State Expects All Indiana Schools To Earn A's By 2020

Kyle Stokes / StateImpact Indiana

Indiana state superintendent Tony Bennett discusses the takeover of a Gary school at a public meeting in August.

Indiana education officials have dropped ambitious federal goals for student performance spelled out under No Child Left Behind. In their place, the state’s adopting what it calls an “ambitious and achievable” goal of its own:

Every Indiana school must earn a state letter grade of an A — or failing that, improve two letter grades to earn no worse than a C — by 2020.

State officials spelled out this goal in their NCLB waiver application (which we’ve annotated for easy reading below the jump), which they submitted for review to the U.S. Department of Education this week.

Screenshot / IDOE

A chart from p. 50 of Indiana's application for an NCLB waiver spelling out the state's projections for school letter grade distribution by 2020. ("AMO," by the way, stands for "Annual Measurable Objectives.")

The document reads both like a primer on Indiana’s efforts to overhaul education in recent years, and like a game plan for big changes to the state’s education policy that are still to come — including a more aggressive timeline for state intervention in failing schools.

Under the new letter grade goal, the state projects no schools will receive a D or F by 2020, while 73 percent will receive an A.

Many now believe NCLB’s goals of 100 percent proficiency in math and reading by 2014 are unattainable — and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says more than 82 percent of the nation’s schools would have been penalized for failing to make progress towards those goals this year.

In that light, Indiana Education Insight writes on the Hoosier Ed blog that the new goal of all A’s for Indiana schools is more “realistic and reachable.”

Here’s the application:

[documentcloud url=https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/266586-indiana-esea-flexibility-request-nov-14.html format=normal sidebar=false ]