Will IPS still exist in 20 or 25 years? Is the ILEA an existential threat to the district, or even public education as we know it? And is it possible to create a high-quality, pluralistic education landscape in Indianapolis? We dig into all that and more. Continue reading Is the Demise of IPS Inevitable?
2025 IREAD results showed marked improvement, up almost five percentage points last year. We are finally back to matching pre-pandemic proficiency rates on something. Meanwhile, as many as 10,000 students might be retained for not passing and nearly one third of all second graders are not on track to pass IREAD next year. Continue reading IREAD 2025: Progress, Retention, and How These Results Square With ILEARN
The financial future of IPS depends on a new operating referendum in 2026. What will it look like? Will it find support? We unpack all that and go through a timeline of how we got to this point. Continue reading Without a 2026 Operating Referendum, IPS’ Finances Look Dire
Local advocacy groups are increasingly pressing the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance on how it should conduct its work and what kind of recommendations it should make. These forces reflect the wider debate around the future of education in Indianapolis. Are these competing visions reconcilable? Continue reading Are Competing Visions for Indianapolis’ Education Landscape Reconcilable?
ILEARN results for the 2024-25 school year just dropped. The top-line results for the state reading something like this. In reading? Stagnation. In math? Modest growth. We do a deep dive into this year’s results and offer four takeaways for the broader landscape in Indianapolis and statewide. Continue reading 2025 ILEARN Deep Dive, Analysis, and Takeaways
What’s our priority as education professionals, leaders, and advocates? Is it supporting students? Or supporting systems? And are those always mutually-exclusive? Those were a few of the questions on my mind after reading about IPS’ rejection of Cold Spring’s bid to operate as both an Innovation Network School and a charter school. I unpack them here. Continue reading The Curious Case of Cold Spring and IPS: Supporting Students or Supporting Systems?
Part 2 of our “Fully funded, fully public” thought experiment, wherein I unpack what would make Indianapolis’ education ecosystem fully public. And address concerns traditional public school advocates tend to raise about charter schools and why they feel they aren’t actually public schools. Continue reading What Does Fully Funded, Fully Public Mean? A Thought Experiment, Part 2.
Fully funded, fully public. It’s what many education advocates call for, this last legislative session included. Yet the terms are often nebulous, ill-defined. So I’m undertaking a two-part series to explore what a system of public schools that are fully funded and fully public might look like in practice. Continue reading What Does Fully Funded, Fully Public Mean? A Thought Experiment, Part 1.
Coverage around the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance (ILEA) has focused on how the advisory group is exempt from Indiana’s Open Door Law. But the worry around transparency seems not to extend to the inordinate number of executive sessions IPS holds, where discussions about school consolidation remain largely under wraps. Continue reading What’s the Deal With Open Doors? IPS and the ILEA.
Every time I assert that charter schools are public schools, I get a predictable line of pushback. “Well, that may be true on paper,” people will say. “But they don’t really accept every student.” But too often what people are concerned about happening at charter schools is largely a specter. And what they believe could never happen at a traditional public school does happen. Just as often, if not more frequently, than it does at charter schools. Continue reading Free and Open to All? Not So Fast.
