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A plan to once again assign A-F grades to Indiana schools is officially open for public feedback.
The state is moving forward with a draft first presented in June that would assign schools grades no later than December 2026 under a new legislative mandate. Public comment is now open online; an in-person session will also take place in August.
Indiana has not issued A-F grades to schools since 2018 due to changes in the state testing model, and later, the pandemic. The state in 2022 moved away from a single letter grade to evaluate schools and unveiled its Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS) dashboard, which features a profile of each school’s testing and attendance data.
But education officials said some families had found the dashboard to be too complex. Earlier this year, lawmakers mandated that the state develop an updated grading framework based primarily on state test scores and aligned with the state’s new high school graduation requirements.
Unlike under the previous iterations of the grading framework, the proposed plan gives schools credit for students who are progressing in their skills, rather than just those who are proficient, according to the Department of Education’s June presentation.
It works by assigning each student at a school a number of points based on their proficiency on the state tests — the ILEARN in grades 3-8 and the SAT in high school. Students would get 100 points for meeting or exceeding the proficiency benchmarks for those tests, and 90 points for approaching proficiency, in the draft proposal.
It also gives students points for other skills, like attendance, workforce skills, and proficiency on the IREAD, the state third grade reading test.
Schools would then be assigned a letter grade based on the average points generated by all students.
The first public comment period is open now through Aug. 22 online. The Department of Education will also hold an in-person public comment session on Friday, Aug. 22, at 10 a.m. in the Indiana Government Center South, Conference Room C.
After the first public comment period concludes, the Department of Education will present a second draft of the grading framework, as well as host a second public comment period. The State Board of Education must adopt the final draft of the grading system by Dec. 31.
Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.
