemary Baker, the family advocate for Anderson Scholar House, says the program changes lives and isn’t just a Band-Aid.

“Our goal is that if we see you slipping, sliding, or something going on, we address it with you,” Baker said.

As long as they are enrolled in college full-time and attend 75% of classes in person, participants can stay in their apartments. They also must have passing grades, attend workshops, and help out around the scholar house. Their children must go to child care or school. No other adults are allowed to stay the night or move in.

Potential residents can make progress towards living in the scholar house by enrolling in school, attending online workshops, meeting with financial advisers, and providing updates to Baker.

There’s a waiting list of nearly three dozen to move in. And Eckerty has plans to grow the program even more.

The biggest challenge is acquiring the housing and doing the renovations, he said. So when the opportunity to partner with Glick Philanthropies came up to help with a future Indianapolis expansion, it just made sense.

Staff at two locations owned by Glick Housing Foundation are currently training at pilot programs before they start working with potential scholars, said Ceceily Brickley, director of resident success with Glick Philanthropies. (Glick Philanthropies includes the Glick Fund, a fund of the Central Indiana Community Foundation which also funds Chalkbeat Indiana.)

College registration is just the next step

Finishing high school and registering for college on the same day felt empowering and exciting, Lowery said.

When Lowery learned last year that she and Aaliyah would be able to move into Anderson Scholar House, she cried. Now she has long-term plans that include a master’s degree.

When Lowery registered for college, Baker ended up crying, just like Lowery did when she got into the scholar house.

“She’s just our first success story,” Baker said.

A year ago, Lowery wasn’t taking high school classes yet, and she wasn’t living in the scholar house. Now, it’s her village. Lowery said Anderson Scholar House has taught her that big dreams are possible, a sentiment that she wants to pass to her daughter.

Lowery’s ultimate goal is to get a master’s degree in clinical social work and open her own rehab facility for those who are pregnant and mothers of young children with mental health and substance challenges.

“The scholar house has given me a future, it’s given me hope, it has given me a home, stability, a community of people that care about me and that care about my success,” she said.

Learn more or volunteer here: Anderson Scholar House.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief and covers higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

FAFSA will be required for Indiana students starting next school year

2023-04-20T17:52:54+00:00

Indiana’s 2023 legislative session is under way, and state legislators have introduced more than 100 new education bills and bills impacting schools and students. For the latest Indiana education news, sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free newsletter here.

Starting next school year, Indiana students will be required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The requirement was approved by both the Indiana Senate and House and signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb on Thursday. It applies to all students, with some exceptions, but is not a requirement for high school graduation.

The new law makes filling out the form, known as the FAFSA, a conscious choice instead of happenstance, advocates said. They added that students would also have a better picture of the money available to them for college, and perhaps convince more students to enroll in postsecondary education, at a time when Indiana officials are concerned about the number of students who enroll in college. In the Class of 2020, 53% of students went on to college, according to state data.

The FAFSA is the form that students need to file to be considered for federal financial aid such as grants, loans, and scholarships, and completion is also considered a leading indicator of college-going.

States and colleges also use the FAFSA to determine eligibility for their respective aid programs. The new law would require students to submit the FAFSA by April 15 of their senior year, which is the deadline to be eligible for state aid in addition to federal aid.

And the money isn’t just for two- and four-year institutions. Filling out the FAFSA can also provide funds for students who want to use a Next Level Jobs Workforce Ready Grant for a short- or long-term credential.

The new law comes at a time when officials said students are leaving nearly $70 million in Pell Grants on the table, amid perceptions that higher education is unaffordable.

A state dashboard of FAFSA completion shows that about 44% of this year’s high school seniors in Indiana have completed a FAFSA.

Lawmakers have tried for years to pass this FAFSA requirement, and it was increasing the number of exceptions that got the bill the widespread support it needed to pass.

The exceptions are for students at certain nonpublic schools, and for students who have a parent sign a waiver (emancipated minors can also sign it for themselves) to decline to complete the form. A school principal or counselor can also waive the requirement if they are unable to reach the student’s parent or guardian by April 15 after “at least two reasonable attempts.”

Additionally, the requirement expires in 10 years, so lawmakers can reevaluate it. Indiana joined at least eight other states who have such a law.

This year, the deadline for state aid was extended to May 15 for students in the seven counties under a disaster emergency declaration due to recent storms: Benton, Johnson, Monroe, Morgan, Owen, Sullian, and White.

To improve college scholarship program’s impact, Indiana might enroll students automatically

2023-03-24T11:00:00+00:00

The tables were covered in Creston Middle School green, and topped with neat rows of snacks and cans of pop.

Another table was covered in brochures and paper applications. Laptops were scattered on tables around the room.

Because of the pandemic, it had been four years since an information session about 21st Century Scholars was in person at Creston Intermediate and Middle School, and organizers were doing all they could to entice families to attend the early March session and apply before their students reach high school and the deadline has passed.

The scholarship program offers up to the equivalent of four years tuition and regular fees at an in-state public university or college to students who meet income and residency eligibility, and follow requirements outlined in a scholar pledge.

Despite success with enrollees and its more than 30-year track record, the scholarship program has struggled to attract students to enroll in the program that has helped more than 50,000 Hoosiers earn college degrees. There’s also a no-exceptions deadline of June 30 after eighth grade for students to sign up.

But legislation at the statehouse aims to change that by auto-enrolling all eligible students into the scholarship program. This move is yet another effort to increase awareness of postsecondary options at a time when Indiana’s college-going rate is low, and higher education has the perception of being too expensive.

The bill, House Bill 1449, was approved by the Indiana House and has since advanced out of the Senate Education and Career Development Committee. But even with support from lawmakers, educators, and business leaders, the legislation still faces several votes before it could become law.

Talking to families about qualifying for scholarships

Berenice Tenorio travels Marion County, meeting with students and families to talk about postsecondary options as an outreach coordinator for the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

“My goal isn’t that everyone goes to a four-year school,” she said.

21st Century Scholars

Who is eligible?

Students who:

are a resident of Indiana.
enrolled in 7th or 8th grade.
are U.S. citizens or eligible non-citizens.
meet the income eligibility criteria.

What are the income guidelines for 2022-23?

For a household of two, a maximum annual income of $33,874.
For a household of three, a maximum annual income of $42,606.
For a household of four, a maximum annual income of $51,338.
For a household of five, a maximum annual income of $60,070.
For a household of six, a maximum annual income of $68,802.

For each additional person, add $8,732.

What do families need to apply?

Student’s Social Security number, birth date, and address.
Parent’s or guardian’s Social Security number or individual taxpayer identification number (if applicable).
2022 gross income amounts for all members of the household.
A valid email address.

Apply here.

Source: learnmoreindiana.org

She likened postsecondary options to a door, saying that students can avoid the door and asking questions about it if the path is dark. So, her goal is to light up the door and allow students to feel comfortable asking questions to help them make informed decisions about higher education.

One way she does that is through sessions for families about 21st Century Scholars, like the one at Creston.

The first challenge is making sure parents know about the scholarship and see it as worthwhile to attend the session she said. Once they are there, she said it’s about filling out the application to see if they qualify.

“I know that middle school students, they don’t see the price tag for college every single day like I do,” Tenorio said, adding that college can feel “so far away” to students and families.

In her presentation at Creston, she speaks in English and then in Spanish for each slide, going over what the scholarship is and isn’t and the requirements.

Yes, she tells people, the scholarship is usable for both public and private schools, but only covers up to the cost of tuition at public schools. Yes, students can take a gap year and still use the funds. Yes, students would need to complete the FAFSA as well as not drink alcohol before 21 and not do drugs.

Tenorio urges families who are unsure if they qualify to just apply, and tells them the income verification that’s part of the process may take a while.

Eventually, nearly three dozen people filled the room to listen and talk to Tenorio, who walked around to each family to answer questions and pick up applications.

Several families attended because the scholarship had become a family tradition after their older children enrolled. That was the case for Erika Rodriguenz, who said she learned about the program from a family member and thought it was a good opportunity for her middle school daughters.

She said she stresses to them the importance of studying now so they’ll be prepared for college down the road.

“The first time was hard, but this time not so much,” she said of the application.

Scholars see success, but graduation rates are low

Created in 1990, 21st Century Scholars can point to multiple successes.

More than 80% of students in the program enroll in college – that’s compared to 53% of all students statewide and 30% of students in the state from low-income backgrounds who are not in the program. And 75% of scholars stay in Indiana after graduating.

Despite these stats, the program has struggled to get the word out.

Although four in 10 Indiana students are eligible for 21st Century Scholars, only half of the eligible students apply. And a recent survey from the Indiana Department of Education shows that awareness of the scholarship is inconsistent: Just 64%of parents know about the program.

Berenice Tenorio speaks to families at a 21st Century Scholars enrollment night at Creston Intermediate and Middle School. More than three dozen people including students and their families attended the event.

There’s also widespread pessimism about higher education’s price tag in general. Only 27% of parents think education beyond high school is affordable for Indiana students, the department’s survey found.

And not all of the data about 21st Century Scholars looks rosy. Just 37% of 21st Century Scholars graduate on time, compared to 44% of students statewide. However, their on-time graduation rate is still higher than the 27% for students from low-income backgrounds.

Indiana’s Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery said the scholars’ graduation rate is something the commission is aware of and working on, in part by meeting with university and college presidents to share best practices and services they provide for scholars.

But that relatively low graduation rate for the program could harm efforts to expand it for the foreseeable future.

During an Indiana Commission for Higher Education presentation to the Senate Appropriations Committee about the state budget, lawmakers pressed Lowery about the program’s graduation rate. Some noted that students need to be ready for college when they attend, not just attend because it’s paid for.

That committee is where a Senate bill that was the same as the advancing House bill died earlier this legislative session. It’s also the House bill’s next step.

Auto-enrollment could make the program more effective

If the bill passes, the commission for higher education would work with IDOE to notify eligible students and their parents or guardians. To participate, students would still have to agree to the conditions of the scholar pledge, and they could opt out of the program at any time. Students would be identified before starting high school as they are now. And other key programming details wouldn’t change.

“It continues the momentum and removes barriers to the program,” Lowery told lawmakers during a Senate committee meeting this month.

In addition to support from the commission for higher education, the bill has backing from multiple education and economic groups including associations representing school principals and superintendents, the Indiana State Teachers Association, and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

Lowery added that if 21st Century Scholars enrolls students automatically, the commission would be able to shift program resources from a focus on scholarship enrollment to student success.

That possibility is what excites Tenorio, who would have more time to check in with students.

“Right now, the responsibility is on the parents to be all knowing, and this takes the pressure and responsibility off of them,” she said. “It allows us to say, ‘You’re already eligible, all you have to do is say yes and take advantage of this.’”

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief and covers higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

A FAFSA requirement for Indiana students is one step closer to becoming law

2023-03-15T19:04:03+00:00

Indiana students could soon be required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a shift that supporters say could give students more money to go to college and convince more of them to enroll in higher education in the first place.

The Indiana House Education Committee voted 11-1 Wednesday to advance Senate Bill 167, which would create the requirement starting with the 2023-24 school year, although there would be several exceptions. Lawmakers also amended the bill Wednesday to have the requirement expire in 10 years.

“This money is going to be spent somewhere, when we have a chance to put our hand out, let’s take advantage of it,” state Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican and one of the bill’s authors, told fellow lawmakers last week.

If the bill becomes law, Indiana would join at least eight other states who have this law.

The FAFSA is the form that students need to file to be considered for federal financial aid such as grants, loans and scholarships. States and colleges also use the FAFSA to determine eligibility for their respective aid programs.

By not filing out the form, students in Indiana are leaving $69 million in Pell Grants on the table, Leising said last week.

“That doesn’t even count the [other] scholarships, we don’t even have an idea of that money that’s lost,” she added. “We have got to do something about this.”

The legislation would require all high schoolers to complete and submit the FAFSA by April 15 of their senior year, which is the deadline to be eligible for state aid in addition to federal aid.

The bill includes exceptions for students at certain nonpublic schools, and for students who have a parent sign a waiver (emancipated minors can also sign it for themselves) to decline to complete the form. A school principal or counselor can also waive the requirement if they are unable to reach the student’s parent or guardian by April 15 after “at least two reasonable attempts.”

There was some concern about the bill during committee meetings. Rep. Tonya Pfaff, a Democrat, said during the vote that while she was supporting the bill, she still had concerns about the burdens on school counselors and wanted to work on that.

However, the exception in the bill to limit the attempts to reach families has eased that concern for others. And it could give the bill crucial support, after years of unsuccessful attempts to require students to fill out the FAFSA.

What FAFSA says about Indiana’s college attendance

Completion of the FAFSA is considered a leading indicator of college-going.

Just 53% of students in Indiana’s Class of 2020 went on to college, and many Hoosiers see college as too expensive. In a statewide survey by the Indiana Department of Education, only 27% of parents said postsecondary education is affordable.

A state dashboard of FAFSA completion shows that about 36% of Indiana’s high school seniors have completed a FAFSA.

It’s not that there aren’t efforts to get the word out from the state and other groups. Indiana has had College Goal Sunday, an in-person event to help families sign up, for more than 30 years.

But that doesn’t mean every student or family knows about the form or if it’s for them. And schools with higher rates of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch tend to have the lower completion rates, said Josh Garrison, associate commissioner for public policy for the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, in a previous House education committee meeting.

The legislation would make sure that filing out or not filling out the FAFSA is a choice, not happenstance of who found out about it, advocates of the bill said.

They added that filling out the form can also help reduce student debt. FAFSA qualifies students for government loans that have lower interest rates than the private loans that they would get without the form, Garrison said.

The committee meeting last week about the bill featured a show of support from organizations representing school boards, principals, and counselors, as well as public, private and community colleges in the state, and the Indiana and Indy chambers.

Will higher FAFSA completion mean more Hoosier students go to college? Officials hope so

2023-02-23T22:13:47+00:00

As higher education battles low enrollment and perceptions that it is too expensive, lawmakers and others are working to make sure more Indiana students know about the financial aid available to them.

This Sunday is College Goal Sunday, a free in-person event at locations around the state, to help families fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, commonly known as the FAFSA. And earlier this week, lawmakers advanced a bill that would require most students to fill out the form.

The legislation and the College Goal event highlight arguments from public officials that millions of dollars in aid is being left on the table, money that could change a student’s decision about postsecondary education.

A new survey released earlier this month by the Indiana Department of Education shows that roughly 70% of high schoolers in Indiana plan to pursue education after high school.

But just 53% of students in Indiana’s Class of 2020 went on to college, state data released last summer showed. And only 27% of parents say it’s affordable, per the new survey.

Filling out the FAFSA would show Hoosier families more aid options and potentially change that, in turn, improve Indiana’s college going rate, leaders argue.

As of Feb. 10, roughly a third of Indiana’s Class of 2023 had completed the FAFSA, per Form Your Future, a national tracker of FAFSA completion.

College Goal Sunday offers FAFSA help

Students need to fill out the FAFSA to be considered for federal financial aid, such as Pell Grants. But the form is also used by many states and colleges as well as private aid providers to determine eligibility for state and school grants, scholarships, and more.

In Indiana, the deadline to file the FAFSA for state aid is April 15.

Senate Bill 167 would require all students, with certain exceptions like for those at some nonpublic schools and for students whose parents sign a waiver, to complete the FAFSA by that state deadline during their senior year. The Indiana Senate passed the bill earlier this week and it now awaits action from the Indiana House.

College Goal Sunday started more than 30 years ago and is now a model used in other states.

The event comes around like clockwork, and families can count on it as a way to get the form off their to-do list, said Bill Wozniak, co-chair of the event.

“The FAFSA is so critical and the most important form,” he said.

But he knows that despite strong interest in education after high school, many Hoosiers are uncomfortable with the financial aid process.

He’s heard it in his role leading College Goal Sunday, and as he’s traveled the state leading an advisory team from INvestED, a nonprofit that provides free financial aid advising to students and families. And a survey from INvestED shows the same.

Nearly 90% of Hoosiers see a value in education beyond high school, but 62% say understanding the process of paying for college is not easy, per the survey results released earlier this month. And of people who don’t enroll, 28% said it was because of the cost.

When it comes to FAFSA, families and students are often worried that they are on the hook for student loans just by filling out the form, or that they make too much money or it’s too difficult to fill out, he said.

But Wozniak stressed that the FAFSA doesn’t require people to take out loans and is a way for many people to qualify for aid beyond what’s earmarked for students from low-income backgrounds.

And events like College Goal Sunday can help not just by answering questions, but by calming nerves, he said.

IPS partners with National Education Equity Lab to bring Harvard, UPenn classes to students

2023-02-02T21:24:22+00:00

Students in Indianapolis Public Schools can now take courses at Harvard University or the University of Pennsylvania without leaving their high school classrooms.

Indianapolis Public Schools is the first district in the state to partner with the National Education Equity Lab to allow Crispus Attucks High School students to enroll in college-level courses at the country’s top universities.

The partnership with the education justice nonprofit will allow students to enroll in college courses offered at prestigious universities throughout the country, such as Howard University, Princeton University, Spelman College, and Wesleyan University.

Those college courses could later count as college credits, depending on where students matriculate.

The program began this semester at Crispus Attucks. Twenty-five students are participating virtually in one of two courses: a psychology course titled “Grit Lab 101” at the University of Pennsylvania taught by author and professor Angela Duckworth, and “Poetry in America” at Harvard University taught by Lisa New, creator of the PBS series by the same name.

IPS hopes to eventually expand the program to its other high schools, partnering with other universities such as Stanford and Georgetown.

“We know the potential that all of our students have,” said Crispus Attucks Principal Lauren Franklin. “Opportunities like this allow them to reach their full potential after high school and for all of their future endeavors in life.”

The partnership means students like Shaheem Woods — who hopes to be among the first in his family to attend college — can experience a college-level course.

Woods said his guidance counselor recommended he sign up for “Grit Lab 101.”

“I wasn’t prepared to take any type of college class,” said Woods, a junior who wants to study business in college. “But I was like, ‘If he picked me, then there’s gotta be something that he sees in me.’”

The National Education Equity Lab recommends that participating students have at least a 3.0 GPA, but does allow guidance counselors to advocate for students who may not hit that threshold, said Alexandra Slack, the nonprofit’s chief operating officer.

The partnership, which costs $250 per student, is paid for through the school’s budget. IPS students do not have to pay to paricipate.

The new program marks the National Education Equity Lab’s first partnership with an Indiana school district. The nonprofit partners with a number of top universities and public school districts throughout the country to offer credit-bearing college courses at no cost to students.

Students watch pre-recorded lectures from university professors while undergraduate teaching fellows also lead classroom discussions — an experience similar to the one found in traditional college courses.

The program expands the dual-credit offerings that IPS already provides through Ivy Tech, Vincennes University, IUPUI, and Martin University. In 2021-22, students earned 105 credits through Vincennes University and 989 credits at Ivy Tech. A typical college course carries three credits.

“For me the power of this experience for our students is not just the credit that they can earn, but also the confidence that they will be able to have knowing that they can be a student taking a Harvard class, that they can be a student taking a UPenn class,” said Superintendent Aleesia Johnson. “That means something as they think about their futures.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

This article has been updated to clarify the funding source for the program.

‘The right thing to do:’ Indiana considers in-state tuition for students without legal U.S. residency

2023-02-01T23:35:57+00:00

Hoosiers without legal U.S. residency may become eligible for in-state college tuition rates through a bipartisan bill currently under consideration by the legislature.

The students have had to pay out-of-state tuition instead of paying the lower in-state rates due to a 2011 law, and despite past efforts to change the policy.

This has left Indiana as just one of a few states that requires students lacking legal residency status to pay out-of-state tuition rates — often at a cost of many times the in-state rates — leaving college out of reach.

But lawmakers are trying once again to change that with Senate Bill 135, which would make students eligible for in-state rates if they have attended Indiana schools for four years and either graduated or received the equivalent of a high diploma.

The bipartisan bill would also require students to file an affidavit with their college stating that they will apply to legalize their immigration status as soon as the option is available.

The bill is authored by Republican Sens. Blake Doriot of Goshen and Linda Rogers of Granger, and Sen. David Niezgodski, a Democrat from South Bend.

Doriot said the bill would put Indiana in line with other states that make in-state tuition accessible to more students, like those who were brought to the United States as children, but who don’t qualify for temporary resident status as offered in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA recipients are currently eligible for in-state tuition at some Indiana public colleges, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

Doriot added that many of his constituents have lived in Indiana for a long time despite not having legal resident status, and that the cost of college leads students to give up on higher education.

Given its critical need for workers, the state should help students who want to go to college, Doriot said.

“This problem has come to us… not from what the state of Indiana has done, but what the federal government has failed to do. We haven’t been able to get together and find a clean pathway to citizenship,” Doriot said. “And we are addressing children, young adults, who want to further themselves and they’re here, and they can’t go home.”

“The bottom line is, this is just the right thing to do,” Niezgodski added.

SB 135 had its first hearing Wednesday to public support from community groups and higher education systems, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, Indiana Latino Institute, Stand For Children Indiana, and Ball State University.

Sen. J.D. Ford, a Democrat from Carmel, noted that at Purdue University, for example, in-state students paid around $10,000 per year in tuition, versus $28,800 for out-of-state students.

Rachel Santos, director of education policy at the Indiana Latino Institute, said Indiana is now just one of two states barring students without legal residency from accessing the less expensive in-state tuition rate. She added that the state’s Latino population is growing in large part due to immigration.

“This is not a handout. This is asking for a fair chance at earning an education,” Santos told lawmakers.

There were no amendments or votes on Wednesday. Chair Sen. Jeff Raatz said the committee would take up the matter next week.

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

Improving community college retention rates: Ivy Tech launches program with 10 ‘high-impact’ habits

2022-12-14T15:37:43+00:00

With Indiana’s college-going rate at a historic low, Ivy Tech Community College is piloting a new program to keep students on campus by making sure they have 10 specific habits.

The program — called Ivy Achieves – aims to ensure that once students go to college, they complete their degrees.

Retention is top of mind for those in higher education, especially coming out of the pandemic, said Dean McCurdy, provost for Ivy Tech Community College, which has 19 campuses and 25 satellite locations across the state, serving 157,000 students and a retention rate of 47% from last fall to fall 2022.

With Indiana’s college-going rate of just 53% — the lowest in recent history — and shifts in learning due to the pandemic, Ivy Tech leaders changed the way they think about what students need and want.

Ivy Achieves is one result of that mindset shift. Ivy Tech leaders created the 10 “high impact habits” by looking for what habits make a student more likely to stay. And the pilot program has promising signs as early data shows that the more habits students keep, the more likely they are to be registered for the spring classes.

Ivy Achieves program outlines 10 habits for student success

Looking at data and consulting with students, faculty, and staff, Ivy Tech considered more than 60 different student habits, McCurdy said.

One data point they considered, for example, was that first-time students are less likely to pass their courses than other types of students. And if they do fail in their first term, they are less likely to keep going to the next term or will enroll in fewer credit hours.

Additionally, officials considered that having a C or higher in a class is a predictor of retention, and course success rates are lower for students who are Black, Latino, two or more races, or eligible for Pell Grants.

Using this data, leaders looked for what habits stood out as the “most important drivers of success,” McCurdy said, and Ivy Achieves was born.

The program connects students with a “Campus Lead” or staff member on each campus who helps the student work on the 10 habits that will help them succeed in their first semester, but also in college in general.

Ivy Achieves initially started last school year at all campuses for all students, but was refined for the current school year and now focuses on “first-time college students who have historically been underrepresented in higher education.”

Ivy Tech is now piloting the program with 1,840 students on 10 campuses. The goal is to expand it to all 19 campuses.

The students in this pilot are first-year, first-time students who are seeking a degree and meet certain demographic criteria, such as coming from a low-income family or being Black or Hispanic.

There’s no need to opt in; officials said students who fit the criteria are automatically part of the pilot, and their campus lead reaches out to them about the habits and resources available.

The habits are behaviors and practices around academic planning, finances, and campus life that can be tracked in real time and have helped other Ivy Tech students, officials said. For example, McCurdy said the habit of registering more than 30 days before a term starts gives students time to arrange child care and transportation.

While it’s still early to have more data on Ivy Achieves in its current form, there have been some positive initial data points.

Ivy Tech had a 5.4% increase in retention of Black male students from fall 2021 to fall 2022, which was a five-year high. Campus leaders said that’s likely due to the early version of Ivy Achieves, as well as other programs on campus that are student led.

And for the students in the pilot program, the more habits they’ve completed, the more likely they were to be registered for the spring term.

As of this week, 37% of the students in the pilot completed five or more habits and 63% have completed four or more, per Ivy Tech. For students who maintained five habits, 87% are registered for the spring, but that percentage jumps to 94% for six habits and 97% for seven habits – the highest amount for this point in the term.

Overall, 58% of students in the pilot program are registered for the spring, according to the community college.

“Our goal is to get them through those milestones as soon as we can because early momentum is key,” McCurdy said. “We know that these things are associated with success, so now we are very focused on making sure we can provide these things for students.”

Ivy Achieves aligns with a growing emphasis on the first-year onboarding process at many colleges, said Karen Stout, president and CEO of Achieving the Dream, a national network of community colleges focused on transformation to address inequity.

And many of the habits of Ivy Achieves, like meeting with an advisor and having a roadmap, are “fairly consistent with what other schools say students need in the first semester.” If the initiative works, she said there could be potential national impact if other colleges apply these habits too, potentially for all students.

But she does see some room for additions in the habits. They could work in tandem with the well-regarded “early momentum metrics” linked to college success from the Community College Research Center – attempting at least 15 credits in the first semester, taking and passing college-level math and English in the first year, and taking and passing at least nine credits in the student’s field of study in the first year.

And Stout pointed out that some of the habits rely on factors outside of school. The ability to pay by the start of classes and register early depends on students’ financial situation and the college’s affordability, since students are balancing the costs of tuition with other expenses such as child care and books.

But that’s why supporting students throughout the college experience is so crucial, she said, whether they are struggling in a class or if they are looking for transportation because they have a flat tire or another issue with their car.

“By the time that grades come out, it is too late,” she said.

Giving students support with food, transportation, and more

Making sure students have the support to achieve the 10 habits is where the “Campus Lead” role comes in.

On the Evansville Campus, it’s Marcus Weatherford, the campus’s director of student experience. He works with students and staff to educate them about the 10 habits and guide them to resources.

He’s working with roughly 250 students, including Donny Payne, who came to Ivy Tech after graduating high school in spring 2022, and plans to one day transfer to University of Southern Indiana for an engineering degree.

After attending orientation, Payne went to the Lamkin Center on campus, where student resources are housed, and started talking with Weatherford.

At first, Payne thought resources like transportation help or the food pantry were for someone else, not him, Weatherford said.

But with Weatherford’s help, those resources kept Payne in school. A bus pass, for example, helped him get to campus this semester until he was able to get his own car.

“We were struggling at the house and didn’t have much for groceries… that’s helped a lot,” Payne said.

The barriers to staying in school are often greater for community college students than students at a four-year school, Weathersford said, and can be particularly discouraging to students in their first semester.

“Going to college can be an overwhelming process,” Weatherford said.

While older students might be proactive in asking for help, many will need time before bringing up their problems. So it’s important to have a point person invested in their success – like Weatherford and his colleagues – to ask students lots of questions, like if they’re eating well or whether any troubles at home are affecting their studying.

Before, Weatherford would wait for students to come with an issue and he’d direct them to the resources they need. Now, it’s about reaching students before that moment through email and texts as well as in person.

“If a student knows that there is a particular person who cares and is holding them accountable, it helps,” he said.

Payne agreed, saying he’s learned that if he doesn’t have what he needs, he can always go to Weatherford to ask for help. And Weatherford has watched Payne become a better advocate for himself.

Stout said she supports having a set meeting schedule between students and advisors or campus leads to create these relationships and set expectations.

“Students do not engage with those key support offices enough,” Stout said.

Colleges find ways to help students stay and feel belonging

Ivy Achieves is part of a larger effort to improve communication and in turn, retention with students throughout Ivy Tech, officials said. Colleges used to send all information to all students, said Jo Nahod-Carlin, Ivy Tech vice president for marketing, recruitment, and enrollment.

But now, she said information is more targeted and clear – removing higher education jargon and sharing information with the students who may need it.

If a student has said at any point that they need child care, they’ll keep receiving information about child care options, Nahod-Carlin said, adding students who haven’t filled out the FAFSA will get information about getting help with the financial aid documents.

Stout added that in an ideal situation, students don’t have to repeat themselves, but an advisor or campus lead or faculty member can look at student records to not only see their academics but a more holistic picture of the student’s experience to help pinpoint resources.

“Many are coming to college and have never had someone say they are ready for the college experience,” Stout said, adding that that holistic approach tells students that they belong and the staff is there to help.

And just like data helped inform the 10 Ivy Achieves habits, McCurdy said he’s excited to see the tools that will continue to be developed to help student success.

“Some of it is as simple as saying: in your program, if you were to take this course next, we would advise you to do that because students who’ve done that have been more successful or for you based on your own history, we would recommend that you take this course face-to-face,” he said.

Because ultimately, McCurdy said the goal isn’t just enrollment or retention or even graduation – it’s what college can do for the next step: a four-year university or a better job.

“Yes, we want to serve more students, but we also want to make sure that we are successful with the ones that we have and that success doesn’t just begin and end with us either,” he said. “College is not the destination.”

MJ Slaby is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

From virtual reality to careers: How Indiana’s Boys & Girls Clubs use VR for workforce development

2022-12-08T15:04:07+00:00

Alexis Fernung was ready to taxi the airplane from the runway to the hangar. Following the guidance of the signalman and staying in the lines on the runway, she did her best to move the airplane.

“I got this,” she said as the plane started moving.

Just a few minutes earlier, Lillian Green was examining a robot arm used for industrial painting. Up on a ladder, she searched for leaks and inspected the machine.

“Don’t fall off the ladder!” teased Ben Waterman, the teen coordinator at the Boys & Girls Club of Tipton County.

“It’s not real Ben, chill,” Lillian responded.

But it felt real.

Alexis and Lillian are in sixth and fifth grade, respectively. They weren’t on the job site, but rather in the Tipton Boys & Girls Club’s music room where, once a week, it’s transformed into a “hands-on” jobsite using Oculus headsets.

The Indiana Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs partnered with Transfr, a company that creates immersive virtual reality simulations for workforce development, training, and education, to bring oculus headsets loaded with VR simulations to help students explore potential careers to clubs across the state.

Tipton, about an hour north of Indianapolis, was one of 10 clubs that got the headsets in the summer and the program has recently expanded to include nearly two dozen more clubs.

“It’s opened up some of those types of conversations,” Waterman said of VR’s impact on his talks with students about careers. “Kids will gravitate toward careers that they see in their lives like teaching, nursing, or youth pastor.”

Listing jobs they’ve never seen means nothing to them, but with this, you can tell them that the skill they did in the simulation is important for one or more jobs, he said

“It’s a much more concrete way to talk about it,” Waterman said.

Multiple ‘hands-on’ career experiences in one place

Students come to the Boys & Girls Club looking for something different after the school day, said Lana Taylor, executive director for the Indiana Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs.

“They don’t want to do math and reading, they want to do something fun and engaging,” she said. And the virtual reality experience, she said, “is fun and engaging.”

It’s also part of a shift from career exploration to workforce development, Taylor said. It’s the difference between hearing about a career and trying it. Plus, she said it’s another way to supplement what students are learning about career choices in school and at home.

Hearing adults talk about a career isn’t always the best way to give students an understanding of it, she said.

So the Boys & Girls Club wanted to offer more hands-on experiences. One way was for students to work as junior staff at the clubs and learn what it’s like to be a staffer. But not all students want to work at a Boys & Girls Club, Taylor said.

So the club started more partnerships with companies, such as Old Navy, and the one with Transfr is perfect, Taylor said. It allows students to explore multiple industries without leaving the Boys & Girls Club.

The simulations build a path from classroom to career and “help young people understand the full range of options available to them in today’s fast-changing economy and workplace,” Bharani Rajakumar, founder and CEO of Transfr, said in a statement.

After the VR experience, students know if a career is“that’s what we thought it was” or “that’s not what I wanted to do,” Taylor added.

Students try multiple careers and find new ideas

Back in Tipton, the music and art rooms at the Boys & Girls Club transform into job sites on Wednesdays.

Students in fifth grade and older can use the headset programs, which include an option for students to level up and build skills in a specific field.

For fifth and sixth graders, the ideas of going to college and having a career can feel pretty abstract, Waterman said. But he said he knows how important it is to try out different things.

Before coming to the Boys & Girls Club, Waterman worked in student life at Grand Canyon University, where he said he saw students come to college with one major in mind, start taking classes and experiencing life on campus, and then change majors.

He tells the students he works with to be prepared to change their minds once they learn something new.

And that’s exactly what the simulations from Transfr offer: Be a pilot, be an engineer, work in construction or tourism — try it all out.

As the students are exploring, Transfr is collecting data about which simulations are popular and adding options like health care. Waterman said that information helps him think about which guest speakers and field trips the students would want.

Both Alexis and Lillian said the airplane experiences were their favorites, and Lillian liked the robots too.

The girls said they want to be teachers someday. But they also expressed interest in engineering, math, and STEM — all subjects that are covered in the VR simulations.

“That’s what happens. Kids find other options that they hadn’t thought of before,” Taylor said. “The more exposure they get, the more they think about it.”

MJ Slaby is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Some Indiana students have new paths to graduation amid push to ‘reinvent’ high school

2022-12-07T19:45:31+00:00

Indiana students at a handful of school districts have new ways to graduate, and the pathways could expand to more schools throughout the state.

The State Board of Education on Wednesday approved three locally created graduation tracks at two school districts and one adult learning center. They will allow students to earn diplomas and certificates by taking certain courses related to entering the workforce, including in one case potentially getting a job with the district, or enlisting in the military.

District leaders said that the paths could be replicable at schools throughout the state as the legislature considers a push to “reinvent” the high school experience.

The pathways are authorized under 2017 state graduation requirements that are meant to give students more flexibility in earning a diploma. They allow students to graduate via a local track, in lieu of more traditional requirements like earning college-ready test scores or taking advanced classes. The state has previously approved four other such pathways, according to the Indiana Department of Education.

Yorktown High School Principal Stacey Brewer said Yorktown schools’ new graduation track is intended for students who aim to go directly into the workforce after high school. Existing options have been limited for students who don’t want to enter a specific trade, she added.

“Not all students are destined for immediate entrance into postsecondary education, the military, or trade schools,” Brewer said. “Some students will be successful, contributing members of our community working in food service, maintenance, and groundskeeping, to name a few professions.”

Yorktown schools will begin identifying students who are interested in this track in eighth grade, Brewer said, with a course on preparing for college and careers.

No more than 5% of a cohort will be admitted to the pathway in high school, where they’ll train in skills that employers prioritize, like bookkeeping and personal finance, and communicating effectively.

They’ll also receive preferential interviews and hiring from local employers — including Yorktown schools, Brewer said. Students in the pathway will receive training in school-based topics like bullying and seclusion and restraint.

If they get a job during high school, they’ll be able to use time during the school day to get work experience.

The pathway received vocal support from Secretary of Education Katie Jenner and other board members, who noted that students who opt to join the workforce often take a graduation waiver instead of completing a diploma.

“This is a pathway that provides a solution for a group of young adults who deserve similar opportunities as their peers to gain experience, complete training, and build their resume in order to achieve their goal of being workforce ready,” Brewer said.

Another new pathway will also emphasize workforce opportunities, but for adult learners taking classes toward their high school diplomas at the Goodwill Industries-sponsored Excel Center in Gary.

Called Catapult Training, the program will allow students to take shorter-term certification courses from the Excel Center and Ivy Tech. By doing so, students are guaranteed interviews and higher wages with certain employers who are involved in the pathway, said Trent Moore, the director of career and technical education at Goodwill Industries of Michiana.

A final new program at the School City of Hammond will emphasize military enlistment. Board member Byron Ernest said the pathway might be the first such track in the state.

In addition to taking four years of JROTC classes, students on this track will complete a service learning or community service project, attend leadership conferences, take college courses, and participate in military visits, said Cassandra Shipp, Hammond’s assistant superintendent for academic services.

The goal is for students to either enlist in the military at a higher rank and at higher pay than they would otherwise, or to transfer their skills and courses to a college or university, Shipp said.

Though the program is designed to be a four-year track, students can opt in at any point during their high school careers, Superintendent Scott Miller noted.

The state’s four other locally created pathways include a Civic Arts pathway at Greater Clark County Schools, and a Recreation Vehicle Construction pathway at Wa-Nee Community Schools.

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

KIPP Indy’s first graduation will mark historic moment for neighborhood

2022-09-21T20:26:19+00:00

Shariah Miller will always remember leading over 100 of her fellow students on a Juneteenth Peace Walk through Indianapolis’ Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood this summer.

From left: Seniors Devon Wilson, Jessica Torres, and Shariah Miller are a part of the first graduating class of KIPP Indy Legacy High School.

Their route passed by Miller’s school, KIPP Indy Legacy High, where she and 98 other students will become the first graduating class this spring.

Reflecting on the moment when she took the megaphone to address the crowd during the walk, Miller said the KIPP teachers and staff who have known her since freshman year “never fail to remind me of when I first started here how quiet I was and how much I kept to myself.”

That changed, she said, as she found a passion for social justice in high school, through events like the peace walk and in encouraging other young people to speak out.

“I spoke about how important it is for events like this to be student-led because it gives young people voices that deserve to be heard,” she said of the walk. “They felt like they were making a change and their voices were heard by being at this event.”

The Class of 2023 is not just Legacy’s first class, but the first class to graduate within the boundaries of Indy’s Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood, a historically Black, working class area affected by industrial collapse, the construction of a highway that bisects the community, and federally mandated busing.

That graduation will be a moment of pride for Martindale-Brightwood, where the school — part of the national KIPP charter school network and the Indianapolis Public Schools Innovation Network — has become a focal point in the neighborhood’s efforts to improve residents’ quality of life.

Even amid the pandemic and other pressures, the students have worked hard to assist the community through a variety of civic-minded projects. And supporting their neighbors has helped many students, in turn, identify their future goals.

“It’s been amazing to watch as they have grown not just in the physical sense but in knowing who they are and the impact they want to make on the community,” said David Spencer, the school leader.

Adults working to improve Martindale-Brightwood have also been paying attention. Community leaders believe the students and the school have been a key part of efforts to boost the area’s long-term prospects.

“We want high quality options for our kids, where kids do not have to leave our neighborhood to have access to high quality education and be able to compete,” said Barato Britt, executive director of the Edna Martin Center, which provides social services in the neighborhood. “When that’s provided within the community, it breaks certain cycles, helps us revitalize the neighborhood, and enhances the community pride that already exists.”

Stepping up to help hard-hit students

Getting here hasn’t always been easy.

The school opened its doors to its first class of 121 freshmen in 2019, and closed for COVID only a few months later. When it reopened in 2021, one-third of all students didn’t show up for in-person classes. Around 9% of all students didn’t return to the school at all.

As with students around the country, the pandemic had hit them hard. They were living on their own in cars or sleeping on park benches, said Robyn Russell, a KIPP Indy Legacy mom who volunteered to go find them. Some students and their families were going hungry.

And so many students lacked access to running water that Russell started doing their laundry overnight and sending them to shower in the school’s locker rooms before the morning bell rang.

The school used its partnership with the Edna Martin Center — located on the same campus as Legacy — to help families access housing and food assistance. Russell started to keep snacks in the front office.

“We wanted to make sure we met all of the needs we could possibly meet to ensure a positive trajectory for the students’ success in school and for parents to understand that they do have support and resources,” said Russell, who also works as manager of school operations for the school.

Robyn Russell, a school operations manager and KIPP Indy Legacy mother, has worked to meet the needs of students who’ve dealt with shelter and food insecurity during the pandemic.

Students also grappled with the isolation of online school during pivotal moments of their high school years.

Devon Wilson, a senior, said that while he kept his grades up, “The part I didn’t like about quarantine was the social part — you can’t be social.”

Miller, meanwhile, said she lost the motivation to do virtual school, which would later make an impact on her GPA.

“I always think about how I wish I didn’t. Because of the fact that I lost that motivation, I ended up ghosting school the rest of the year,” Miller said.

And some students took on additional work on behalf of their peers. Senior Jessica Torres found herself translating the constantly evolving situation for her fellow Spanish-speaking students.

“I feel like that kind of put pressure on me, but I didn’t mind helping them out because my parents have always shown me it’s like being human,” she said.

Stepping into leadership roles

But even during COVID, and at times because of it, students found ways to connect with the community.

In 2020, while still learning virtually, Wilson and his peers hosted a voter registration drive, walking around the neighborhood to encourage residents to register to vote ahead of the presidential election and “to learn what they could earn from voting,” he said. They registered over 100 people to vote in two days.

Other students helped in vaccine clinics. And when the Red Cross needed volunteers to reach out to senior citizens about their fire and smoke alarms, KIPP students stepped in, said Gina Lewis Alexander, executive director of the Oasis Christian Community Development Corporation.

“We try to identify young leaders,” Lewis Alexander said. “We need more young people at the table to help make decisions.”

Coming back to campus last year presented an opportunity not just to step into additional leadership roles, but to connect and reconnect — even if that involved painful moments. When Miller led the Juneteenth Peace Walk, she heard her peers share stories of how police violence had affected them.

“It was such a collective and collaborative moment to be so heartfelt with so many people you’ve always known, or have never known,” she said. “It was heartwarming, but also gut-wrenching.”

In turn, local leaders like pastors and advocates have served in the school as mentors and educators — two will teach debate and Black history this fall.

“Sometimes we think of things as: How can the school support the community? But it’s actually not that at all, it’s been: How can we be a part of a community that’s supporting and benefiting one another to ensure that we continue to grow?” said Spencer, the leader of Indy Legacy High.

David Spencer, the school leader of KIPP Indy Legacy High, looks at the school and the Martindale-Brightwood community as entities that support and grow each other.

Countering decades of hardships

Having a high school that’s within walking distance has been a boon for many students, school and community leaders said. Students gravitate to campus even when school isn’t in session, said Russell, the school operations manager. They walk from school to the nearby Frederick Douglass Park.

Just over one-third of the graduating seniors come from Martindale-Brightwood’s 46218 ZIP code, where the school is located and the median household income of $26,615 is around half that of the figure for Indianapolis. The remaining students come from adjacent ZIP codes.

Elsewhere, students might take that proximity for granted. But in the past, many local students haven’t had a school so close, said Lewis Alexander, the community leader, who described the history of the neighborhood as traumatic for many residents.

Its major upheavals have included the decline of the railroad industry, which had employed many residents, as well as the construction of the Interstate 70 that bifurcated the neighborhood, she said. Residents — especially white residents — and businesses left.

Federally mandated busing that lasted through the 2000s also took students out of the neighborhood to districts south of the city, leading to enrollment declines and closures in the neighborhood schools.

The closest high school to the area since the turn of the century has been Arsenal Tech, located south of the interstate, according to IPS. Another charter school specifically for students who had experienced juvenile detention operated in the neighborhood from 2015 to 2019.

It was important for KIPP to embrace the Martindale-Brightwood as it considered opening schools in the neighborhood, said Britt, the leader of the Edna Martin Center, who also serves on KIPP Indy’s board.

Residents have long emphasized a need to invest in education as part of their plans to improve quality of life in the neighborhood. While they didn’t seek out KIPP specifically, the innovation charter model that KIPP uses was appealing, Britt said, because the school has support from IPS while operating independently.

Britt said KIPP demonstrated its commitment when its middle school returned to the neighborhood in 2015 after IPS temporarily relocated it to another part of town.

The school operates a community council where local leaders provide input monthly, said Lewis Alexander. Its logo features an “MB.”

After decades of hardships imposed from the outside, Martindale-Brightwood is undergoing a positive transformation. Through an infusion of resources, including a $30 million federal grant, the community is getting resources like a new library and a family life center.

At the same time, these changes have already attracted wealthier homebuyers to the neighborhood and generated some concerns about gentrification, Britt said. Indianapolis Public Schools has also recently highlighted links between its most-desirable programs and “a particularly sharp increase in housing value” in nearby neighborhoods in an FAQ on its plans to close and reshuffle some schools.

“It’s one thing to have a high quality preschool to college school network but another if we know the individuals we know it was designed for are being displaced,” Britt said. “But overall, though, there is excitement. There is time for us to maintain ownership.”

After years of hardship caused by post-industrialization, white flight, and systemic racism, Martindale-Brightwood is seeking to improve the quality of life for its residents and believes Legacy High is a crucial part of that effort.

Looking ahead to graduation

The school hopes to host its graduation ceremony at Martin University, in the heart of Martindale-Brightwood, with enough space for students to bring as many guests as they wish.

“I’m going to cry from beginning to end,” said Spencer.

Approximately 54% of the graduating class is interested in enrolling in a four-year college, while another 35% intend to pursue an associate’s degree, career technical education, or military training, said YeVonne Jones, the school’s managing director of postsecondary counseling and social services. The remainder are headed to the workforce, she said.

After graduation, they’ll still have access to Jones and KIPP Indy counselors, who will make sure they’re on track with college enrollment deadlines and credits and even offer microgrants to students who are facing stumbling blocks.

“The model here that doesn’t stop at graduation is so important to the community to know,” Jones said. “We take this inaugural class seriously, but we’re also building a legacy with our 9th and 10th grade students, and what we hope to provide in the future.”

Jessica Torres, the senior who translated for her fellow students, said KIPP taught her that college isn’t for everyone. She’s interested in pursuing construction management in order to grow her dad’s construction company.

“I haven’t told him yet, because I don’t want him to get his hopes up and then I change my mind,” she said.

But Torres said it’s clear to her that her trajectory would have been different without the environment at KIPP. She considered dropping out once — but kept going with the encouragement of the school’s teachers and administrators.

Miller, who led the Juneteenth march, said she’s most interested in attending a historically Black college or university. In addition to her own goals, she’d like to be a model to her younger sister, who’s now a freshman at Legacy.

“I am not only setting an example for other freshmen, I’m specifically setting an example for her,” Miller said. “Not that she needs to follow in my footsteps, because we’re two different people. I just hope that she’s as diligent as I try to be.”

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

As Indiana’s college-going rate dips, can an underused aid program do more?

2022-08-11T21:52:49+00:00

Katie Keegan will always be grateful to her mom for pushing her to apply to 21st Century Scholars, a needs-based scholarship and mentoring program. Without it, she says, she might not be studying at Purdue University right now.

Her graduating class, the class of 2020, saw Indiana’s steepest decline in college-going rates in recent memory. That year, only 53% of graduating Indiana high schoolers went straight to college, a steep drop from 58% the previous year. But Keegan said she was able to attend Purdue thanks to the support and mentorship from Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars Program, a state financial aid program that helps many Indiana students from low-income families who qualify.

During high school, Keegan met with advisors through the program who guided her through applications like the federal student aid form known as the FAFSA, and answered her questions about college. And the program ultimately provided her with a scholarship allowing her to reach higher education.

“When you know that you’re going to be okay because you don’t have to worry about ‘How am I going to pay this off?’ everything else just kind of feels better,” she said.

Keegan’s story with the program is a successful one, but there’s evidence that not enough students get a chance to emulate it. While 80% of Keegan’s fellow 21st Century Scholars went on to college in 2020, just over half of the overall graduating class did. Yet while four in 10 Indiana students are eligible for 21st Century Scholars, only half of them apply. Such numbers leave some advocates and others wanting better access to programs designed to help students bridge the gap between K-12 and college.

Meanwhile, over the last decade, the share of Indiana’s low-income students going to college — the same population served by the program that helped Keegan — has plunged by 26 percentage points. There have also been declines of 20 percentage points among Black students and 7 percentage points among Hispanic students, all over the last decade.

Rachel Santos, director of education policy at the Indiana Latino Institute, said there are a number of hurdles students and families must cross when planning for college. Automatically enrolling students in programs like 21st Century Scholars would ensure that they are made aware of options and resources that can help them, she said.

“We know that this program can help students get into college and not have the burden of debt,” Santos said. “Students who are in the program, they’re much more likely to enroll in college and then once they’re in college, they get more support and they’re likely to succeed.”

The program isn’t a guarantee of success. In 2020, 37% of the 21st Century Scholars graduated from college on time. This lags behind the 44% state average for on-time graduation, but it is considerably higher than the rate for other low-income students of 27%. And the share of students in the program graduating on time has improved in recent years.

The higher education landscape itself, along with the workforce opportunities available to students after high school, has changed in recent years in ways that may be beyond the direct control of schools, students, and officials. But Chris Lowery, the commissioner for Indiana’s Commission for Higher Education, said those who attribute declines in college-going rates solely to the pandemic are mistaken.

“There are clear economic benefits that come with greater levels of education,” Lowery said in a May release. “People with a bachelor’s degree or higher are more likely to be employed and participating in the workforce, and they have significantly higher wages and a greater overall net worth.”

Like Santos, he’s called for auto-enrolling students in 21st Century Scholars.

A (good) domino effect

Eligibility for the program, founded in 1990, is based on a student’s household income, alongside their residency status. But when students start to apply in the 7th and 8th grades, they have to explain why they want to pursue higher education. Once students reach the 9th grade it’s too late for them to apply as the rules currently stand.

That happened to align well with the approach taken by Keegan, who had been planning for college since she was in middle school.

“It’s something that not a lot of people do, or not a lot of people have to think of,” Keegan said. “But I had to sit down and think of why I’m fit to go to college and why that’ll benefit my mom and I at such a young age.”

Keegan described being accepted into 21st Century Scholars as creating a domino effect, in a good way. A huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, and everything else seemed a bit more possible.

Once she began to participate in the program, she started to envision herself at college. And when she knew she wouldn’t have to take on debt to support herself, she became focused on the application process. Students in the program like Keegan receive up to 100% of tuition at public two- and four-year colleges in Indiana, along with certain fees, and the program also pays for some tuition costs at private, independent, and approved for-profit schools. Students in the program pledge to graduate high school with a cumulative GPA of at least 2.5.

She also said being in the program made her work harder in high school in Connersville, a small Indiana town where the median household income is nearly $30,000 less than the national average of $67,520 in 2020.

Even now as a Purdue student, Keegan sets boundaries for herself in college to maintain good standing with the scholarship program — that means maintaining a strong GPA and full-time class schedule. Students also promise to complete at least 30 credit hours each year to stay on track toward earning a degree on time.

Santos believes 21st Century Scholars’ emphasis on mentoring and personalized support is what has proven to be truly successful with the students she has worked with in the past. Not everyone, she said, can have parents who have the time or knowledge to help them through the process of preparing for college.

“I don’t think just giving students money is the solution to having them succeed,” Santos said. “In higher ed, I think you need cohort style programs. You need community programs.”

While the Commission for Higher Education administers the scholarships, state lawmakers, among others, will also need to be on board with the change. Right now, the commission is putting together analyses on the return of investment for the program in hopes of advocating for auto-enrollment.

More than 45,000 students in the state have obtained their degrees with the help from the scholarship. The commission hopes to increase this number considerably, but they understand it will cost more to do so. In Lowery’s opinion, it’s more than worth it.

“What an incredibly good return on investment it is,” Lowery said. “We statistically know that with increased educational attainment, on average, we spend a lot less on an individual and his or her loved ones in social spending.”

Lowery says the program is old enough that they have already seen the generational impacts. Some students who graduated through the program now have their own children, who are also now more likely to obtain a college degree.

While the share of Indiana students going straight from high school to college has declined recently, that doesn’t mean other students will never go on to higher education.

Chris Foley, director of online education for Indiana University, said online enrollment for them has increased since 2016. Most of the uptick consists of adults who work to get their degree some time after graduating high school, but recently, he said, more students have enrolled in online education immediately following high school. Since many recent students experienced virtual learning due to the pandemic, Foley anticipates online higher education to fill a role for many in the future.

In addition to the flexibility students have when pursuing higher education, Foley said there are other job opportunities that didn’t exist before as well.

“There’s a wide variety of things that I think students have at their fingertips now that I know I didn’t when I went to college 30 years ago,” Foley said.

But others, like Lowery, have concerns about the long-term effects on some who might enter the workforce too soon.

“If individuals go directly into the workforce, if it’s right for them and they can continue to progress to their satisfaction, that’s super,” Lowery said. “But I do have concern if they will continue to have the skills over their working lifetime to progress.”

‘Two very different stories’

When Keegan arrived at Purdue, she explained 21st Century Scholars to a girl she met living on the same floor. The girl was surprised to learn that Keegan had been thinking about and planning for college for years, whereas she knew her parents would fund her college career.

“After we (had) that conversation it was a real eye opener for both of us,” Keegan said. “Because we’re both coming from such different socioeconomic statuses. You don’t really tend to think about how we all ended up with the same place, same floor, same dorm. When I think about that, that’s two very different stories.”

Keegan recommends all students look into local scholarship opportunities, including 21st Century Scholars and other programs such as the Frank O’Bannon Grant and Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship.

She said some of her peers write college off as “just more school” when considering a plan after high school, when in fact her positive experiences range far beyond the coursework and even the people she’s met on campus. Keegan just returned from a study abroad program in Scotland — something she says she wouldn’t have been able to do without financial aid.

“I think a lot of people look at it as more school: ‘I gotta go sit and learn more,’” Keegan said. “When in reality, there’s so much more to it.”

Keegan hopes the state can bring college enrollment numbers back up in the coming years. To her, it would mean more students can look back toward their high school years with gratitude, like she is able to.

Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Helen Rummel was a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area.

Indiana juniors’ SAT scores much better in reading than math

2022-08-10T18:36:16+00:00

Half of Indiana’s high school juniors tested as college-ready in reading and writing on the SAT in 2022, but only around one-third met readiness benchmarks in math, according to Indiana Department of Education data released Wednesday.

The SAT scores also show major disparities in college preparedness between student groups.

Last spring was the first time that juniors took the SAT as a graduation requirement, as the state moved away from its previous assessment for older students — known as the ISTEP — in order to better measure students’ postsecondary readiness.

The state Board of Education approved the score thresholds required to show college readiness on Wednesday, but didn’t discuss the results at length.

Students needed to score a 480 out of 800 in reading and writing and 530 out of 800 in math to be considered college-ready — the same benchmarks set by the College Board, which administers the SAT.

The gaps between student groups were particularly pronounced in math, where only 5.5% of English learners and 7% of students with disabilities were college-ready.

Around 10% of Black students, 16% of Hispanic students, and 20% of American Indian students met the readiness benchmark in math, while rates for multiracial and Native Hawaiian students hovered around 25%. Meanwhile, 37% of white students and 53% of Asian students were considered college-ready in math.

Reading and writing scores were higher overall than math results, but significant disparities persisted in those subjects. Around 62% of Asian students and 58% of white students met college-ready benchmarks, compared to one-third of Hispanic students and one-quarter of Black students.

Around 16% of students in special education and 7% of English language learners met the readiness standard.

Because this is the first year that juniors took the SAT en masse, results from previous years aren’t available. But earlier this summer, Indiana reported a notable decline in the share of students who are heading to college. That rate dropped 6 percentage points from the class of 2019 to 53% for the graduating class of 2020.

Students who don’t pass the SAT have alternative ways to meet their graduation requirements, like taking the ACT or demonstrating military aptitude or career readiness.

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

Indiana program supporting college credit in rural schools expands to cities

2022-07-26T21:29:15+00:00

Over the past two years, many rural schools around Indiana have worked to offer more college credit classes. Now, organizers are moving the initiative into cities like Indianapolis and expect similar results for their students.

The Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis is expanding on their efforts within the Early College High School model to create the Urban College Acceleration Network, or UCAN. The support for the new program comes after the center created the Rural Early College Network in 2019 that now includes 20 Indiana schools.

The idea behind both networks, rural and urban, is to give schools more support and resources encouraging students to enroll in classes that give them college credit.

A key element of the networks are high schools that serve as “mentors.” These schools have already been certified by CELL as “Early College High Schools” — Ben Davis University High school in Indianapolis, for example, was previously certified and is now serving as a UCAN mentor school. With the staff and classes already in place, these mentor schools guide the new schools toward endorsement as an Early College High School.

Once a school has been certified by the program as an Early College High School, students will have access to more dual credit courses and advanced coursework. This endorsement process already existed in the state, and typically would take three to five years for schools to complete. But over the last two years, seven schools in the rural network program have reached endorsement.

Janet Boyle, the director of the Rural Early College Network, said that previously, some high schools had been trying to reach the “Early College” endorsement for eight to 10 years before joining the network.

After two years of running the rural network, the center launched the urban network this year. UCAN received $4.1 million from ESSER funding to start a network consisting of 16 schools, including five in Indianapolis. The funding will support the program for at least two years.

According to recently released state data, 62% of 2020 Indiana high school graduates received some form of college credit through their classes, whether that was through dual credit courses or Advanced Placement. The premise of the Early College High School model is to increase that number.

While the first network targeted students living in rural areas, organizers believe this similar structure will benefit students at city schools too.

“It’s purposely trying to find the kids that traditionally don’t go on to college,” Boyle said about the program. “Even though rural schools don’t have as many students of color, they’ve got first generation students and they’ve sure got poverty. So there is more similarity than you might think.”

To achieve that goal, Early College tries to bring opportunities to students of color and those from lower income households. Because of this, Boyle said, students can save thousands of dollars in tuition costs by taking the classes for free in high school, not at a university.

While the majority of Indiana’s high school graduates from two years ago received college credit through their coursework, the share of Indiana students enrolling in higher education has declined recently. Boyle said the center’s program can encourage more students to enroll in higher education.

Katie Dorsey, vice president of strategic planning of Herron Classical Schools, a public charter network in Indianapolis, agrees. Two schools within the charter network will be involved in UCAN.

“As a school counselor, I know we talked about a soft handoff from high school to college, especially for students who demographically or historically aren’t as likely to persist and complete that degree,” said Dorsey, who used to work as a school counselor. “When students arrive on a college campus with a good portion of their credits already fulfilled, it gives them momentum to complete that first semester and then that first year.”

Principal Corye Franklin of Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis said he toured multiple schools showing the program’s model from both the center’s rural program and even some schools outside Indiana. He said he was impressed by the collaboration seen between educators and students and is excited to see Arsenal Tech become a partner school within the network.

While Franklin hopes this network can increase a student’s chance to pursue higher education, he believes it is important for schools to prepare graduating students for a range of possibilities, including the workforce or trade schools. The network, he says, can support all of those options.

“We want to make sure that we are supporting all of our students,” Franklin said. “With that, we want to make sure that when students get to the stage and they’re ready to walk across, we are preparing them for enrollment, employment, or enlistment.”

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect Janet Boyle’s position with the Rural Early College Network.

Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Helen Rummel is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Helen at hrummel@chalkbeat.org.

Recent Indiana high school grads: Tell us what’s next for you

2022-07-19T18:05:58+00:00

In recent years, Indiana has seen a significant decrease in the number of high school students going to college. The Indiana high school class of 2020 saw a college-going rate of only 53%, which is 6 percentage points less than the previous year.

This trend impacts students of color and low-income households the most. Boys in high school also saw a sharp decrease in the college-going rate with just 46% compared to the college-going rate for girls remaining at 61%. We understand that behind these trends are deeply personal decisions being made by students and their families. If you are a recent high school graduate, we want to hear from you here at Chalkbeat.

You can respond to this form until Monday July 25, at the end of the day. You can also reach the reporter, Helen Rummel, directly at hrummel@chalkbeat.org or at (317) 737-9316. We’re always listening at community@chalkbeat.org.

If you are having trouble viewing this form on mobile, go here.

Crispus Attucks high schoolers jumpstart health care careers

2022-07-14T23:47:29+00:00

On Tuesday morning, Chandler Harris and Aileen Reyes were walking through the echoing halls of IU Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Wearing masks and IU Health jackets, the two high schoolers were starting their day observing medical professionals in what could be the first steps of their careers at age 16.

The two are a part of a year-old program that allows high school students to explore the health care field and even promises a job offer upon graduation. The program will guarantee them offers through IU Health as a medical assistant or patient care technician in a state where some hospitals have been short staffed.

The partnership between IU Health and Indianapolis Public Schools serves 23 students of Crispus Attucks High School.

“Crispus Attucks sits right in the backyard,” Program Manager Andrea Russell said, referring to the proximity of the school to the hospitals involved in the program. “So, it was definitely a partnership that made sense.”

Russell said the program targets students of various backgrounds interested in working in health care. Russell said it’s important to have team members patients can identify with and that represent a diverse population.

During the summer, students rotate among Methodist, Riley, and University hospitals as well as IUPUI research buildings. They apply as freshmen. The program will add 45 more students in the fall and hopes to expand even more in future years.

The program covers an array of jobs in health care from cardiology to travel nursing as well as the business side of the medical field. While many students start with a specific interest, Russell said students are often surprised when they find a field that is even more engaging.

She recalls a student who observed a neuroscience research team and found the job “felt like home” to her.

“Students start to intentionally develop their character,” Russell said about the high schoolers.

Russell described the program as hands-on with work-based learning. While students do not work directly with patients, they do work with cadavers, use medical equipment, and observe appointments and medical procedures.

Since the program covers many topics, Harris said she learns a new thing every day.

“Being here is like a breath of fresh air,” she said, far different from her previous job in food service.

Harris and Aileen Reyes are rising juniors at Crispus Attucks. While they were interested in different facets of the health care industry, they both say they could hone in on their passions, especially while working this summer at the hospitals.

Even with the guarantee of a job, many students will pursue higher education after graduating. Program leaders hope the college transition will be smoother for these students after already learning in a hospital setting. Many of them will have a chance to work part time while in college if they’re interested.

Harris said she already knew she wanted to go to college, but the program helped her narrow her focus.

“Normally, people don’t know what they want to do when they’re in high school,” Harris said.

Now, Harris said, she’s excited to continue studying forensics in hopes of starting a career as a forensics nurse.

Helen Rummel is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Helen at hrummel@chalkbeat.org.

Make more money, faster: Indiana banks on the appeal of a one-year college certificate

2022-06-27T21:11:08+00:00

Four years is a long time.

Noemi Lozano sometimes hears that from students, who can’t imagine studying and paying for four years of college for a bachelor’s degree.

But Lozano, who connects families with resources for River Forest Schools in Northwest Indiana, doesn’t want those students to completely give up on getting a college education. So she offers a low-risk option:

Just go to college for one year.

In that year, students can earn a certificate that qualifies them for a skilled job. They can decide to keep studying, or they can get a job making more money than, say, in a retail or restaurant job.

“It’s a great start to just look at short-term goals,” Lozano said. “Then you go from there. It can take you anywhere.”

Plus, for hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers, that one year of college could come at no cost, though few seem to know that.

In Indiana, people who don’t have college degrees can get the training to become welders, electricians, medical assistants, web programmers, or truck drivers — for free.

The Next Level Jobs Workforce Ready Grant foots the tuition bill for certain certificates in high-demand fields. The state touts that grant recipients increase their salaries by a median $6,800 a year after completing such training programs.

It’s part of Indiana’s bid to increase the number of college-educated adults and meet changing workforce needs. And it’s an attractive deal as students are questioning the value of college amid skyrocketing tuition and the albatross of student loan debt.

“Especially for working adults, they need a quick solution,” said MJ Michalak, vice president of public affairs for Ivy Tech Community College. “They just need something to get them to that next step.”

Still, advocates and experts say the state can do more. It’s not clear how effective the grant is in advancing students’ careers. Officials don’t track how many students drop out without finishing the certificate, nor do they look at what kinds of jobs graduates go on to hold.

And a bright spot in the program — that it attracts more Black and Latino students — could also pose the danger of steering students of color away from four-year colleges and into lower-paid jobs.

“If we’re only pushing Workforce Ready Grants on our students of color, then we’re going to be in a not-helpful situation,” said Rachel Santos, education policy director for the Indiana Latino Institute. “It’ll feel good for a little bit, and then we’ll be looking at a ton of inequity.”

The Workforce Ready Grant pays for adults without college degrees to obtain free workforce training as part of a larger push in Indiana to help more Hoosiers get skilled jobs.

What the workforce grants pay for

When Laura Rucoba was job hunting, she applied to so many places and got denied so many times.

Having worked in restaurants, at Lowe’s, and in an elementary school as a paraprofessional, Rucoba wanted to work in a hospital or doctor’s office but learned she needed to have a certification.

College had always been at the back of her mind. But life was busy. Rucoba, 41, was raising two children and didn’t want to take on student loan debt.

“I just thought it was something that was impossible for me to do,” Rucoba said. “I just couldn’t comprehend how at an older age, I could go back to school.”

Rucoba found out about the Workforce Ready Grant from Lozano, her sister, and enrolled in a medical assisting certificate program, which advertises salaries ranging from about $31,500 to $49,000.

Since finishing her technical certificate last year, Rucoba has worked in a pediatrics office in northwest Indiana, checking in patients, taking vitals, reviewing charts, and giving shots. The pay is better than her previous jobs, she doesn’t have to work weekends, and she sees opportunities to advance if she earns additional certifications.

“I truly enjoy what I’m doing right now,” Rucoba said. “I’m in a spot right now where I thought I was never going to be.”

The Workforce Ready Grant is part of a larger initiative called Next Level Jobs, launched five years ago, that focuses on helping Hoosiers get skilled jobs. The state prioritizes five industries: advanced manufacturing, building and construction, health and life sciences, information technology and business, and transportation and logistics.

Within those areas, Indiana identified certain certificate programs that it would pay for through the Workforce Ready Grant, such as cybersecurity, HVAC technician, and supply chain management.

Unlike many scholarships, students don’t need to qualify financially to receive the grant. They can use it at certain providers, such as Ivy Tech. During the pandemic, the state extended grant eligibility to additional programs and to college-educated people seeking to switch careers.

The state makes a relatively modest investment in the workforce grants, spending $3 million per year. To reach more students, Indiana stretches its dollars by combining the grant with need-based federal Pell Grants and other state funding for adult students.

The pandemic has delayed Indiana from looking at what one expert considers the most important outcome: whether workforce grant recipients went on to get jobs.

But what are the results?

Since its start in 2017, nearly 60,000 students have used the Workforce Ready Grant.

But here’s where the picture gets a little cloudy.

The state doesn’t know what happens to Workforce Ready Grant recipients. Overall, about 33,000 students have finished certificates. But the state doesn’t track a total completion rate — or completion rates by program — that would show how many students dropped out and how many are still in progress.

That’s a statistic the state hopes to eventually be able to crunch. Regardless, Indiana’s higher education leader Chris Lowery acknowledged that more students should be finishing their programs: “I’d like to see us have a greater completion rate,” he said. “I’m not satisfied with that. I think it needs to be higher.”

The pandemic has also delayed the state from looking at what one expert considers the most important outcome: whether grant recipients went on to get jobs.

And not just any jobs — but better jobs than they had, in the fields that they studied.

“The best way to center quality is to focus on the labor market outcomes of people who go through this training,” said Shalin Jyotishi, senior policy analyst for education and labor at New America, a public policy think tank.

It’s not enough to report that graduates make more money, Jyotishi said, because that doesn’t necessarily mean a person is no longer facing poverty or that they have landed a job in their field that pays well and offers good benefits.

“That’s where a lot of those programs tend to mess up,” Jyotishi said. “They tend to report an increase in earning, and that is a great outcome, but it doesn’t necessarily achieve the goal of economic security.”

California, for example, surveys community college students on career and technical education outcomes — although only about a third respond — and publicly reports how many work in jobs related to their field of study, how many earn a local living wage, and their median earnings.

Jyotishi pointed out that some of the professions supported by the Workforce Ready Grant, like pharmacy technician or phlebotomist, can still be low-paying jobs.

In Indiana, state officials say they don’t want to burden providers with the additional request to report job outcomes. Instead, they say jobs data is already available, through the same back-end tracking of state workforce data that shows the $6,800 median wage increase.

It’s just that because of other demands created by the pandemic, state officials haven’t looked yet at the data to see whether grant recipients secured better jobs with their new qualifications.

Noemi Lozano has her sights set on a bachelor’s degree after completing a certificate in business. “I started with a certificate — it was a little step,” she said. “Once I started, I said, I am not just stopping.”

Concerns about students of color

Last year, Indiana ramped up marketing for the Workforce Ready Grant, more than tripling efforts to spend $2.5 million on hyping the program.

“Build a better future for free,” billboards and newspaper ads say.

“Employment situation changed? Wondering what’s next?” social media ads ask.

Still, not enough people know the opportunity exists, advocates say, and those who pursue it don’t always have clear pathways to jobs or further education.

The state is trying to reach two types of students: recent high school graduates around 18 years old, and adults who have been out of school for some time.

Adults who have jobs, families, bills, and other responsibilities are likely the toughest student population to reach. Going to college as an adult means rationalizing the expense and time to study, and possibly even giving up a job that supports a family.

The payoff has to be worth it.

In recruiting students for the Workforce Ready Grant, state higher education officials believe they’ve unlocked a key strategy that has the potential to improve college enrollment across the board. Aside from billboards and Facebook ads, the state has also turned to trusted messengers like community organizations and churches.

The Indiana Latino Institute is one of those organizations. Among its education programs, the group works with high schoolers on applying for financial aid for college.

Rachel Santos, the institute’s director of education policy, says students often are unaware of the free training opportunity, and she worries there’s some confusion about who the grant is supposed to serve.

She’s not surprised that the Workforce Ready Grant has attracted a larger share of Black and Latino students among the overall college-going population.

“There’s an urgency right now with people really feeling the cost of living going up,” Santos said.

Still, Santos believes bachelor’s degrees should remain the larger goal. She wants to see the state take a more intentional approach to showing how a student can advance from a certificate to an associate degree to a bachelor’s degree, so that students of color aren’t further tracked into lower educational attainment rates.

It’s often harder than it should be for students to know how to “stack” credentials and transfer credits, she said.

“We should not just be pushing our Latino students toward the Workforce Ready Grant because it’s a paid program and we need more people doing hard labor in the workforce,” Santos said. “It has to be seen as a small piece of the bigger picture.”

Noemi Lozano, the parent liaison, uses herself as an example when she talks to families about postsecondary options. She also works on Latino college outreach for the state through its Padres Estrellas program, or Star Parents.

Lozano had started studying business before putting college on pause while she raised a family.

Then, one day, her children brought home a flyer from school about the Workforce Ready Grant. With her children heading to college, and her tuition paid for by the grant, Lozano found she had no excuse for not going back to school.

She earned a business certificate, then finished her associate degree. Now she’s transferring her credits from Ivy Tech to Indiana University-Northwest to work toward her bachelor’s degree.

“I started with a certificate — it was a little step,” Lozano said. “Once I started, I said, I am not just stopping.”

Stephanie Wang covers education in Indiana, including pre-K, K-12 schools, and higher education. Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Stephanie at swang@chalkbeat.org.

Ivy Tech spent years trying to improve rock bottom graduation rates — and it’s working

2022-06-15T21:06:01+00:00

When Precious Johnson enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, she was terrified. It had been years since she graduated high school, and she was a single mom raising a son with autism.

“I was trying to figure out how to juggle this with my son,” Johnson, 40, recalled recently. “How am I going to do this homework? I still have to go to work in the morning.”

The challenges Johnson faced might be unusual at many four-year college campuses. But community colleges are designed to educate students like her — adults with complicated lives and responsibilities outside of school.

For a long time, Indiana’s community college system seemed to be failing those students. When Johnson earned her associate degree in 2014, she was defying the odds. Less than 30 percent of her peers earned degrees or certificates six years after enrolling. And fewer than 1 in 20 students graduated from Ivy Tech on time.

But over the last decade, Ivy Tech, which serves about 74,000 students across the state, has made steady gains in completion rates. Two-year completion rates at Ivy Tech steadily improved from a dismal 5 percent for students who began in 2012 to 14 percent for the most recent cohort.

“Now, we’re still operating off of a base that’s too low, but all the trends are in the right direction,” said Teresa Lubbers, who served as Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education for 13 years and left that position in March.

Ivy Tech has something of a dual mission. On the one hand, it needs to serve its students. But it is also an essential tool for economic development in a state where there are more jobs that require postsecondary education than qualified workers.

The community college system has seen significant declines in enrollment in recent years, reducing the number of qualified workers it educates. Improving outcomes for students who do enroll is another way Ivy Tech can help educate more workers — and prepare more people for good jobs.

This also comes as Indiana faces its steepest decline in high school graduates going to college in a generation.

Lubbers and leaders at Ivy Tech point to several changes Indiana’s system has made over the years as it embraces practices that are backed by research or have shown success at other community colleges around the country.

Upending the old system

Remedial education was one of the first and most substantial areas overhauled. These courses typically cover the same material as high school and don’t offer college credit.

Remedial classes just weren’t working, Lubbers said in an interview before she left office.

“You’re putting people in standalone remedial courses, and they’re using their financial aid, and it’s taking them time, and they’re less likely to be successful,” she said. “The conclusion was, we better do something differently.”

Ivy Tech restructured remediation, which is also known as developmental education, to allow students to take essential college-level courses as soon as they enrolled and push fewer students into remedial classes. That transformation was part of a national movement.

Susan Bickerstaff, a researcher at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University, said developmental education had a few problems. One was that the placement tests schools used to check if students were ready for college-level math and English weren’t very reliable.

“Under the old system, we were just placing too many students into developmental education,” Bickerstaff said.

Students could be pushed to take several semesters of developmental classes before they got to the college subjects they were interested in.

“College could be really deflating if in your first semester, you’re basically taking what you took in high school,” Bickerstaff said.

So Ivy Tech made it a lot easier for students to show they were ready for college-level work, using evidence such as high school grades and scores on college admission tests. Now, students who are placed into remedial classes have the option to study and retake the assessment.

Those changes led to a staggering decline in remediation.

The number of Ivy Tech students identified as needing remediation dropped to about 13 percent in 2019 from about 67 percent in 2012, according to data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

“It’s an enormous success for us,” said Kara Monroe, who was provost at Ivy Tech from 2018 to January. “It marked a significant turnaround, at least in community colleges, about the way we talked about … student success.

‘Very fast’ courses

For students who need help, Ivy Tech embraced a model called corequisites, which allows students to simultaneously enroll in developmental and college level math and English classes.

That’s the approach in Tiffani Butler’s English class.

English 111 is the “bread and butter” of the department, because most students must take it to earn their associate degrees, Butler said.

It’s a college-level class. But if students need remediation, they take a corequisite class to “help them give them the support that they need to be successful,” Butler said.

One of the students in both classes is Moise Toussaint, who emigrated from Haiti.

“I’m very, very motivated to achieve this goal,” said Toussaint, who needs to pass English for the Ivy Tech nursing program. But it’s a challenge to keep up with the pace.

“It’s very fast. And you have to do a lot of stuff at the same time for both of them,” he said. “Then I have work too — I’m working at the same time.”

The class is a sprint for Toussaint because it’s only eight weeks long, rather than a traditional 16-week session. That’s another change that Ivy Tech embraced a few years ago: It shortened courses in a bid to keep students from dropping out and help them finish courses sooner.

The eight-week courses can be hard for students who are returning to school after years away, because it can take time to learn the skills they need to succeed as students, Butler said. Some students, for example, don’t even have laptops when they enroll.

“For students that are focused and ready for it, an eight-week format is wonderful because it does get them in and get them out,” Butler said. “But it’s not for everyone.”

Ivy Tech Provost Dean McCurdy, however, said that’s one of the changes that has helped the community college system continue to improve outcomes for students. Students are less likely to have a class interrupted by a problem outside of school when taking shorter courses, he said.

Students in short sessions are more likely to earn passing grades of C or better, compared to traditional 16-week classes, McCurdy said. Next semester, about three quarters of courses Ivy Tech offers will be eight-week sessions.

McCurdy said the system is looking for new ways to improve outcomes, such as incentivizing students to take steps that help them succeed. Those include meeting with an advisor and filling out the financial aid application.

“We know if students do these things it helps them keep momentum and stay enrolled,” he said. “We always work backwards from the outcomes that we’re looking for.”

The changes at Ivy Tech have fueled dramatic gains. But Ivy Tech is now facing another pressing challenge as it tries to deal with substantial losses in enrollment.

And even as on-time completion rates have improved to 14 percent, there’s a long way to go. Most students who enroll in Ivy Tech still aren’t earning degrees.

Contact WFYI education reporter Dylan Peers McCoy at dmccoy@wfyi.org. Follow on Twitter: @dylanpmccoy.

Rate of Indiana high school students headed to college drops to 53%

2022-06-10T16:01:57+00:00

The number of Indiana high school students who are heading to college has fallen to 53%, a significant drop after years of declining enrollment, according to data released by state officials in a Thursday morning meeting.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education data is for the state’s 2020 high school class, the first to graduate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data shows the college-going rate has dropped 6 percentage points over the last year — 12 percentage points lower than five years ago — with widening gaps for students of color and students from low-income families.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused drops in college enrollment, but the commission stressed that enrollment saw a decline even before then. The commission cited the perceived cost of higher education and low unemployment rates as possible factors in the continued decline.

“I want to make clear, though, that we cannot just blame this on the pandemic,” Sean Tierney, ICHE associate commissioner for policy and research, said at the meeting.

Dhanfu Elston, chief of staff and senior vice president for strategy at Complete College America, said a competitive job market often can force students to reconsider higher education plans.

“Whenever a student can potentially get a job paying well beyond minimum wage, in some cases, double and triple that amount, it’s going to make them rethink everything,” Elston said.

In order for higher education institutions to see students return, they will have to emphasize the long-term benefits, Elston added.

“There’s also this recognition that institutions don’t always do well, especially for minoritized populations — under-resourced students, first-generation students, rural students, community colleges — in letting them know: This is what you can do. These are the careers. Here’s the demand in our particular field.”

While college enrollment has decreased across the nation, Indiana’s college-going rates have fallen further than most states. Currently, the college-going rate nationwide is 63%, with Indiana trailing 10 percentage points behind.

The college-going rate among Black students in Indiana fell by 7 percentage points, meaning the group now has the lowest college-going rate by ethnicity at 43%. Hispanic and Latino students’ college-going rate also dipped considerably, with a 6 percentage point decrease to 44%. The trends also fell more steeply among low-income students, where only about 1 in 3 high schoolers pursues higher education. However, 81% of the 2020 class of 21st Century Scholars, a program that pays some or all of the tuition for lower-income students, are going to college.

The education attainment rates in Indiana – working-age adults who have completed some form of higher education – are also low when compared to national averages. The state has set a goal for 60% of the adult population to complete some form of higher education by the year 2025, but currently Indiana stands at just 48%.

The report revealed that in 2020, 61% of women went to college while only 46% of men did. This is the first time in recent years where less than 50% of men sought some form of higher education. In keeping with national trends, the gender gap in higher education in Indiana has widened over the last 10 years.

“Men, in many cases, are working to try to figure out how do they support their families,” Elston said. “In many cases, the opportunities and the disparities in wages between men and women allow for more men to see opportunities than for women.”

Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery said the data was startling and pushed the board to consider the next steps to increase higher education enrollment.

“Indiana’s sharp one-year college-going decline is alarming, and we have to treat it as such,” Lowery said in a statement Thursday morning. “We know individual lives and the state’s economy depend on and thrive with an educated society,”

A study presented by the commission found that while the majority of Hoosiers still feel favorably toward higher education, there are negative views motivated by its perceived cost. Currently, higher education is most frequently associated with four-year bachelor’s degrees, leaving out associate degrees and trade school certificates.

Correction: June 10, 2022: A previous version of this story gave an outdated figure for Indiana’s higher education attainment rate.

Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Helen Rummel is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Helen at hrummel@chalkbeat.org.

‘Overcame statistics’: IPS students graduate despite COVID challenges

2022-05-25T22:30:39+00:00

Senior Class President Saul Rodriguez still remembers a speaker he met when he was a freshman at Indianapolis’ Arsenal Technical High School. He said he never forgot her telling his class that, statistically speaking, most of them wouldn’t make it to graduation.

On Tuesday, Rodriguez stood before 412 of his fellow classmates. Tech’s class of 2022, dressed in caps and gowns, looked on from the crowd at Clowes Memorial Hall. Rodriguez chuckled at the story.

Glancing around the packed auditorium, he said, “I can say that we proved her wrong.”

Rodriguez’s statement drew roaring cheers. The class can dismiss her doubts as irrelevant now, he said.

“You being seated here today shows that not only did we overcome people’s expectations, but we also overcame the statistics as well,” Rodriguez said, “doing so with flying colors.”

As more parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, friends, children, and cousins arrived, officials asked guests to squeeze together to make room. Cheering supporters crescendoed into a celebration of the moment they had waited years for.

Rodriguez was part of a senior class of around 500 students. He reminded his peers of everything they endured over the last four years: mask mandates, other COVID 19 protocols, remote learning, political protests, and losses of jobs, families, and lives. All affected the class’s education in ways Rodriguez said no one could have expected.

“If I had to compare what we have gone through throughout these last four years, I would say it was like a dumpster fire,” he said.

Now the students are graduating as college enrollment is falling, and talk of a recession continues.

All that doesn’t include personal struggles.

“There was also adversity that each of us faced that we don’t talk about,” Rodriguez said.

Graduate Kamickia Weathersby endured hardship while at Tech — and emerged primarily grateful.

She lived unhoused all four years of high school.

“I know what it feels like to be hungry,” Weathersby said. “And to be homeless.”

On Tuesday she thanked Arsenal Tech for providing a community and a home that supported her. She specifically mentioned Assistant Principal Crishell Sam and social worker Jacquelyn Powell.

Weathersby said she would carry her gratitude long after leaving school. “I love it here,” said Weathersby, dressed in a bright white dress. “If I could do over the past four years, I wouldn’t change anything.”

She said she plans to attend Ivy Tech after graduation and to start a non-profit supporting unhoused people in Indianapolis.

Graduate Sana’a Kirby’s mother died in May 2020. Now, Kirby is determined to go to college, because that’s what her mother motivated her to do.

“I wanted to show her what I could do,” Kirby said. “I could be at my best.”

Kirby will study at the Herron School of Art and Design at IUPUI.

Cameron Whistler said he struggled with online classes and with the decision to go to college. He plans to attend Marian University.

Wearing black velvet dress shoes purchased specially for the big day, Whistler said he’s excited now to take on a new challenge at college, and make his own life. He had arrived on Tuesday with his grandmother Elizabeth Cowans, 62. She smiled when thinking about Whistler’s future plans.

“I’m feeling very proud,” she said. “I’m proud of everything he puts his mind to.”

Helen Rummel is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Helen at hrummel@chalkbeat.org.

How much money do high school graduates make? Indiana digs into the numbers.

2022-04-19T11:00:00+00:00

What happens to students after they graduate from high school?

Schools largely don’t know. At South Bend schools, for example, officials know that fewer than half of graduates went on to college in the past two years. But they don’t follow the other 55%.

“It’s certainly harder to track,” said Rafi Nolan-Abrahamian, assistant superintendent of accountability and innovation. “And there’s less certainty in outcomes and the quality of the information you’re getting.”

That could soon change. For the first time, what students do after high school will contribute to how Indiana gauges school performance, through a new dashboard expected to launch in the fall.

How many students enlist in the military? How many of them hold steady jobs 10 years after graduation? How much money do they make?

All of those outcomes can paint a fuller picture of how well K-12 education prepares students, experts say.

But beyond tracking enrollment in Indiana colleges, finding the data is proving tricky. What state officials know so far is just a small slice of the whole story, and they haven’t yet broached how to use the limited information.

“There’s a philosophical question as well as a data accuracy question here,” said Christy Hovanetz, who focuses on school accountability as a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd. “Should high schools be accountable for what happens to a student six years after they leave high school? … [and] how accurate of information can we gather on students six years out?”

Giving context to the data

The state cast a wide net to look at employment after high school, examining anyone with an employment record reported through unemployment insurance data.

That broad employment rate includes people who could have worked for a brief stint or made little money. But it also excludes Indiana graduates who find jobs in other states.

To attempt to better capture employment, the state also calculated a sustained employment rate and median wage that filters out short-term jobs. It focuses on those who worked for most of the year and made at least minimum wage.

The state recently published the employment outcomes, ahead of the upcoming K-12 dashboard. At first glance, the data seems to indicate that in 2020, students who graduated high school the previous year made a median income of about $22,000.

But that’s missing a lot of students.

The figure doesn’t include anyone who dropped out of high school. It doesn’t include students enrolled in Indiana colleges. It doesn’t include graduates who moved away to other states. It doesn’t include those working part time.

In fact, the median wage calculation only includes roughly 13,000 out of some 75,000 graduates — or about 18% of graduates.

So that $22,000 figure doesn’t truly represent earning prospects. It’s also hard to draw conclusions about who it does represent.

Because of the data caveats, it’s difficult to analyze trends. Do employment rates taper over time because of something happening in the labor market, or because the state can’t keep tabs on as many students?

The state will also eventually need to set goals to help people understand what a $22,000 median wage or, say, a 66% employment rate after 10 years means.

“Is that good or not?” Hovanetz said. “It’s hard for the general public specifically to make a lot of contextual sense out of it.”

Many still support collecting the data, if imperfect. State officials and policy experts say they hope the numbers spark more conversations on how schools can set students up for life after high school and perhaps fuel better data collection moving forward.

Still, Hovanetz says Indiana is ahead of the curve on connecting life outcomes to K-12 education — not just proxy indicators for how prepared a student is to be successful, but what a student actually accomplishes.

How schools can use the data

For now, the after-high school outcomes won’t be tied to the way the state grades schools.

But state officials hope the new information puts the focus on how schools prepare their students. It moves the goalpost beyond high school graduation, said Jason Callahan, Indiana’s assistant secretary of student pathways and opportunities.

“From a policy standpoint, we are really looking to move that terminal end point beyond a high school diploma, thinking about postsecondary and work-based experiences that lead to life-fulfilling careers,” Callahan said.

The numbers could help illustrate how much students could make depending on what paths they pursue after high school, he said. In trying to increase higher education attainment rates, state officials often emphasize that a credential or degree can lead to significantly larger lifetime earnings — on average, about $22,000 more per year.

Some experts caution, however, against pressuring high schools to push all students toward college and say the data needs to show how students can be successful in different ways. It’s also difficult to know whether a student’s success can be directly attributed to something a high school did.

There’s a clearer pipeline between high school and college, said Nolan-Abrahamian, the South Bend administrator. High schools tie many strategies to preparing students for college, like offering dual credit courses. But even though schools teach workforce skills, he said it’s less clear how K-12 education can improve outcomes for students who don’t go to college.

“Postsecondary enrollment is something schools have direct control over, and something they’re actively working students toward,” Nolan-Abrahamian said. But when it comes to employment or enlistment, “it’s harder to say how schools would directly plan toward those outcomes.”

Kae Petrin contributed to this story.

It’s time for colleges to prove their value, Indiana leader says

2022-02-09T22:09:28+00:00

Through 13 years on the job, Indiana’s higher education leader has sought to assuage the unrelenting skepticism of whether college is worth it.

As she approaches retirement, Commissioner Teresa Lubbers put the question back on colleges Tuesday in her final state of higher education address at the Statehouse.

It’s up to colleges to prove their value, Lubbers said — to bring costs down, to be more flexible for nontraditional students, to show how a degree or certificate matters in the workforce.

At a time when the future of higher education is uncertain, she said, the colleges that will survive “will resist the temptation for incremental change, but rather embrace the reality that students — young and older — will expect a dramatically different system of learning and ways of showing their competence.”

The college-going rate among Indiana’s high school graduates has fallen to 59%, down from 65% five years ago. Enrollment is particularly dropping among men and students of color.

Despite the perception of higher education institutions being slow to change, Lubbers said the pandemic has shown they can quickly adapt.

College officials acknowledge the challenges ahead. At IUPUI, for example, Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Kathy Johnson is thinking about how to reach more working adults once the pandemic subsides and emphasizes the need for work-based learning opportunities.

“COVID has forced us to come to a turning point perhaps faster than we otherwise would,” she said. “The ways of doing our work have shifted. That can be to the benefit of students.”

Stephanie Wang covers higher education for Chalkbeat Indiana, which partners with Open Campus.

Indiana bill would duplicate First Amendment protections at colleges

2022-01-27T23:25:40+00:00

A bill to bar Indiana state colleges from restricting protests based on ideology passed overwhelmingly in the House Thursday — even though the legislation essentially duplicates federal First Amendment protections.

Universities have stopped short of supporting the bill, but said they agree with its ideas. Bill critics questioned why a state law is necessary when federal protections exist. They also warned the bill if signed into law could encourage litigation and complicate First Amendment case law.

Spurred by complaints from conservative and religious groups, House Bill 1190 would codify federal free-speech protections into state law and also allow students and student groups to sue for damages.

The bill would prevent state education institutions from prohibiting protests or leafleting on certain areas of campus or denying those rights to student groups based on their ideology.

Co-author Rep. Chris Jeter (R-McCordsville) cited examples of conservative and religious groups facing alleged discrimination on college campuses in explaining the origin of the bill. Still, he said the bill was neutral and didn’t distinguish among points of view.

Jack Jordan (R-Bremen), the author of HB 1190, also said the bill was not a Democrat or Republican issue, but stemmed from the First Amendment.

“This is a ‘we’ issue, that we all should be — and I’m assuming are — excited about,” Jordan said in presenting the bill.

HB 1190 received near-unanimous support from public speakers and other lawmakers, though Rep. Ed DeLaney (D-Indianapolis) questioned why it was necessary if the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court rulings have affirmed First Amendment rights on college campuses.

It’s not necessary to put existing federal protections into state laws, said Sheila Kennedy, a professor emeritus of law and public policy at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI — and doing so inaccurately could create legal headaches for schools.

“There’s no legal reason to codify it. It is the law,” Kennedy said. “State legislatures do not have to go back every time the Supreme Court makes a law inapplicable. If the Supreme Court comes down with a decision, a law may stay on your books, but it is no longer in effect.”

Kennedy said HB 1190 encourages additional litigation, and complicates the legal precedent of the First Amendment and existing case law by potentially allowing somebody to claim they have additional rights under Indiana law.

Specific provisions of the bill — like one prohibiting colleges from denying a benefit to student organizations based on their ideology — could require schools to recognize and fund white supremacist student groups, she said.

“Even if their intent was not to protect student groups with abhorrent views, that certainly could occur under this language,” she said.

Jeter said the purpose of adding the language to state law is to provide additional guidance to universities.

“We’ve seen universities attempt to craft policies just based on the First Amendment, which is very broad, and those policies have oftentimes veered away… from some of the case law,” Jeter said. “(Universities) want to propagate rules that are fair, lawful, and viewpoint-neutral for all students.”

The bill says it should not be construed to prevent universities from restricting non-protected speech, such as threats or harassment, or conduct that “materially and substantially” disrupts the protected activity of another individual.

In an interview, Jeter said the bill pares down years of case law into specific guidance for schools to follow.

The enforcement provision — which allows students or student organizations to sue schools for violations — is novel, but Jeter said schools would likely be open to legal action even without it.

Jeter said he had met with Indiana schools about this bill

Indiana University hasn’t taken a position on the bill, spokesperson Chuck Carney said.

“We appreciate that it largely mirrors our existing policy, and especially appreciate that the legislature has worked with the public universities as they continue to refine the legislation,” Carney said in a statement.

Speaking to lawmakers on behalf of IU, Ivy Tech, and Ball State, Zachary Smith Howard, assistant director of state relations at Indiana University, said the universities were committed to First Amendment protections.

“Our institutions recognize the rights of all members of the campus community,” he said. “This is essential to the advance of each of our institutions’ educational measures.”

Jeter said the bill was a response to “national trends towards suppression of speech,” citing certain challenges that student groups have faced to their freedom of association.

He said higher education institutions in Indiana have been generally good about protecting First Amendment rights, but that they’ve still seen a handful of complaints, including a 2018 lawsuit by a pro-life group at Ball State University that claimed the school had unfairly denied them student activity funds.

An IUPUI graduate also told House lawmakers during testimony that her pro-life student group had been held to different standards than other student groups, including by having a display confined to a small area enclosed by bike racks.

Asked if the bill aimed to protect conservative viewpoints at traditionally liberal college campuses, Jeter said, “Those are the ones you see most in the news.”

However, he added that “there are reports of liberal groups on more conservative campuses also being marginalized.” The bill, he said, is politically neutral.

It’s not Indiana’s — nor Jordan’s — first foray into college free speech.

Last year, the state passed a law requiring universities to survey students on free speech by May 2022, in order to gauge whether students felt their schools “recognized and fostered” the free expression of opinions and ideologies.

Jordan separately had proposed that universities identify the ideological leanings of professors, courses, speakers, and student groups, according to the IndyStar.

Last year’s bill also required the Commission on Higher Education to create a report on free speech at higher education institutions, which was issued on Nov. 1.

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

Proposed Indiana law could unlock millions in college financial aid

2022-01-26T23:08:04+00:00

Indiana students miss out on an estimated $65 million in free money for college, simply because many don’t fill out the federal financial aid application.

But what if high schools required every student to complete the financial aid form?

That’s up for discussion in the legislature for the third year in a row. And supporters say the need to help students afford a postsecondary education is becoming a more pressing problem as Indiana faces declining college enrollment.

“It’s a student equity issue. It’s a workforce development issue. And it’s ultimately an economic mobility issue,” said Jason Bearce, vice president of education and workforce development for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

The Senate Education and Career Development Committee unanimously advanced a proposal Wednesday to require all high school seniors to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. The bill would allow families to opt out of filling out the form, or principals and school counselors to waive the requirement for students in extenuating circumstances.

Indiana ranked in the bottom half of states last year for FAFSA completion, with 55.9% of seniors filing. Less than 60% of high school seniors nationally completed the FAFSA.

And there’s more at stake than the $65 million in Pell Grants that the National College Attainment Network estimates Hoosier students would have qualified for. The FAFSA also unlocks state-level financial aid, as well as scholarships offered by individual colleges.

But officials representing K-12 school associations raised concerns that mandating the FAFSA would add another burden to overtaxed educators.

“We become the FAFSA police,” said Terry Spradlin, executive director of the Indiana School Boards Association.

While he wants students to be able to access financial aid, Spradlin said he is worried educators would have to spend too much time tracking down families who don’t intend to seek financial aid — families who know their income is too high, or whose children who plan to enter the workforce or join the military.

Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, backed the bill but echoed the concern about putting more work on school staff: “Right now our school counselors are just inundated with severe mental health issues among students.”

Still, supporters said they want to ensure students are choosing to not seek financial aid, rather than missing out on an opportunity they don’t know about. Filling out the aid application can help dispel the notion that people cannot afford to attend college.

Tuition at Ivy Tech Community College, for example, would be easily covered by a Pell Grant, said MJ Michalak, Ivy Tech’s vice president of public affairs.

“When you talk about free community college, we already have that in Indiana for the students who have the most need — if they file the FAFSA,” she said.

A handful of other states, including Louisiana, Texas, and Illinois, have made completing the FAFSA a graduation requirement. Louisiana, the first state to adopt such a law, has the highest rate in the nation of students completing the application — 78%.

In Indiana, the proposed FAFSA mandate has passed the Senate in each of the past two years but stalled in the House. Last year, balking at the idea of a requirement, lawmakers in the House instead suggested providing a financial incentive to schools based on how many students complete the FAFSA. But the bill ultimately didn’t make it through.

Bill author Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, said she brought the proposal back this year because she thinks it’s more important than ever.

“The reality is, unfortunately, our participation rate in Indiana continues to decline,” she said. “We’re leaving a lot of money out there that would benefit not just our four-year college-bound students, but also the two-year (college students) and even those kids that want to participate in the Workforce Ready Grant.”

FAFSA filing rates are falling in particular among Black, Latino, and rural students, and those from low-income families, said Indiana Commission for Higher Education official Josh Garrison.

He believes the proposal’s benefits outweigh the burden.

“It’s easy to get lost in percentages and large numbers, but it’s important to remember these are students who are sitting in classrooms right now, who are missing out on the opportunity for postsecondary education and the opportunity for a better life,” Garrison said. “This is just not something that can wait another year.”

Stephanie Wang covers higher education for Chalkbeat Indiana, which partners with Open Campus.

Tell us what you want to read about higher education in Indiana

2022-01-11T16:55:07+00:00

What’s the value of a college degree in Indiana? What challenges stand in the way of earning one?

Roughly 60% of Hoosier adults don’t have a degree or certificate beyond a high school diploma. That used to not matter as much in Indiana’s old manufacturing economy. But today, state officials and experts alike say those without a higher education are struggling to compete for decent jobs and a livable wage.

This year, Chalkbeat Indiana is expanding its coverage of higher education in partnership with Open Campus — and we need your help.

Our reporting will continue to focus on educational equity, examining how Indiana’s higher education systems serve students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. We will also cover Indiana’s push to offer job training through credentials and certificates, as well as the connection between postsecondary education and workforce development.

Tell us what you’re interested in reading in our higher education coverage by filling out the form below.

Having trouble viewing the survey? Go here.

Stephanie Wang covers higher education for Chalkbeat Indiana, which partners with Open Campus.

Indianapolis scholarship pays off college bills, giving students another shot at a degree

2022-01-11T16:55:02+00:00

Tapiwa Mzumara felt stuck.

She was tired of working long hours at a shoe store in the mall, earning just enough money to make ends meet and listening to her friends talk about a college experience she didn’t have.

As a teenager, Mzumara thought she’d go to school to become a doctor or a lawyer. She knew she could excel if given the chance. But her financial aid had fallen through, and when she tried to take some classes anyway at IUPUI and Ivy Tech Community College, the full cost of tuition strained her family’s finances.

By her early 20s, going back to college was on indefinite pause. “I decided I wasn’t going to go back until I could get a more stable situation,” Mzumara said.

Then, six years after graduating from high school, Mzumara received an email offering her another shot.

Indy Achieves, a fledgling city education initiative, would settle her $200 outstanding balance with Ivy Tech and pay for her first semester back. This opened the door for her to return to college to study biotechnology. Now she’s serving as student government president and is on track to graduate this year.

For tens of thousands of Hoosiers, the cost of returning to college is more than just tuition — it requires cash up front for unpaid bills from their previous attempts at degrees. These aren’t the colossal student loan debts that have consumed millions of Americans, but smaller missed payments to colleges for classes, fees, textbooks, or other supplies.

Indy Achieves is one program trying to knock down this barrier. As part of $2 million in city-funded scholarships each year, Indy Achieves gives “completion grants” to local students at Ivy Tech’s Indianapolis campus and IUPUI to eliminate the unpaid tuition and book bills that lock them out of re-enrolling.

Out of about 82,000 people across Indiana who owe money to Ivy Tech, the statewide community college system, officials say the median outstanding balance is $550. It’s a dream-ending amount for some students.

“That can be a significant burden for a student to get that kind of money,” said Indy Achieves Executive Director Matt Impink.

This type of scholarship could pave the way for a critical population of students to gain a postsecondary credential, Impink believes. Ten percent of adults in Indiana have some college experience but no degree, and policymakers have zeroed in on the need for some type of credential to lift wage and career prospects.

Among the roughly 900 students awarded completion grants since 2019, Indy Achieves officials say the results are promising. Last school year, for example, three-quarters of completion grant recipients at Ivy Tech graduated or stayed in school — far higher than the average student. At IUPUI, that rate is even better, at 92%.

But Indy Achieves officials know there are thousands of people they aren’t reaching — all of them potential college graduates.

“We know there are more students out there that have stopped out of Ivy Tech and IUPUI,” said Esther Woodson, Indy Achieves’ director. “It’s just, how do we connect with those students? How do we find them? Because we know they’re out there.”

Offering a ‘fresh start’

Mzumara actually meant to delete the email offering her a completion grant. “I wasn’t in school anymore, so I didn’t need to hear about back-to-school stuff,” she said.

When she accidentally opened it, the email seemed too good to be true. She wondered if someone was playing a prank on her, and she resolved not to get her hopes up.

Thousands of those kinds of emails have gone out in recent years — not just about Indy Achieves — and it seems many students have a similar reaction.

In late 2019, for example, Ivy Tech tried to offer a “fresh start” for students with unpaid bills. The community college sent emails to 17,000 students across Indiana, offering to forgive debts for students who owed less than $1,500 if they met certain GPA requirements and finished school. Ivy Tech also automatically wiped out all balances under $50.

After hearing interest from some 800 students, Ivy Tech was prepared to waive about $1 million in outstanding balances, according to a news report.

But just 163 students came back to school.

Ivy Tech officials called it a moderate success, particularly since community college enrollment has dipped as people face health, family, and financial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ivy Tech also recently removed another significant consequence of unpaid bills. Last month, the community college stopped barring students who owed money from obtaining their transcripts, which had prevented them from transferring credits or proving they had attended college.

“We understand that the purpose of Ivy Tech is to serve our students and serve our community, and get them on the path to a sustainable career and future,” said Ivy Tech Indianapolis Chancellor Lorenzo Esters. “Why would we be a barrier to that success?”

Out of about 82,000 people across Indiana who owe money to Ivy Tech, the statewide community college system, officials say the median balance is $550.

When Indy Achieves asked scholarship applicants why they wanted the opportunity, officials heard about deep economic needs. They heard from parents struggling to provide for their children but wanting to be role models, people who experienced financial hardships, and students who didn’t want to give up on the progress they had made.

And colleges across the country have realized that eliminating these small debts can be worth far more than what students owe, Impink said, in tuition and, eventually, degrees.

“It’s something that can be very useful in getting a large amount of students back on the right side of things,” he said.

Making the case to return to college

In northeast Indiana, a local community foundation tried a similar tactic last year. In partnership with area universities and colleges, the Degree Finish Line program promised to forgive outstanding balances and provide up to $5,000 in a forgivable loan to adult students who finish their degrees and stay in the region.

But it has only received two or three takers so far.

“There’s a learning in that for us in higher education — that it is harder to get people to come back,” said Liz Bushnell, executive director of the Questa Education Foundation. “Is there a way for us to intervene when students are at risk of dropping out? That might be the priority.”

Seeing the same challenge, Indy Achieves also offers completion grants to students in danger of dropping out, to help them stay in school.

“We’re trying to find the right sweet spot for students who are going to get the grant and graduate as quickly as possible,” Impink said.

The two local campuses help Indy Achieves identify and reach out to potential scholarship recipients. In the two years since its launch, the program has targeted completion grants toward students who are doing well in school, who fill out the federal financial aid application, and who are close to graduating. The average grant at Ivy Tech is $1,100, and grants top out at $2,500 at IUPUI.

But the program is looking to broaden its reach. With the pandemic depressing college enrollment, Indy Achieves hasn’t yet spent its entire $2 million annual budget, which also includes “promise scholarships” to cover other gaps in financial aid.

“It’s an enormous group of potential college graduates that are tricky to engage with, because they’re at all different points of life,” Impink said. “I think we have really figured out a few things on how to execute this program, but the challenge now is really expanding it and getting a lot more folks in the pipeline.”

Officials agree that financial help is just one piece of the puzzle in making college accessible.

Esters, the Ivy Tech chancellor, says it can be challenging to persuade adults to return to college, particularly if they don’t know about opportunities or don’t see the long-term benefits.

“I think so many people are afraid to return because they’re worried, ‘Well, I’ve been out too long,’” Esters said. “When we can connect the meaning or purpose of that learning to potential work, then they’re more likely to return.”

Now that she’s on track to finish her associate degree this year, Tapiwa Mzumara plans to go for her bachelor’s degree and has her sights set on dental school.

Seizing the opportunity

For Mzumara, the path to college was full of hurdles. Her mother battled chronic illnesses, her family couldn’t afford college, and she didn’t qualify for financial aid because of her immigration status.

Even the Indy Achieves grant was just the beginning. The city program paid off her outstanding debt — about $200 — and footed the tuition for her first semester back, about $2,000.

To cover the rest of her education, Mzumara sought scholarships for women in technology and DACA recipients. She ran for student government president, receiving another scholarship when she was elected. To enter a lottery for yet another scholarship, Mzumara joined the chancellor’s fitness club, walking at lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She won that one, too.

This year, almost a decade after graduating high school, Mzumara will earn an associate degree in biotechnology. She plans to transfer to IUPUI to finish her bachelor’s degree, and after volunteering at a mobile dental clinic, she has set her sights on dental school.

None of those plans are certain. Mzumara is applying for more scholarships to pay her way. But her return to college, she said, has taught her patience.

Rather than feeling daunted by the challenges, Mzumara sees the possibilities. Because maybe, like that email out of the blue a few years ago, there’s an opportunity waiting to be seized.

“I don’t think I would’ve been able to go to college as soon as I did,” Mzumara said. “And who knows what would’ve happened? Maybe I wouldn’t have gone at all.”

Stephanie Wang covers higher education for Chalkbeat Indiana, which partners with Open Campus.

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Indiana graduation rate dips slightly, unevenly for Class of 2021

2022-01-05T00:22:19+00:00

Graduation rates for Indiana students dipped slightly to about 87% last year, according to state data released last week, falling most steeply among student groups with the lowest graduation rates.

Graduation rates fell 3 percentage points among Black students, 2.6 points among Hispanic students, and 6 points among Native American students. They also fell by 4 points among English learners and students from low-income families.

Indiana had about 67,500 graduates in the Class of 2021, which experienced COVID-related disruptions throughout senior year.

Those students represent 86.7% of their class, one point lower than that of the Class of 2020.

The 2021 rate includes some students who received a waiver from the state’s graduation exam. Students qualify for a waiver if they meet certain other requirements, like showing workforce readiness.

In 2020, the state granted a blanket waiver to seniors — thus complicating any comparison between the past two years’ high school classes.

A higher percentage of students passed the exam to graduate last year than did in 2019. In that year, which required a graduation exam, 87.3% graduated.

This year’s rates offer a look at the circumstances that students faced over a year of pandemic learning, said Jill Shedd, assistant dean for teacher education at the Indiana University College of Education.

While they can help gauge how the year went, they shouldn’t be taken as characteristic of the graduating class, she added, many of whom experienced challenges in accessing education.

“I am not convinced that they are an accurate measure of our seniors’ potential, what they’re able to know,” Shedd said. “The fact that so many did graduate, and were extremely resilient doing as well as they did, speaks a lot about their capabilities and who they are as persons, which are important elements that are never going to be captured on pencil and paper.”

Graduation rates for 2021 varied among schools and student groups. One prevalent pattern was a jump in rates from 2019 to 2020, followed by a drop in 2021.

District	School	2020	2021	Change
Adams Central Community Schools	Adams Central High School	100.00%	94.55%	-5.45
North Adams Community Schools	Bellmont Senior High School	94.12%	96.15%	2.03
South Adams Schools	South Adams High School	92.13%	89.11%	-3.02
MSD Southwest Allen County Schls	Homestead Senior High School	96.28%	93.85%	-2.43
Northwest Allen County Schools	Carroll High School	97.91%	95.70%	-2.21
Fort Wayne Community Schools	North Side High School	88.27%	86.31%	-1.96
Fort Wayne Community Schools	R Nelson Snider High School	95.52%	94.57%	-0.95
Fort Wayne Community Schools	South Side High School	88.95%	81.68%	-7.27
Fort Wayne Community Schools	Wayne High School	95.74%	90.46%	-5.28
Fort Wayne Community Schools	Northrop High School	92.64%	88.42%	-4.22
East Allen County Schools	Leo Junior/Senior High School	92.21%	92.67%	0.46
East Allen County Schools	Heritage Jr/Sr High School	86.18%	81.88%	-4.3
East Allen County Schools	Woodlan Jr/Sr High School	89.36%	89.26%	-0.1
East Allen County Schools	New Haven Jr/Sr High School	89.51%	85.60%	-3.91
East Allen County Schools	East Allen University	96.88%	100.00%	3.12
Bartholomew Con School Corp	Columbus North High School	87.90%	84.09%	-3.81
Bartholomew Con School Corp	Columbus East High School	85.01%	85.86%	0.85
Flat Rock-Hawcreek School Corp	Hauser Jr-Sr High School	91.23%	93.42%	2.19
Benton Community School Corp	Benton Central Jr-Sr High School	84.85%	90.51%	5.66
Blackford County Schools	Blackford Jr-Sr High School	92.31%	86.21%	-6.1
Western Boone Co Com Sch Dist	Western Boone Jr-Sr High School	95.20%	96.32%	1.12
Zionsville Community Schools	Zionsville Community High School	96.91%	97.20%	0.29
Lebanon Community School Corp	Lebanon Senior High School	93.78%	86.67%	-7.11
Brown County School Corporation	Brown County High School	82.29%	87.34%	5.05
Carroll Consolidated School Corp	Carroll Senior High School	94.37%	94.81%	0.44
Delphi Community School Corp	Delphi Community High School	84.54%	89.83%	5.29
Pioneer Regional School Corp	Pioneer Jr-Sr High School	96.30%	100.00%	3.7
Lewis Cass Schools	Lewis Cass High School	92.92%	96.26%	3.34
Logansport Community Sch Corp	Logansport Community High School	81.59%	84.59%	3
Borden-Henryville School Corporation	Henryville Jr & Sr High School	89.53%	87.78%	-1.75
Borden-Henryville School Corporation	William W Borden High School	88.68%	95.83%	7.15
Silver Creek School Corporation	Silver Creek High School	96.12%	93.39%	-2.73
Clarksville Community School Corp	Clarksville Senior High School	90.91%	84.09%	-6.82
Greater Clark County Schools	New Washington Middle/High School	96.08%	97.73%	1.65
Greater Clark County Schools	Charlestown Senior High School	97.55%	96.70%	-0.85
Greater Clark County Schools	Jeffersonville High School	97.08%	94.62%	-2.46
Clay Community Schools	Clay City Jr-Sr High School	90.48%	91.23%	0.75
Clay Community Schools	Northview High School	72.69%	85.71%	13.02
Clinton Central School Corporation	Clinton Central Junior-Senior HS	92.65%	90.00%	-2.65
Clinton Prairie School Corporation	Clinton Prairie Jr-Sr High School	91.57%	94.05%	2.48
Community Schools of Frankfort	Frankfort High School	87.95%	86.86%	-1.09
Rossville Con School District	Rossville Middle/Senior High Sch	91.55%	92.86%	1.31
Crawford County Community Sch Corp	Crawford County High School	84.44%	82.83%	-1.61
Barr-Reeve Community Schools Inc	Barr Reeve Middle/High School	100.00%	100.00%	0
North Daviess Com Schools	North Daviess Jr-Sr High School	93.75%	98.61%	4.86
Washington Community Schools	Washington High School	95.81%	89.07%	-6.74
Sunman-Dearborn Com Sch Corp	East Central High School	97.07%	96.50%	-0.57
South Dearborn Community Sch Corp	South Dearborn High School	89.95%	90.95%	1
Lawrenceburg Community School Corp	Lawrenceburg High School	92.57%	94.08%	1.51
Decatur County Community Schools	South Decatur Jr-Sr High School	97.50%	100.00%	2.5
Decatur County Community Schools	North Decatur Jr-Sr High School	97.65%	95.65%	-2
Greensburg Community Schools	Greensburg Community High School	84.78%	92.57%	7.79
DeKalb Co Eastern Com Sch Dist	Eastside Junior-Senior High School	88.35%	95.05%	6.7
Garrett-Keyser-Butler Com Sch Corp	Garrett High School	95.15%	94.59%	-0.56
DeKalb Co Ctl United Sch Dist	DeKalb High School	90.75%	91.67%	0.92
Delaware Community School Corp	Delta High School	94.71%	89.77%	-4.94
Wes-Del Community Schools	Wes-Del Middle/Senior High School	98.48%	100.00%	1.52
Liberty-Perry Community Sch Corp	Wapahani High School	86.59%	93.98%	7.39
Cowan Community School Corp	Cowan High School	90.57%	98.28%	7.71
Yorktown Community Schools	Yorktown High School	97.16%	97.35%	0.19
Daleville Community Schools	Daleville Jr-Sr High School	87.69%	96.97%	9.28
Muncie Community Schools	Muncie Central High School	83.33%	81.97%	-1.36
Muncie Community Schools	Youth Opportunity Center	3.33%	4.76%	1.43
Northeast Dubois Co Sch Corp	Northeast Dubois Jr/Sr High School	89.86%	88.57%	-1.29
Southeast Dubois Co Sch Corp	Forest Park Jr-Sr High School	95.88%	93.98%	-1.9
Southwest Dubois Co Sch Corp	Southridge High School	95.73%	84.30%	-11.43
Greater Jasper Consolidated Schs	Jasper High School	95.08%	92.50%	-2.58
Fairfield Community Schools	Fairfield Jr-Sr High School	97.50%	94.17%	-3.33
Baugo Community Schools	Jimtown High School	92.07%	84.46%	-7.61
Concord Community Schools	Concord Community High School	87.64%	87.01%	-0.63
Middlebury Community Schools	Northridge High School	92.94%	93.37%	0.43
Wa-Nee Community Schools	North Wood High School	91.67%	92.12%	0.45
Elkhart Community Schools	Elkhart Memorial High School	94.87%	73.33%	-21.54
Elkhart Community Schools	Elkhart High School		88.27%	88.27
Goshen Community Schools	Goshen High School	90.74%	87.28%	-3.46
Fayette County School Corporation	Connersville Sr High School	88.76%	90.18%	1.42
New Albany-Floyd Co Con Sch	New Albany Senior High School	88.64%	90.31%	1.67
New Albany-Floyd Co Con Sch	Floyd Central High School	95.25%	94.85%	-0.4
Attica Consolidated School Corp	Attica High School	100.00%	97.50%	-2.5
Covington Community School Corp	Covington Community High School	96.92%	98.28%	1.36
Southeast Fountain School Corp	Fountain Central High School	81.82%	93.62%	11.8
Franklin County Community Sch Corp	Franklin County High	88.59%	88.59%	0
Rochester Community School Corp	Rochester Community High School	92.96%	93.28%	0.32
Caston School Corporation	Caston Jr-Sr High School	91.07%	93.48%	2.41
East Gibson School Corporation	Waldo J Wood Memorial High	85.71%	86.30%	0.59
North Gibson School Corporation	Princeton Community High School	76.92%	84.00%	7.08
South Gibson School Corporation	Gibson Southern High School	93.88%	90.91%	-2.97
Eastbrook Community Sch Corp	Eastbrook High School	97.48%	96.04%	-1.44
Madison-Grant United School Corp	Madison-Grant Jr./Sr. High School	98.82%	97.89%	-0.93
Mississinewa Community School Corp	Mississinewa High School	95.05%	94.76%	-0.29
Marion Community Schools	Marion High School	87.72%	83.56%	-4.16
Bloomfield School District	Bloomfield High School	92.45%	93.10%	0.65
Eastern Greene Schools	Eastern Greene High School	83.54%	75.00%	-8.54
Linton-Stockton School Corporation	Linton-Stockton High School	89.77%	84.91%	-4.86
MSD Shakamak Schools	Shakamak Jr-Sr High School	84.85%	96.83%	11.98
White River Valley School District	White River Valley High School	91.55%	84.75%	-6.8
Hamilton Southeastern Schools	Fishers High School	98.24%	97.81%	-0.43
Hamilton Southeastern Schools	Hamilton Southeastern HS	97.04%	96.94%	-0.1
Hamilton Heights School Corp	Hamilton Heights High School	91.62%	96.24%	4.62
Westfield-Washington Schools	Westfield High School	98.23%	96.28%	-1.95
Sheridan Community Schools	Sheridan High School	95.45%	89.74%	-5.71
Carmel Clay Schools	Carmel High School	95.17%	96.98%	1.81
Noblesville Schools	Noblesville High School	96.89%	98.31%	1.42
Southern Hancock Co Com Sch Corp	New Palestine High School	94.44%	95.85%	1.41
Greenfield-Central Com Schools	Greenfield-Central High School	94.56%	91.67%	-2.89
Mt Vernon Community School Corp	Mt Vernon High School	97.78%	95.44%	-2.34
Eastern Hancock Co Com Sch Corp	Eastern Hancock High School	99.07%	91.58%	-7.49
Lanesville Community School Corp	Lanesville Jr-Sr HS	93.15%	98.15%	5
North Harrison Com School Corp	North Harrison High School	99.24%	97.02%	-2.22
South Harrison Com Schools	Corydon Central High School	94.54%	92.12%	-2.42
South Harrison Com Schools	South Central Jr & Sr High School	96.77%	95.74%	-1.03
North West Hendricks Schools	Tri-West Senior High School	97.10%	90.34%	-6.76
Brownsburg Community School Corp	Brownsburg High School	98.79%	97.91%	-0.88
Avon Community School Corp	Avon High School	97.84%	97.32%	-0.52
Danville Community School Corp	Danville Community High School	93.15%	90.00%	-3.15
Plainfield Community School Corp	Plainfield High School	93.66%	93.38%	-0.28
Mill Creek Community Sch Corp	Cascade Senior High School	94.17%	99.11%	4.94
Blue River Valley Schools	Blue River Valley Jr-Sr High Sch	97.30%	87.50%	-9.8
South Henry School Corp	Tri Junior-Senior High School	90.63%	89.55%	-1.08
Shenandoah School Corporation	Shenandoah High School	94.68%	93.48%	-1.2
New Castle Community School Corp	New Castle High School	87.97%	92.02%	4.05
C A Beard Memorial School Corp	Knightstown High School	91.86%	87.76%	-4.1
Taylor Community School Corp	Taylor High School	86.41%	81.82%	-4.59
Northwestern School Corp	Northwestern Senior High School	97.99%	99.21%	1.22
Eastern Howard School Corporation	Eastern High School	95.65%	95.45%	-0.2
Western School Corporation	Western High School	95.31%	90.00%	-5.31
Kokomo School Corporation	Kokomo High School	95.45%	95.38%	-0.07
Huntington Co Com Sch Corp	Huntington North High School	90.55%	86.94%	-3.61
Medora Community School Corp	Medora Jr & Sr High School		90.91%
Seymour Community Schools	Seymour Senior High School	91.56%	74.62%	-16.94
Brownstown Cnt Com Sch Corp	Brownstown Central High School	88.31%	89.74%	1.43
Crothersville Community Schools	Crothersville Jr-Sr High School	92.86%	87.88%	-4.98
Kankakee Valley School Corp	Kankakee Valley High School	94.92%	92.34%	-2.58
Rensselaer Central School Corp	Rensselaer Central High School	92.37%	88.60%	-3.77
Jay School Corporation	Jay County Jr/Sr High School	83.33%	84.29%	0.96
Madison Consolidated Schools	Madison Consolidated High School	88.50%	88.40%	-0.1
Madison Consolidated Schools	E.O. Muncie Jr/Sr High School		31.82%	31.82
Southwestern-Jefferson Co Con	Southwestern High School	94.94%	93.02%	-1.92
Jennings County School Corporation	Jennings County High School	90.44%	80.32%	-10.12
Clark-Pleasant Community Sch Corp	Whiteland Community High School	91.72%	92.11%	0.39
Center Grove Community School Corp	Center Grove High School	96.42%	95.63%	-0.79
Edinburgh Community School Corp	Edinburgh Community High School	93.55%	90.38%	-3.17
Franklin Community School Corp	Franklin Community High School	91.29%	90.62%	-0.67
Greenwood Community Sch Corp	Greenwood Community High Sch	92.39%	88.62%	-3.77
Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson United	Indian Creek Sr High School	92.16%	96.40%	4.24
North Knox School Corp	North Knox Jr-Sr High School	93.10%	93.10%	0
South Knox School Corp	South Knox Middle-High School	100.00%	94.12%	-5.88
Vincennes Community School Corp	Lincoln High School	84.91%	83.33%	-1.58
Vincennes Community School Corp	Washington Learning Academy		70.97%	70.97
Wawasee Community School Corp	Wawasee High School	89.95%	91.62%	1.67
Warsaw Community Schools	Warsaw Community High School	91.94%	90.40%	-1.54
Tippecanoe Valley School Corp	Tippecanoe Valley High School	95.69%	91.79%	-3.9
Whitko Community School Corp	Whitko Jr/Sr High School	87.50%	90.82%	3.32
Prairie Heights Community Sch Corp	Prairie Heights Sr High School	90.83%	93.62%	2.79
Westview School Corporation	Westview Jr-Sr High School	91.67%	95.51%	3.84
Lakeland School Corporation	Lakeland Jr/Sr High School	88.73%	82.03%	-6.7
Hanover Community School Corp	Hanover Central High School	97.50%	95.48%	-2.02
River Forest Community Sch Corp	River Forest High School	89.81%	76.19%	-13.62
Merrillville Community School Corp	Merrillville High School	91.78%	89.66%	-2.12
Lake Central School Corporation	Lake Central High School	92.91%	95.94%	3.03
Tri-Creek School Corporation	Lowell Senior High School	96.55%	93.43%	-3.12
Lake Ridge New Tech Schools	Calumet New Tech High School	98.10%	98.64%	0.54
Crown Point Community School Corp	Crown Point High School	98.56%	98.58%	0.02
School City of East Chicago	East Chicago Central High School	72.82%	64.10%	-8.72
Lake Station Community Schools	Thomas A Edison Jr-Sr HS	87.00%	82.47%	-4.53
Gary Community School Corp	West Side Leadership Academy	64.71%	66.67%	1.96
Griffith Public Schools	Griffth Jr/Sr High School	76.92%	71.59%	-5.33
School City of Hammond	George Rogers Clark Md/HS	84.95%	74.75%	-10.2
School City of Hammond	Donald E Gavit Middle/High School	87.39%	76.85%	-10.54
School City of Hammond	Hammond Central High School	75.00%	63.76%	-11.24
School City of Hammond	Morton Senior High School	81.40%	70.48%	-10.92
School Town of Highland	Highland High School	93.48%	92.03%	-1.45
School City of Hobart	Hobart High School	92.45%	91.35%	-1.1
School Town of Munster	Munster High School	94.34%	95.49%	1.15
School City of Whiting	Whiting High School	94.50%	94.29%	-0.21
New Prairie United School Corp	New Prairie High School	97.55%	97.74%	0.19
MSD of New Durham Township	Westville High School	91.67%	91.18%	-0.49
Tri-Township Cons School Corp	LaCrosse School	95.12%	91.30%	-3.82
Michigan City Area Schools	Michigan City High School	91.18%	81.01%	-10.17
South Central Com School Corp	South Central Jr-Sr High School	97.30%	92.50%	-4.8
LaPorte Community School Corp	LaPorte High School	89.21%	80.84%	-8.37
North Lawrence Com Schools	Bedford-North Lawrence High School	89.57%	86.42%	-3.15
Mitchell Community Schools	Mitchell High School	75.76%	90.91%	15.15
Frankton-Lapel Community Schools	Frankton Jr-Sr High School	93.33%	97.32%	3.99
Frankton-Lapel Community Schools	Lapel Sr High School	100.00%	93.46%	-6.54
South Madison Com Sch Corp	Pendleton Heights High School	96.32%	93.48%	-2.84
Alexandria Community School Corp	Alexandria-Monroe High School	89.92%	76.09%	-13.83
Anderson Community School Corp	Anderson High School	87.39%	78.23%	-9.16
Elwood Community School Corp	Elwood Jr-Sr High School	97.06%	85.26%	-11.8
MSD Decatur Township	Decatur Central High School	88.21%	89.79%	1.58
Franklin Township Com Sch Corp	Franklin Central High School	95.17%	95.66%	0.49
MSD Lawrence Township	Lawrence Central High School	92.11%	92.83%	0.72
MSD Lawrence Township	Lawrence North High School	93.42%	94.09%	0.67
Perry Township Schools	Perry Meridian High School	89.98%	94.94%	4.96
Perry Township Schools	Southport High School	84.99%	85.28%	0.29
MSD Pike Township	Pike High School	90.58%	89.67%	-0.91
MSD Warren Township	Warren Central High School	86.54%	81.71%	-4.83
MSD Washington Township	North Central High School	90.54%	91.70%	1.16
MSD Wayne Township	Ben Davis High School	86.97%	87.15%	0.18
MSD Wayne Township	Achieve Virtual Education Academy	36.92%	42.50%	5.58
MSD Wayne Township	Ben Davis University High School	100.00%	100.00%	0
Beech Grove City Schools	Beech Grove Sr High School	88.63%	78.46%	-10.17
Indianapolis Public Schools	Impact Academy 1	2.63%	0.00%	-2.63
Indianapolis Public Schools	Arsenal Technical High School	69.31%	69.97%	0.66
Indianapolis Public Schools	Crispus Attucks High School	85.58%	85.20%	-0.38
Indianapolis Public Schools	Emmerich Manual High School		76.00%	76
Indianapolis Public Schools	Shortridge High School	87.37%	82.82%	-4.55
Indianapolis Public Schools	George Washington High School	63.28%	72.41%	9.13
School Town of Speedway	Speedway Senior High School	96.72%	99.18%	2.46
Culver Community Schools Corp	Culver Community Middle/High Sch	91.38%	81.63%	-9.75
Argos Community Schools	Argos Comm Jr-Sr High School	87.50%	89.80%	2.3
Bremen Public Schools	Bremen Senior High School	94.12%	92.17%	-1.95
Plymouth Community School Corp	Plymouth High School	88.08%	91.45%	3.37
Triton School Corporation	Triton Jr-Sr High School	86.27%	86.89%	0.62
Shoals Community School Corp	Shoals Community High School	93.88%	88.68%	-5.2
Loogootee Community Sch Corp	Loogootee High School	89.86%	88.41%	-1.45
Maconaquah School Corp	Maconaquah High School	92.14%	87.50%	-4.64
North Miami Community Schools	North Miami Middle/High School	96.05%	86.89%	-9.16
Oak Hill United School Corp	Oak Hill High School	96.92%	98.40%	1.48
Peru Community Schools	Peru High School	89.93%	91.10%	1.17
Richland-Bean Blossom C S C	Edgewood High School	90.91%	88.89%	-2.02
Monroe County Community Sch Corp	Bloomington High School South	97.21%	92.06%	-5.15
Monroe County Community Sch Corp	Bloomington High School North	90.10%	95.21%	5.11
Monroe County Community Sch Corp	The Acad of Sci & Entrepreneurship	100.00%	88.89%	-11.11
Monroe County Community Sch Corp	Bloomington Graduation School	56.76%	58.82%	2.06
North Montgomery Com Sch Corp	North Montgomery High School	92.36%	93.10%	0.74
South Montgomery Com Sch Corp	Southmont Sr High School	88.36%	95.80%	7.44
Crawfordsville Community Schools	Crawfordsville Sr High School	85.96%	82.66%	-3.3
Monroe-Gregg School District	Monrovia High School	90.54%	86.76%	-3.78
Eminence Community School Corp	Eminence Jr-Sr High School	87.10%	97.06%	9.96
MSD Martinsville Schools	Martinsville High School	84.86%	87.90%	3.04
Mooresville Con School Corp	Mooresville High School	95.77%	95.99%	0.22
North Newton School Corp	North Newton Jr-Sr High School	83.72%	89.53%	5.81
South Newton School Corp	South Newton Senior High School	91.07%	90.16%	-0.91
Central Noble Com School Corp	Central Noble Junior Senior HS	88.50%	90.48%	1.98
East Noble School Corporation	East Noble High School	92.54%	92.00%	-0.54
West Noble School Corporation	West Noble High School	89.63%	86.18%	-3.45
Rising Sun-Ohio Co Com	Rising Sun High School	88.89%	95.89%	7
Orleans Community Schools	Orleans Jr-Sr High School	96.23%	94.64%	-1.59
Paoli Community School Corp	Paoli Jr & Sr High School	89.60%	80.46%	-9.14
Springs Valley Com School Corp	Springs Valley Comm High School	97.10%	98.33%	1.23
Spencer-Owen Community Schools	Owen Valley Community High School	87.57%	79.17%	-8.4
Southwest Parke Com Sch Corp	Riverton Parke Jr-Sr High School	83.10%	79.22%	-3.88
Perry Central Com Schools Corp	Perry Central Jr-Sr High School	93.90%	92.39%	-1.51
Cannelton City Schools	Cannelton Elementary & High School	83.33%	86.11%	2.78
Tell City-Troy Twp School Corp	Tell City Jr-Sr High School	92.05%	92.05%	0
North Central Parke Comm Schl Corp	Parke Heritage High School	88.57%	90.11%	1.54
Pike County School Corp	Pike Central High School	90.32%	87.50%	-2.82
MSD Boone Township	Hebron High School	100.00%	97.62%	-2.38
Duneland School Corporation	Chesterton Senior High School	92.73%	93.51%	0.78
East Porter County School Corp	Morgan Township Middle/High School	100.00%	96.49%	-3.51
East Porter County School Corp	Kouts Middle/High School	98.46%	96.55%	-1.91
East Porter County School Corp	Washington Twp Middle/High School	96.61%	95.65%	-0.96
Porter Township School Corp	Boone Grove High School	94.16%	95.90%	1.74
Union Township School Corp	Wheeler High School	96.12%	97.58%	1.46
Portage Township Schools	Portage High School	93.29%	92.95%	-0.34
Valparaiso Community Schools	Valparaiso High School	92.88%	95.26%	2.38
MSD Mount Vernon	Mount Vernon High School	88.82%	88.64%	-0.18
MSD North Posey Co Schools	North Posey High School	90.83%	97.70%	6.87
Eastern Pulaski Community Sch Corp	Winamac Community High School	89.80%	98.48%	8.68
West Central School Corp	West Central Senior High School	88.33%	96.92%	8.59
South Putnam Community Schools	South Putnam High School	97.96%	97.89%	-0.07
North Putnam Community Schools	North Putnam Sr High School	93.75%	97.83%	4.08
Cloverdale Community Schools	Cloverdale High School	96.67%	90.24%	-6.43
Greencastle Community School Corp	Greencastle High School	92.97%	90.65%	-2.32
Union School Corporation	Union Junior & High School	77.27%	100.00%	22.73
Union School Corporation	Indiana Digital JR and High School	90.91%	94.57%	3.66
Union School Corporation	Indiana Digital Alternative School	31.96%	52.63%	20.67
Randolph Southern School Corp	Randolph Southern Jr-Sr High Sch	97.56%	100.00%	2.44
Monroe Central School Corp	Monroe Central Jr-Sr High School	98.82%	90.54%	-8.28
Randolph Central School Corp	Winchester Community High School	94.59%	83.33%	-11.26
Randolph Eastern School Corp	Union City Community Jr/Sr High	90.32%	95.59%	5.27
South Ripley Com Sch Corp	South Ripley High School	94.68%	92.31%	-2.37
Batesville Community School Corp	Batesville High School	97.56%	96.45%	-1.11
Jac-Cen-Del Community Sch Corp	Jac-Cen-Del MS/HS	97.33%	100.00%	2.67
Milan Community Schools	Milan High School	94.95%	94.51%	-0.44
Rush County Schools	Rushville Consolidated High School	92.94%	92.74%	-0.2
John Glenn School Corporation	John Glenn High School	95.80%	95.03%	-0.77
Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp	Penn High School	97.10%	97.32%	0.22
School City of Mishawaka	Mishawaka High School	93.77%	81.74%	-12.03
South Bend Community School Corp	South Bend Virtual School		56.25%	56.25
South Bend Community School Corp	Clay High School	78.06%	69.78%	-8.28
South Bend Community School Corp	Adams High School	91.12%	90.18%	-0.94
South Bend Community School Corp	Riley High School	82.01%	83.62%	1.61
South Bend Community School Corp	Washington High School	82.02%	61.25%	-20.77
South Bend Community School Corp	Rise Up Academy at Eggleston	30.69%	20.26%	-10.43
Union-North United School Corp	LaVille Jr-Sr High School	86.79%	77.38%	-9.41
Scott County School District 1	Austin High School	84.69%	90.22%	5.53
Scott County School District 2	Scottsburg Senior High School	85.56%	84.98%	-0.58
Shelby Eastern Schools	Morristown Jr-Sr High School	93.18%	94.44%	1.26
Shelby Eastern Schools	Waldron Jr-Sr High School	80.00%	93.88%	13.88
Northwestern Con School Corp	Triton Central High School	93.46%	90.98%	-2.48
Southwestern Con Sch Shelby Co	Southwestern High School	96.15%	95.56%	-0.59
Shelbyville Central Schools	Shelbyville Sr High School	92.19%	95.20%	3.01
North Spencer County Sch Corp	Heritage Hills High School	94.37%	92.86%	-1.51
South Spencer County Sch Corp	South Spencer High School	93.62%	94.95%	1.33
Oregon-Davis School Corp	Oregon-Davis Jr-Sr High School	79.49%	82.35%	2.86
North Judson-San Pierre Sch Corp	N Judson-San Pierre Jr Sr High Sch	88.42%	85.90%	-2.52
Knox Community School Corp	Knox Community High School	92.65%	92.47%	-0.18
Fremont Community Schools	Fremont High School	90.28%	95.38%	5.1
Hamilton Community Schools	Hamilton Community High School	84.62%	92.31%	7.69
MSD Steuben County	Angola High School	85.90%	83.25%	-2.65
Northeast School Corp	North Central Jr/Sr High School	85.71%	96.10%	10.39
Southwest School Corporation	Sullivan High School	97.06%	92.86%	-4.2
Switzerland County School Corp	Switzerland Co Senior High School	91.40%	92.22%	0.82
Lafayette School Corporation	Oakland High School	56.25%	0.00%	-56.25
Lafayette School Corporation	Jefferson High School	79.28%	53.00%	-26.28
Tippecanoe School Corp	McCutcheon High School	92.50%	93.30%	0.8
Tippecanoe School Corp	William Henry Harrison High School	95.44%	90.66%	-4.78
West Lafayette Com School Corp	West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School	93.96%	92.13%	-1.83
Tri-Central Community Schools	Tri Central Middle-High School	92.00%	98.21%	6.21
Tipton Community School Corp	Tipton High School	88.98%	89.55%	0.57
Union Co/Clg Corner Joint Sch Dist	Union County High School	95.65%	94.64%	-1.01
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	Benjamin Bosse High School	91.77%	90.58%	-1.19
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	Central High School	94.86%	95.65%	0.79
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	Francis Joseph Reitz High School	95.95%	97.88%	1.93
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	North High School	95.13%	95.40%	0.27
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	Academy for Innovative Studies	21.43%	18.75%	-2.68
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	Harwood Career Prep High School	60.34%	25.11%	-35.23
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	William Henry Harrison High School	93.36%	94.47%	1.11
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp	New Tech Institute	97.01%	98.39%	1.38
North Vermillion Com Sch Corp	North Vermillion High School	96.88%	88.06%	-8.82
South Vermillion Com Sch Corp	South Vermillion High School	86.33%	90.97%	4.64
Vigo County School Corp	Terre Haute North Vigo High School	84.65%	75.62%	-9.03
Vigo County School Corp	West Vigo High School	96.32%	90.13%	-6.19
Vigo County School Corp	Terre Haute South Vigo High School	87.27%	81.44%	-5.83
Vigo County School Corp	Vigo Virtual School Academy	54.55%	19.35%	-35.2
Vigo County School Corp	Booker T Washington Alt Sch	59.09%	41.94%	-17.15
Manchester Community Schools	Manchester Jr-Sr High School	94.35%	93.69%	-0.66
MSD Wabash County Schools	Northfield Jr-Sr High School	94.55%	95.65%	1.1
MSD Wabash County Schools	Southwood Jr-Sr High School	98.63%	94.44%	-4.19
MSD Wabash County Schools	White's Jr-Sr High School	55.76%	52.56%	-3.2
Wabash City Schools	Wabash High School	91.75%	91.53%	-0.22
MSD Warren County	Seeger Memorial Jr-Sr High School	97.75%	100.00%	2.25
Warrick County School Corp	Tecumseh High School	100.00%	96.15%	-3.85
Warrick County School Corp	Boonville High School	87.71%	88.62%	0.91
Warrick County School Corp	Castle High School	92.79%	91.07%	-1.72
Salem Community Schools	Salem High School	96.99%	85.00%	-11.99
East Washington School Corp	Eastern High School	81.08%	83.00%	1.92
West Washington School Corp	West Washington Jr-Sr High School	94.29%	93.02%	-1.27
Nettle Creek School Corporation	Hagerstown Jr-Sr High School	95.45%	98.72%	3.27
Western Wayne Schools	Lincoln Sr High School	94.12%	85.94%	-8.18
Centerville-Abington Com Schs	Centerville Sr High School	91.67%	90.00%	-1.67
Northeastern Wayne Schools	Northeastern High School	97.56%	98.91%	1.35
Richmond Community Schools	Richmond High School	94.49%	93.70%	-0.79
Richmond Community Schools	Community Youth Services		25.00%	25
Southern Wells Com Schools	Southern Wells Jr-Sr High School	96.15%	95.71%	-0.44
Northern Wells Community Schools	Norwell High School	94.20%	94.01%	-0.19
MSD Bluffton-Harrison	Bluffton High School	98.10%	99.14%	1.04
North White School Corp	North White High School	90.00%	96.08%	6.08
Frontier School Corporation	Frontier Jr-Sr High School	89.09%	87.76%	-1.33
Tri-County School Corporation	Tri-County Jr/Sr High School	98.08%	96.08%	-2
Twin Lakes School Corp	Twin Lakes Senior High School	89.05%	89.56%	0.51
Smith-Green Community Schools	Churubusco Jr-Sr High School	97.83%	91.40%	-6.43
Whitley County Con Schools	Columbia City High School	94.16%	87.36%	-6.8
Dynamic Minds Academy	Dynamic Minds Academy		0.00%
Purdue Polytechnic High School Ind	Purdue Polytechnic High School Ind		72.66%
Indiana Connections Career Academy	Indiana Connections Career Academy	63.39%	72.09%	8.7
Excel Center - Clarksville	Excel Center - Clarksville	21.35%	12.50%	-8.85
Excel Center - Hammond	Excel Center - Hammond	5.77%	3.57%	-2.2
Gary Middle College West	Gary Middle College West	25.58%	11.63%	-13.95
Insight School of Indiana	Insight School of Indiana	37.17%	28.31%	-8.86
Riverside High School	Riverside High School		81.67%
Excel Center - Muncie	Excel Center - Muncie	10.00%	3.45%	-6.55
Excel Center - Gary	Excel Center - Gary	4.35%	21.21%	16.86
Excel Center - Richmond	Excel Center - Richmond	17.39%	6.56%	-10.83
Signature School Inc	Signature School Inc	100.00%	100.00%	0
Community Montessori Inc	Community Montessori	93.75%	90.00%	-3.75
Options Charter Schools	Options Westfield	43.02%	68.18%	25.16
Options Charter Schools	Options Noblesville	45.45%	49.09%	3.64
Options Charter Schools	Options Indiana		9.26%	9.26
Irvington Community School	Irvington Community School	72.00%	62.50%	-9.5
Excel Center - Lafayette Square	Excel Center - Lafayette Square	17.19%	5.13%	-12.06
Excel Center - Lafayette	Excel Center - Lafayette	34.39%	33.78%	-0.61
Excel Center - Kokomo	Excel Center - Kokomo	23.71%	26.79%	3.08
Christel House Academy South	Christel House Academy South	87.88%	88.24%	0.36
Christel House DORS	Christel House DORS	32.93%	19.51%	-13.42
Charles A Tindley Accelerated Sch	Charles A Tindley Accelerated Sch	97.50%	79.59%	-17.91
Thea Bowman Leadership Academy	Thea Bowman Leadership Academy	79.82%	65.79%	-14.03
Indiana Agriculture and Technology	Indiana Agriculture and Technology	53.66%	47.06%	-6.6
Gary Lighthouse Charter School	Gary Lighthouse Charter School	85.22%	65.89%	-19.33
21st Century Charter Sch of Gary	21st Century Charter Sch of Gary	94.44%	90.00%	-4.44
Victory College Prep Academy	Victory College Prep Academy	95.45%	92.16%	-3.29
Burris Laboratory School	Burris Laboratory School	96.30%	88.52%	-7.78
Indiana Academy for Sci Math Hmn	Indiana Academy for Sci Math Hmn	98.48%	98.80%	0.32
Herron Charter	Herron High School	98.10%	94.02%	-4.08
Indianapolis Metropolitan High Sch	Indianapolis Metropolitan High Sch	60.53%	41.67%	-18.86
Hammond Academy of Science & Tech	Hammond Academy of Science & Tech	97.18%	93.65%	-3.53
Neighbors' New Vistas High School	Neighbors' New Vistas High School	33.78%	37.68%	3.9
Excel Center - Anderson	Excel Center - Anderson	24.73%	20.93%	-3.8
Anderson Preparatory Academy	Anderson Preparatory Academy	90.16%	82.76%	-7.4
Excel Center - University Heights	Excel Center - University Heights	6.45%	0.00%	-6.45
Excel Center - Noblesville	Excel Center - Noblesville	45.16%	27.42%	-17.74
Rock Creek Community Academy	Rock Creek Community Academy	100.00%	88.57%	-11.43
Career Academy High School	Career Academy High School	95.83%	88.68%	-7.15
Gary Middle College	Gary Middle College	13.21%	9.38%	-3.83
IN Math & Science Academy - North	IN Math & Science Academy - North	76.09%	62.79%	-13.3
Excel Center - South Bend	Excel Center - South Bend	3.57%	8.57%	5
Indiana Connections Academy	Indiana Connections Academy	63.93%	65.93%	2
Excel Center for Adult Learners	Excel Center For Adult Learners	11.85%	8.97%	-2.88
Damar Charter Academy	Damar Charter Academy	6.45%	7.32%	0.87
Dugger Union Community School Corp	Dugger Union Community School Corp	88.10%	89.74%	1.64
Steel City Academy	Steel City Academy	80.00%	54.05%	-25.95
Seven Oaks Classical School	Seven Oaks Classical School		66.67%
Excel Center - Shelbyville	Excel Center - Shelbyville	29.09%	26.79%	-2.3

2021 Graduation Rates

* Schools with fewer than 10 students are suppressed.

Graduation rates for Indiana’s Black students dropped by nearly three percentage points to 77%, one point below its pre-pandemic rate of 78% in 2019.

Rates for American Indian students were also 77%.

For multiracial students, graduation rates were 82.5%, and for Hispanic students, 82.7%. Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students had a graduation rate of 86.3%. White students graduated at a rate of 89% and Asian students 93.7%.

Students classified as English language learners as well as those who receive subsidized meals graduated at a rate of 82.8%.

Students in special education had a graduation rate of 74.5%.

The charter school graduation rate — which includes charter high schools, charter schools for adults, alternative high schools, and online high schools — has risen 4 points each year since 2019. But at 48.2%, it remains behind the traditional public corporation graduation rate of 89%.

The percentage of students earning an honors diploma — a designation for students who have completed college or career readiness courses — has held steady for the last three years at around 40%.

Shedd said that while the return to in-person learning appears to have resolved some pandemic-related issues like a lack of internet access at home, it has made clear that others remain, and likely will have an impact on graduation rates going forward.

Some families have yet to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic, and some students are struggling to adjust to physical classrooms, or have fallen behind academically.

While they’re likely to make progress through in-person learning, they may not grow doubly to account for the last year, she said.

“Our expectations were high – that getting students back will be better,” Shedd said. “It’s clear that face-to-face instruction is important for academics and social emotional learning, but there are still issues that are before us.”

How Indianapolis education gaps tie to income inequality

2021-11-09T12:00:00+00:00

When the Rev. David Greene Sr. saw a new data report on racial disparities in educational and workforce outcomes in Marion County, he felt “just shocked and stunned.”

Some of the gaps are often talked about, like Black and Hispanic students in Indianapolis schools passing standardized tests at less than half the rate of their white and Asian peers — a chasm that has widened with the pandemic.

But the report also showed how many students of color have been graduating from local high schools unprepared for college or careers, a problem often masked behind a rosier picture of overall graduation rates.

And it tied how these disparities led to low rates of college success and, eventually, low wages.

“I had definitely felt like there were some challenges, but now there were clear data that provided the evidence as well as showed the linkages between opportunity for economic growth for students — whether you were college-educated or had the training that you could go on, versus the ones that were falling below the line into the poverty zone,” said Greene, senior pastor at Purpose of Life Ministries and president of the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis.

A coalition of local business and community leaders produced the report, released Tuesday, chronicling how racial gaps in education in Indianapolis contribute to income inequality. It’s part of the Business Equity for Indy initiative, a push for racial equity led by the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership and the Indy Chamber, in collaboration with the Indianapolis Urban League.

“It sets the table, ultimately, for the work that we all need to do collectively and strategically as a community,” said Indianapolis Urban League President and CEO Tony Mason. “What can we do to make Indianapolis a more equitable community, where all families — Black families, African-American families, other families of color — have the opportunity to succeed?”

The coalition calls for policy changes, including strengthening pre-K programs to improve kindergarten readiness; expanding eligibility for the state’s 21st Century Scholars program, a need-based scholarship that covers four years of public university tuition; and mandating high school students fill out the federal FAFSA form that determines postsecondary aid.

The group also wants the state to put more dollars toward helping Black and Hispanic students become teachers, supporting first-generation college students, and incentivizing certificates that lead to high-demand, high-paying jobs.

Business Equity for Indy also charges employers with investing in improving outcomes for people of color, suggesting steps to help employees and their families such as subsidizing the cost of early learning programs, contributing to children’s college funds, and offering tuition assistance.

The coalition doesn’t place blame on school systems or institutions for the disparities, instead citing the nation’s history of systemic racism.

“We think they reflect a long history that is complex, and we think that if we’re serious about addressing them, we really need the public, private, and nonprofit sectors all working together to try to address root causes and address those outcomes,” said Claire Fiddian-Green, president and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, who helped lead the study.

Part of the group’s goal is to simply put numbers to the problems.

Greene and other Black community leaders were particularly alarmed to see an increasing tendency to waive high school graduation requirements for Black and Hispanic students.

Most Marion County township districts had a higher percentage of graduates using waivers in 2019 than the state average, the data showed.

Parents need to have that kind of information to ask questions and choose schools for their children, Greene said.

“Too often one could be satisfied with, oh, this township or this school has what appears to be a reasonable graduation rate. But if 15%-20% of those graduating were graduating on waivers, then that’s a problem,” he said.

Other pieces of hard-to-find data in the report show, for example, that from the high school graduating class of 2016, only 253 Black students from Marion County went on to graduate on time from a four-year public college in Indiana and just 14 from a two-year state college on time.

Or that among the big increase in students pursuing workforce certificates, the number of Black and Hispanic students completing those credentials has remained mostly flat, and that the most popular certificates lead to relatively low median wages.

“Business communities are making commitments and expressing a desire to increase the diversity of their entry-level workforce that then moves into middle management, senior executive roles,” said Jason Kloth, president and CEO of Ascend Indiana, a nonprofit focused on Indiana’s talent pipeline. “We’re not producing the number of graduates that would be required to meet the demand for those job opportunities.”

These racial inequities threaten the health of the city, said Marshawn Wolley, a consultant for Business Equity for Indy and public policy director for the African American Coalition of Indianapolis, as poverty drives record levels of gun violence.

“If you graduate from high school unprepared in an advanced economy, what are your prospects?” Wolley said. “You’re putting people out here who don’t have a fighting chance.”

A $300 incentive enticed few Indiana high school grads to join a college prep program

2021-07-09T17:03:45+00:00

Indiana student Jonathan Barrera-Herrera will complete his first college class at Ivy Tech in the next month before the fall semester starts — and get paid up to $300 to do it.

“It’s teaching me things I didn’t know, like the people that are at Ivy Tech, the classes, the credit hours, everything,” said Barrera-Herrera, a graduate of Jeffersonville High School.

But Barrera-Herrera is one of only a small group of eligible students who took advantage of this opportunity. While the program secured funding for 3,500 students, only about 300 enrolled, according to an Ivy Tech spokesperson.

The summer program was designed to assist students whose high school careers were derailed by the pandemic and help them chart a path toward higher education. Ivy Tech Community College, the Indiana Department of Education, and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education partnered to launch the program, made possible by federal COVID relief money.

Low college enrollment is of particular concern in Indiana, where the percentage of high school graduates continuing to college hit an 11-year low in 2019 at 59%. While pandemic-era figures aren’t yet available, a statewide decline in college financial aid applications indicates fewer students may have pursued higher education this year.

While fewer students participated in the Ivy Tech program than anticipated, Indiana Department of Education spokesperson Holly Lawson said the department sees each enrolled student as a success. She said the department will continue to monitor partnerships to make sure future programs have the greatest impact on students.

“Every student enrolled is one more student who is closer to earning a postsecondary credential,” Lawson said via email.

Enrollment fell short of the goal because it was tricky to gauge interest in the program, especially since it launched at the end of May and had a short recruitment window, said Ivy Tech spokesperson Jeff Fanter. More than 1,000 students expressed interest, Fanter said, and he hopes those who didn’t enroll will still consider attending Ivy Tech this fall.

Students in the summer program will go through three steps: A knowledge assessment, an intro course, and finally, enrolling at Ivy Tech. They will receive a $100 incentive for each step they complete.

The four-week intro course covers the basics of Ivy Tech, like how to navigate online learning platforms, select a major, and schedule classes. The program offers virtual and in-person learning options.

Psychology professor Mary Springer teaches the program’s intro course at Ivy Tech’s Sellersburg campus near Louisville, Kentucky. She said she hopes the program will help students get into the mindset that they can be successful at Ivy Tech.

“I think it can give them insight and some motivation for attending college and being successful in college,” Springer said. “Whether it’s the personality exploration or the career exploration or whatever it might be, then maybe we get a light bulb.”

A few years ago, the Sellersburg campus launched a similar incentive program that rewarded students with gift cards for meeting academic goals, and it faced difficulties recruiting students and encouraging them to complete the program, Springer said.

But it all depends on how you measure success — quantity, or quality. While many students didn’t finish, she said several attendees still gained skills that helped them in college.

“There were some really dynamic students that came out of it,” she said.

I graduated from high school with an associate degree. Here’s how I did it.

2021-06-23T13:00:00+00:00

Coming from a low-income family, the cost of college can be a big worry, which is why I decided to take free college courses while I was still in high school.

When I was in middle school, I was introduced to the college and career program at 21st Century Charter School, the K-12 school I attend in Gary, Indiana.

At the beginning of eighth grade, I took an exam to see if I knew enough to take college-level classes. Even though my scores were high, I didn’t feel ready to start college until my second semester of ninth grade.

I knew that taking college classes would save me some money, but I never imagined that I would have earned 72 free college credits and an associate degree by the end of my senior year of high school. Among other college courses, I took: psychology, algebra, sociology, biology, and Earth science. Elsewhere, those credits might have cost me some $50,000. Given that I have to pay for college all on my own, the money I saved means a lot.

But the free education at. Ivy Tech Community College wasn’t easy. I spent countless hours doing homework, studying, and managing a high school and college workload — all while holding down a part-time job at a local McDonald’s. My normal day consisted of going to school at 8 a.m. and staying, sometimes, until 5 p.m. First, I attended my high school classes, then my college classes. After school, I headed to my 6-11 p.m. shift at McDonald’s. After work, it was time for homework and studying. Some days, my day wouldn’t end until 3 a.m. The most important thing was finding at least 5 minutes between classes and before work to focus on me — whether it was just a quick scroll through social media or closing my eyes for a few minutes to rest.

My fast-food job showed me that getting a higher education was a necessity for me. While there is nothing wrong with working at McDonald’s, I knew I didn’t want to stand behind a screen and take orders for the next 30 years.

If your school has a dual-credit program, I recommend you give it a try, too, especially if you’re worried about the cost of college. Start with one course and see. Some of my peers who thought college wasn’t for them changed their minds after taking their first college class.

The early college program opened new avenues of learning for me. I’d never considered being a psychologist until I fell in love with Psychology 101. Psychology taught me more about myself and others. It taught me about different disorders, and it helped me realize why I thought and felt the way I did about certain things.

The biggest misconception among my classmates was that college-level courses would be as easy as high school ones because we had more freedom around when and how we do our work. In high school, we were given strict rules: take notes that will be graded, turn in assignments by the due date, complete the study guide, finish countless worksheets, etc. In college, we weren’t required to take notes, complete study guides, and turn in assignments all the time. So my biggest challenge was self-discipline. I had to remember all the strict rules my high school teachers set for me and set them for myself. My professors at Ivy Tech considered me an adult, even though most of them knew I was still in high school. It was my responsibility to take notes, turn in assignments on time, and study without the same structure or constant reminders. It was hard to be a high school and college student at the same time, but the experience taught me many life skills, self-discipline being the most important.

I earned an associate of science in liberal arts in May of 2020, a year before earning my high school diploma. My family is very proud of me, and I’m happy to be a positive role model for my younger sisters and brother.

This fall, I’ll attend the University of Kentucky and have decided to major in pre-medical laboratory science. My Ivy Tech credits will transfer to the University of Kentucky and count toward my bachelor’s degree.

Earning these college credits saved me not only money but also time — making those long days, late nights, heaps of coursework, and missed social gatherings worth the sacrifice in the end.

Brianna Moore was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. At age 18, she earned her high school diploma from 21st Century Charter School. She holds an associate of science in liberal arts from Ivy Tech Community College.

Indiana financial aid applications dip, pointing to fewer students heading to college

2021-05-17T14:20:32+00:00

In a typical year, Indianapolis school counselor Karen Matthews spends lunch breaks bribing high school seniors with free baked potatoes or nachos to come to her office and fill out college financial aid forms.

Matthews, who works at Beech Grove High School, said these “working lunches” have been her most successful tactic for encouraging completion of the federal aid application, which intimidates many of her students. The form requires answering over 100 questions and providing multiple records, including Social Security numbers, tax returns, and records of untaxed income.

“If we can just get them started, they realize it’s not that bad and they’ll usually finish it,” Matthews said.

Because of virtual learning and social distancing restrictions, Matthews had to pause her working lunches and other initiatives for 2½ semesters. At Beech Grove, only 33.8% of seniors have submitted the financial aid application this year, according to data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

Statewide completion rates fell 6% compared with last year, even after the deadline extended from April 15 to Saturday. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is required for students to receive federal and state aid and, often, to qualify for scholarships and aid from colleges and private organizations.

With fewer students applying for financial aid, experts say they expect a correlating decline in college enrollment.

“It’s not just a drop in FAFSA,” Matthews said. “Fewer students applying to college means fewer filing the FAFSA.”

The proportion of college applicants at Beech Grove dropped by nearly 20 percentage points this year, according to data from Matthews.

While some students’ interest in college has waned because the pandemic has devastated finances, college enrollment had been declining in Indiana even before COVID-19.

An April report from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education found college enrollment fell below 60% of high school seniors for the first time since they began collecting data in 2009, with only 59% of Indiana seniors enrolling in higher education in 2019. Data for last year is not available, but almost certainly will reflect a steeper decline, the state agency noted.

Furthermore, the students who most need financial aid are the least likely to apply for it, state education officials noted. Students eligible for the Federal Pell Grant, the aid package for those with the highest financial needs, have lower FAFSA filing rates than the class of 2021 overall.

In Indiana, only two schools, both private, had 100% FAFSA participation as of Wednesday: Park Tudor in Marion County and University High School in Hamilton County, according to data from the commission.

Charlee Beasor of the higher education commission said it’s common for seniors to jump right into the workforce when the economy is strong, because they can find high-paying jobs. That promoted a decline in college enrollment before the pandemic, she said.

Beasor, associate commissioner for communications and outreach, and her colleagues had hoped the pandemic recession might encourage more students to pursue college degrees — but the opposite occurred.

Matthews said every year, fewer students at her school see college in their future, and the pandemic accelerated this trend.

She said fear of student debt scares off many. College tuition at most schools has risen steadily for years, and on top of that, the pandemic recession crippled many families’ finances. In a survey Matthews sent to her students last spring, almost one-third said at least one parent had lost their job due to COVID-19.

“You can see the wheels turning,” Matthews said. “They’re thinking, ‘At this point, is it worth the investment of time and debt when I could join the military?’”

Aside from monetary concerns, Matthews said academic performance and mental health suffered at Beech Grove during over a year of virtual schooling, as students lost the structure of in-person school that had kept them organized. Saddled with lower GPAs, she said more students doubt their ability to get into and succeed at schools.

Matthews said in past years, she and other school counselors often gave seniors the push they needed to apply to college or submit the FAFSA.

“My students need a lot of hand-holding through the college application process,” Matthews said. “Without me having the ability to call their butts down to my office and have this discussion and say, ‘Open up that Chromebook and let’s do this,’ fewer of them are going to do that.”

Flora Jones, postsecondary readiness director at Indianapolis Public Schools, said the pandemic triggered a drop in college planning in her district, too.

“We do believe that the pandemic has been a cause in the drop in FAFSA completion based on the need for many of our scholars to help support their families and contribute to the household income,” Jones said in an email. “It is also apparent that many students are losing interest in attending college at such a high cost with no campus experience due to COVID.”

Student performance at IPS schools has also dropped off, as more than 40% of high school students in the district have failed one or more core class.

Encouraging FAFSA completion was difficult before; the pandemic made it harder.

College Goal Sunday, offering students and parents personal help in filling out the financial aid application, normally took place at 40 locations across the state. This year it went online, and attendance plummeted, said Bill Wozniak, co-chair of College Goal Sunday.

Without help from experts, the FAFSA fills parents with terror, Wozniak said. “They loathe going through the process, and then afterward they’re like, ‘Oh that wasn’t so bad.’”

Before they get to the FAFSA, students have to want to apply to college, Beasor of the education commission said. It’s important to show them the long-term benefits of more schooling, she said.

“If you have a bachelor’s degree in Indiana compared to just a high school diploma, you’re likely to make $1 million more over your lifetime,” Beasor said. “It’s that message, the ‘Look at the long-term picture,’ over the immediate ability to jump right into the workforce.”

Upcoming federal changes will make the FAFSA easier to fill out, Beasor said. In October 2022, the form will include fewer than 40 questions instead of over 100, and respondents won’t have to retrieve their own IRS tax records anymore — a new system will automatically submit them.

“The most important thing is that it’s going to be a simpler process for students and families,” Beasor said. “Hopefully that’ll help balance out the longer-term impacts.”

Correction: May 17, 2021: A previous version of this story said 40% of IPS high school students had failed more than one core class. Those students had failed one or more core class.

Just 1 in 6 Indiana college students who study education become teachers, report finds

2021-03-04T19:21:28+00:00

Only 1 in 6 students who pursued bachelor’s degrees in education at state colleges and universities ended up working as teachers, according to a new report on Indiana’s teacher pipeline that followed students who entered college from 2010 to 2012.

The outcomes were even starker among students of color: Just 5% of Black students who entered education programs went into teaching in Indiana classrooms, according to the study from the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

The report followed students enrolled in education programs at Indiana’s public colleges and universities to see how many received degrees, were licensed, and got jobs in teaching.

Of the roughly 11,000 students who pursued bachelor’s degrees in education, just 16% eventually received licenses and found jobs in Indiana public schools.

Indiana schools have struggled to fill vacancies in recent years as a strong economy created jobs in other industries. Teacher pay in Indiana lags behind that of neighboring states and behind salaries of other professional careers — a problem that has attracted attention from politicians and advocates on both sides of the aisle.

Schools are particularly struggling to hire more teachers of color and to fill positions in high-demand areas such as special education and math.

“This is a treasure trove of information, which prompts us to say, ‘We have a problem. Let’s figure out what the problem is,’” said Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Teresa Lubbers.

“If the problem is we don’t have enough people interested in education or enough diversity in education, then we need to find out why,” she said.

Gathering more information is crucial for tackling those challenges, Lubbers said. Some students could be dropping out of college because it is not affordable, for example, while others could be switching to other majors.

The study did not look at other routes to the classroom. Many Indiana teachers pursue alternative teacher licensing pathways, which are open to college graduates who have not completed a university teaching degree program.

Black and Latino college students were especially likely to leave before landing in classrooms, according to the report. Of the students the study had demographic data for, students of color made up 12% of those pursuing education degrees but just 6% of those licensed. That’s a worrying trend because research has shown that having teachers of color improves outcomes for students of color.

About 34% of Indiana students are Black, Hispanic, Asian, or other children of color. But the state’s teaching force is overwhelmingly white, and just 8% of Hoosier teachers are people of color.

Another reason for the wide gap is because Black and Hispanic high school graduates are less likely to enroll in college and less likely to graduate, according to data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, so the pool of potential teachers is smaller.

The state is already pursuing policies to boost diversity, Lubbers said, pointing to programs for Black and Hispanic college students such as scholarships and student-teaching stipends.

“There are things that we’re doing. It’s just that it’s not enough yet,” Lubbers said.

Advocates say that improving teacher diversity in Indiana’s schools will take a multipronged approach.

Blake Nathan, CEO of the Educate ME Foundation, an organization dedicated to increasing the number of teachers of color, said that college students of color could face many hurdles that make it harder for them to become teachers, including concerns about incurring student debt and then entering a relatively low-paying field.

Some college students of color may be prevented from teaching because of state licensing requirements, Nathan said. To earn licenses, prospective teachers must meet grade point average requirements and pass tests that Nathan said put candidates of color at a disadvantage and should be studied for bias.

“It needs to be a statewide initiative to support more teachers of color,” Nathan said.