During his campaign, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett outlined a plan to address gaps in the Indianapolis education landscape and promote solutions to improve options and outcomes for students. The Mayor’s Office of Education Innovation (OEI) has worked aggressively to promote equitable learning opportunities across the city.
OEI authorizes Mayor-Sponsored Charter Schools (MSCS), with almost 40 locations across the city. Since its inception, OEI has adopted national best practices in charter school authorizing, earning a reputation as one of the highest quality authorizers in the country. With four schools opening this fall, MSCS will serve 15,000 students, the majority living in Center Township. MSCS serves a highly diverse student population with 77.8 percent qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch, 55 percent Black and 15 percent Hispanic. Despite the majority living below the federal poverty line, MSCS students consistently outperform similarly situated students in traditional public schools. Autonomy and strong accountability bolster this success; however, OEI continues to work on initiatives to improve academic outcomes and opportunities for all Indianapolis students, which includes an investment in early childhood education.
Indiana is one of several states that do not provide statewide pre-K funding for all children. In 2015, OEI and United Way of Central Indiana initiated the Indianapolis Preschool Scholarship Program (Indy PSP). This program provides full scholarships for the city’s eligible 3- and 4-year-olds to enroll in high-quality pre-K programs. During its first year, Indy PSP received more than 5,000 applications for just 1,300 scholarships. OEI has continued to advocate for statewide pre-K funding so that every child across Indiana has access to high-quality pre-K. As a state, we are moving in the right direction, but there is more work that must be done.
In efforts to promote transparency, higher visibility of school performance and alignment between traditional public and public charter schools, OEI has fully supported unified enrollment, Equity Reports and collaboration with IPS. Since its formative stages, OEI has engaged with Enroll Indy to help develop a strategy to streamline a new unified enrollment process that will begin October 2017. Equity Reports inform parents about school-level data specific to student subgroups. This tool is an additional resource for families and advocates to gauge performance and discipline outcomes by race and gender.
Enroll Indy and Equity Reports are just two components of a district-charter collaboration between IPS and OEI. This collaboration strengthens the Indianapolis education landscape with strategic alignment on common academic measures and facilities data points between IPS and MSCS. While partnership and collaboration with the district are essential to better inform families, OEI is currently working aggressively to address barriers to learning for the city’s low-income students.
The Indianapolis Promise and the Working Group on Poverty and Education are two initiatives designed to alleviate learning obstacles for the city’s low-income students. The Indianapolis Promise seeks to close the skills gap to ensure Marion County students are breaking the cycle of poverty and businesses have a pipeline of highly qualified employees. The City convened the Indianapolis Promise Task Force with members from the public, nonprofit and private sectors to research and produce a report on the initiative’s implementation. The Task Force will present recommendations to the mayor by December 2017.
Since February, the Working Group on Poverty and Education has met to develop a plan to address the many challenges facing Indianapolis students living in poverty. The working group is tasked with creating a comprehensive plan to combat barriers to learning and increase visibility of relevant resources to Indianapolis students and families. Standing by the mayor’s vision for education, OEI supports opportunities to make Indianapolis a city where every student in every neighborhood has access to a high-quality education.
Ahmed Young is director of charter schools for the City of Indianapolis Office of Innovation Education.
