A recent comment in a Chalkbeat article from a researcher at Thomas B. Fordham Institute stopped me in my tracks. If IPS’ current enrollment declines continue year-over-year at their current pace, they said, “In 20, 25 years there will not be a district.” 

I’ve written extensively about IPS’ need for a new operating referendum in 2026 to avoid financial ruin. Enrollment declines have certainly played a role in their financial predicament. But I hadn’t really connected the dots to see the looming end-game as equally tied up in enrollment as finances.

In short, IPS’ trajectory is unsustainable on multiple fronts. But that doesn’t mean their demise is inevitable. Nor does it mean that public education is in danger of extinction in Indianapolis. 

A Quick History of Enrollment Patterns in IPS Boundaries

I’m sure many readers, when confronted with declining IPS enrollment over the past 20 years, will be quick to blame the rise and proliferation of charter schools.

In the 2005-06 school year, charter schools in Indianapolis enrolled about 3,000 students. IPS, meanwhile, enrolled over 37,000 students. Zoom ahead to 2024-25 and IPS now enrolls just over 21,000 at the schools it runs directly and charters now enroll over 22,000 as a collective (though that population includes many students who attend Innovation Network Schools within IPS; the vast majority of these schools also hold their own charter).

At face value, the migration certainly seems to be driven by charters. They gained 19,000 students. IPS lost over 16,000 over the same time period. I hear a lot of voices reflexively respond by bemoaning the enrollment decline at IPS and denigrating charters in the same breath, claiming that this trend is bad for public education and bad for students. But there are fundamental questions to be raised here that too often get glossed over. 

Namely, why is this happening? What forces are at play? And is this trend actually bad for students? Or merely a big red warning sign that IPS cannot continue down this road? 

Look back far enough, and certainly enrollment declines at IPS were at least somewhat the result of white flight—the trend of white, often wealthier families abandoning urban school districts for the suburbs (or in our case, the townships and the suburbs). There’s no doubt that racism and prejudice are baked into the stories of declining enrollment at urban school districts across the country, IPS included. Which is, of course, a bad thing.  

But that’s not the case if you narrow in on the last 20 years, even if the legacy of forces in the 20th century like white flight certainly impacted the 21st century starting point.

Traditional public school defenders always trot out the argument that charter schools cherrypick their students. The implication being that they actively work to only enroll whiter, wealthier students while actively trying to avoid enrolling English Language Learners and students with disabilities. 

A couple points here. Charter schools, as a whole, serve a higher percentage of students of color and a higher percentage of low-income students than IPS does. Put another way, the “average” IPS school is whiter and wealthier than the “average” charter school. And because of enrollment numbers above, this isn’t just about proportions. Charter schools literally serve more of these students in raw numbers. 

I’ll grant you, IPS does serve more students with disabilities. But it’s somewhere in the ballpark of 15% compared to 10% for independent charter schools. Not exactly an unconscionable disparity. A similar, though again not alarming gap, exists for English Language Learners. For a more comprehensive look, see the chart below (based on data from the Indiana Department of Education) that appeared in a Chalkbeat article from January of this year. 

To me, this is not the demographic breakdown of a sector that is cherrypicking its students.

Why Do Families Exercise School Choice in Indianapolis?

So why are families in Indianapolis choosing charters? Especially Black families and low-income families? Switching schools is not easy. Indeed, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say it’s a traumatic experience for families. They do not exercise their ability to “choose a different school” lightly. Not in my experience, anyway.

Of course, there are neighborhoods where a traditional public school either converted to an Innovation Network School or closed only to reopen as an independent charter school. In those cases, families likely took the path of least resistance and enrolled as if it were still their neighborhood school. 

Setting that aside, I’m sure some will point to school closures in IPS writ large. But school closures more generally over the last 20 years hardly tell the whole story either. For instance, Enroll Indy estimates there are approximately 9,000 available seats at public schools within IPS boundaries. Over 7,000 of those are at IPS schools. There’s plenty of space for more students in IPS, despite the district’s attempts to “right-size” in recent years. Plenty of families just aren’t staying in IPS, or, when their students come of age, choosing IPS schools.

Enrollment declines have also at times been fully self-inflicted. Take last year, when almost all of IPS’ enrollment decline was experienced at the middle school level due to a rocky roll-out of their Rebuilding Stronger plan’s standalone middle schools.

Ultimately, based on the demographics displayed in that chart above, I would argue that many families— especially Black families and low-income families—made the switch in search of something better for their students. (The astute reader here might raise the point that in many cases the charter schools with the highest concentration of Black families or low-income families used to be IPS schools that were “restarted” with a new school model and leadership. In that sense, the system “made a choice” for these families. But the traditional public system had no answer for how to turn around these “failing” schools. There’s no world where a charter operator restarts an IPS school if that school is already excelling.)

This is not to say kids can’t find a great education within IPS. After all, thousands of families continue to choose the district and I’m sure they do so out of more than simple inertia. I know many students find a great education in IPS schools, year after year. Success stories exist. Numerous success stories, even. But clearly, not enough do. And thousands of families weren’t going to engage in wishful thinking that somehow a better education would suddenly fall into their student’s lap. So, one way or another, they found their way to a charter school.

This is also not to say that charter schools are perfect. Of course they aren’t. In many cases their academic performance is better than IPS. In some cases, startlingly so. But in others, they still have massive room for improvement. They’re not a silver bullet, even though I’m bullish that the education ecosystem in Indianapolis is better for students and families with them than without them.

The Death of IPS? The Death of Public Education?

There’s an article in Harpers about the microschool movement that has been living in my head rent free for days. It’s gonna live there a lot longer. And while I’m not talking about the growing micro schools trend right now (though I mean to at some point), there’s a quote in that article that perfectly captures my feelings about the room and the role for both IPS and Innovation Network Schools and public charter schools (and even micro schools) in a pluralistic education landscape.

Public education does not have to die when we admit that one size does not fit all. It dies when prejudice and greed contrive to predetermine a student’s future according to the family in which he was born. It dies when states and strongmen favor any kind of compulsion over individual conscience. It dies when the kids who want to follow rivers are never taught how to swim.

What’s the point of all this? Well, I think many folks look at the recent legislative session and the early meetings of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance (ILEA) believe we’re in a battle over the very existence of IPS, whose “demise” would signal death of public education in Indianapolis. 

On the first point? Yes, quite literally, IPS will either become insolvent or literally run out of students to serve if it continues on its current trajectory (regardless of what the ILEA proposes). Maybe that’s in 25 years, maybe far less. It cannot keep going the way it is going and thrive, let alone survive.

But IPS’ demise is not inevitable. We can have a high-quality, pluralistic education landscape in Indianapolis. To get there demands more change in this moment. Change can feel like death to those who think the change is ill-advised, ill-timed, or will be ill-implemented. I don’t know if the right answer for how our education landscape needs to shift once more is toward a unified school district that brings charters and IPS schools under one umbrella like some have called for. I don’t know if the right answer is to make Indianapolis the next New Orleans where all schools are independent charter schools. 

But I do know the answer can’t be to let the status quo prevail or fight for some previous status quo where IPS was the dominant game in town that is too often viewed through rose-colored glasses.

For better or for worse (I lean toward better), the ILEA has been told to point the ship in a new direction. I don’t want it to be a future where one or another faction of adults get what they want. I want it to be a future where students finally get the quality education they deserve from our public schools, no matter the model they choose to operate with.