By HOLLY GASKILL
How does early education correlate to success later in life? Why do advanced class opportunities matter? Where are state education standards headed?
With the Indiana Department of Education’s new dashboard, Wells County residents can gain clarity for those types of questions and more.
The recently-launched Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed dashboard, also called Indiana GPS, is the result of 2021 legislation that required the state to make district data more transparent and available. Ultimately, the purpose is to help Hoosier schools and their stakeholders work toward improvement.
With this in mind, Indiana GPS outlines a series of goals and completion dates for the state.
The first of which follows early literacy — a state average of 81.6 percent of third graders met proficiency standards for literacy in 2022, as determined by the IREAD-3. By 2027, the state hopes to have an average of 95 percent of third graders considered proficient.
According to the IDOE’s website, students who meet these proficiency standards are 35 percent more likely to graduate high school.
Locally, 84.3 percent of third graders in Northern Wells Community Schools were proficient, 86.6 at Bluffton-Harrison Metropolitan Schools, and 92.1 percent at Southern Wells Community Schools in 2022.
The IDOE also hopes to increase the number of sixth-grade students meeting growth targets on the math ILEARN test to 45.8 percent by 2030. Last year, 34.1 percent of students met “adequate growth.”
At the same time, 44.2 percent of sixth grade students at NWCS met this standard, 24.8 percent at BHMSD and 39.3 percent at SWCS.
Looking toward high school and graduation, the IDOE wants to increase the state graduation rate from 86.4 percent to 95 percent by 2030. Additionally, they plan to increase the number of students graduating from college and career credentials from 5.5 percent statewide to 60 percent by 2030.
In 2021, 94 percent of the Norwell High School’s senior class completed graduation requirements, and 66.4 percent completed advanced coursework. At Bluffton High School, 99.1 percent of seniors completed graduation requirements, with 81.9 percent completing advanced coursework. Lastly, 95.7 percent of seniors at Southern Wells Junior/Senior High School met graduation requirements, 72.9 percent of whom graduated with advanced coursework.
The dashboard outlines one more area for improvement — the percent of high school graduates employed or enrolled within Indiana one year after graduation — but does not include a target or deadline.
Statewide, 84.9 percent of recent graduates were employed or enrolled in Indiana in 2020. Since 2006, this described 83 percent of graduates on average.
Locally, in 2020, 90.3 percent from NWCS, 85.7 percent from BHMSD, and 86.5 percent from SWCS were employed or enrolled in college or university in Indiana. Trade or vocational schools, as well as military service, were included in enrollment.
Since 2006, NWCS has had an average of 86.1 percent of graduates enrolled or employed one year after graduation, with BHMSD at 86.9 percent and SWCS at 86.2 percent.
The IDOE’s website states these goals were identified after receiving feedback from educators, families, communities and employers. At large, they were formed to target the following: academic mastery, career and postsecondary education readiness, communication and collaboration, work ethic, as well as civil, financial, and digital literacy.
Additional data — spanning free and reduced lunch participation to FAFSA completion — is also available on the dashboard. Each category can also be explored by demographics based on gender, economic background, and more.
“In education, you use a lot of charts and graphs and data, and sometimes that is not easily accessible for the average person. And so we really took that to heart,” said Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner in a statement to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “Right now, it’s pretty cumbersome for an individual person or educator or a community leader to have to go to each (state or federal) agency to pull that data. This is really putting everything at one place for a school in a transparent way.”
The full dashboard is available at indianagps.doe.in.gov
holly@news-banner.com
