What A-F Letter Grades Can Tell Us About Voucher Schools

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January 28, 2014 | 1:54 PM

By Rachel Morello

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The majority of Indiana students using state-funded tuition vouchers are using them at private schools that received an A or a B in Indiana’s school ratings system for 2012-13.

But D or F rated private schools had, on average, twice as many voucher-recipient students as the A schools. And the private school with the most voucher students — Ambassador Christian Academy in Lake County — received an F from the state.

2012-13 Letter Grade	Number of Schools	Number of Students	Average # of Students
A	125	7183	57
B	62	4270	68
C	39	2560	65
D	13	1412	108
F	6	770	128
		16195	64

Source: Indiana Department of Education

(We’ve also updated our list of voucher-recipient schools to include letter grades where a rating was available for last school year.)

Private schools with A ratings enrolled an average of 57 voucher recipients. Private schools with D or F ratings enrolled more than 100 voucher recipients on average, according to a StateImpact analysis of the data.

As the table indicates, we don’t have 2012-13 letter grades for every private school participating in the state’s Choice Scholarship Program. And in some cases, we don’t have student counts for rated schools because FERPA protects data for populations of less than 10.

But 16,195 voucher students are attending a private school that did receive a rating from the state last year — that’s more than 80 percent of students participating in the Choice Scholarship Program.

Here’s what else we can tell you about the distribution of vouchers by school letter grades:

• About 62 percent of voucher-accepting schools received an A or a B last year — compared to 75 percent of all Indiana private schools who receive letter grades. It’s also slightly less than the 65 percent of public schools that received top ratings.
• About 10 percent of voucher students attend a D or an F school. But D and F schools only make up about 6 percent of voucher schools.
• Ten schools enroll more than 10 percent of all voucher-recipient students — and their letter grades are all over the map. Two of the schools received A’s and five received B’s last year. The other three received a C, D and an F.
• Six voucher-recipient schools received an F in 2012-13 — Ambassador Christian Academy, St. Stanislaus School, Lutheran South Unity School, St. Vincent DePaul School, Trinity Educational Daycare and Academy and Jay County Christian Academy. None of them received an A or a B the previous year, and all of them increased their voucher enrollment by at least 30 percent for 2013-14.
• A voucher school can’t accept new Choice Scholarship recipients if it earns a D or an F in two consecutive years. Five schools — Holy Cross in South Bend, Saint John the Baptist in Tipton, St. Vincent DePaul School in Elkhart, Jay County Christian Academy in Portland and St. Stanislaus School in East Chicago — have now received two low ratings.

As we’ve written before, Indiana private schools haven’t fared as well since the state changed the rating system two years ago.

Of course, the Indiana General Assembly threw out that system last spring. State education officials are reworking the grade calculations now.