Purdue University president and former governor Mitch Daniels wants public universities to be proactive in helping students pay off student debt. (photo credit: Kyle Stokes/StateImpact Indiana)
Purdue University president and former governor Mitch Daniels wants universities to share the burden of student loans.
More than half of college students in Indiana pay for their education using students loans, which on average means students graduate with a degree and almost $30,000 in debt, according to the Institute for College Access and Success.
During a panel at the Bipartisan Policy Center this week, Daniels said paying this debt should also be a university’s responsibility. The Indy Star reported on this speech and how Daniels is spearheading an effort at Purdue to help students pay off this debt:
Students\’ results in the assessment have be invalidated and will be listed as \”undetermined\” in score reports. (photo credit: Alberto G/flickr.com)
The State Department of Education is investigating a testing administration error at the Rochester School Corporation. Approximately 700 students used calculators on a portion of this year’s mathematics ISTEP+ exam where calculators were not permitted.
The DOE blames the error on incorrect instructions from the testing vendor.
DOE Communications Director Molly Deuberry says the corporation contacted the Department of Education when officials discovered the problem.
The future of a federal program dedicated to teacher training and professional remains unclear. (Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
Schools across Indiana will likely soon lose millions of dollars dedicated to teacher training and professional development.
“It’s a huge deal,” says Sandi Cole, director of the Center on Education and Lifelong Learning at Indiana University. “It goes totally against the desire to improve student learning because you can’t improve student learning without improving teachers’ craft.”
In 2016, Indiana schools received about $36 million in Title II, Part A funds known as the Supporting Effective Instruction grant program. That grant program is the third-largest federal K-12 program in the country.
Teachers, students, and the community rallied for the school in February. (photo credit: Indiana Public Radio)
A unanimous decision by the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board, or IEERB, ended any hope of Muncie teachers working under the school board’s version of a new teachers contract. IEERB voted last week to uphold the state fact finder’s decision, meaning the teachers will work under a contract written by the Muncie Teachers Association.
Mitchell Bridwell will compete in the national Braille Challenge, a contest focused on reading and writing Braille. The contest is an attempt to improve the unemployment rate among blind people, by encouraging Braille literacy. (photo credit: Eric Weddle/WFYI News)
Mitchell Bridwell is a voracious reader.
The Pittsboro teen made his way through some Charles Dickens but would rather spend time inside the worlds of Rick Riordan or J. K. Rowling.
To make it through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he’ll have to run his fingertips through six volumes of the braille edition.
But for Mitchell, he’d much rather dig into modern fiction by over smoothly running his fingertips over tiny dots of punctured paper than listening to any audio book or voiceover software.
“I’m not sure if je ne sais quoi would be the right word, but I think that works for braille,” he says while sitting on his couch.
It’s safe to say that Bridwell’s braille reading skills are known nationally. This weekend, he’ll join three other students from the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to compete at the national Braille Challenge contest in Los Angeles.
To get there, the four beat out 1,100 braille readers and writers in preliminary regional events across the US and Canada. Only 50 students, ages six to 19, made the finals.
In braille — words and letters are formed within units of space known as braille cells. A full braille cell is two parallel rows of three raised dots. Continue Reading →
Like rural districts across Indiana, dropping enrollment in Argos Community Schools means less money for the district. As officials look toward the future, they’re nervous about what comes next. (Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
Indiana has the eighth highest population of rural students in the country. One in four public school students in the state attend a rural school.
The Rural School and Community Trust issues a report each year to outline various issues rural schools across the country face. A major takeaway about Indiana is the amount the state funds rural school districts.
Ivy Tech Community College will undergo administrative changes to focus more on individual communities. (photo credit: Kyle Stokes/Stateimpact Indiana)
Ivy Tech Community college will undergo administrative changes this summer aimed at making each campus more community focused, addressing needs expressed by campuses across the state.
Ivy Tech’s campuses currently serve students at a regional level, but going forward they will focus on specific towns.
Caleb Pierson looks over a cabinet project he designed for Heartwood Manufacturing. Pierson is a graduate of a program run through Batesville High School, that helps high school students get manufacturing skills while still in high school. This program within the school system is a solution to Batesville’s lack of skilled workers for manufacturing jobs. (photo credit: Claire McInerny/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
Indiana has open manufacturing and construction jobs, but not enough workers with the training to fill them.
The Indiana Institute for Working Families released a new report this month on some of the biggest challenges for people who want to go back to school to earn credentials.
Andrew Bradley is the senior policy analyst for the institute and says more than a million jobs will open in the next decade that require specific training. And most are in manufacturing and construction.
Tony Walker listens during a State Board of Education meeting in 2014. He vacated the board when a law dictated a restructuring of members, but Gov. Holcomb re-appointed him after a recent vacancy. (Photo Credit: Rachel Morello/StateImpact Indiana)
Gov. Eric Holcomb filled two vacant spots on the State Board of Education, appointing Kathleen Mote and previous board member Tony Walker.
Danielle Reynolds and her son Jackson work on reading skills following his graduation from UPSTART. (photo credit: Lindsey Wright/WTIU News)
One by one, young kids in Floyd County are graduating from their pre-K program, but it’s not traditional preschool, it’s all done online.
Jackson is one of about 100 students graduating from the home-based UPSTART program. He also attends an in-class preschool. His mom, Danielle Reynolds, was eager to try something new with him so he would be prepared for kindergarten.
“My daughter, she didn’t have a rough start, but she wasn’t maybe as prepared as I would have liked,” Reynolds says.
New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated Schools is the first district in the state to pilot UPSTART through a federal grant.The Waterford Institute in Utah develops the software, which New Albany schools also use as a reading intervention tool for K through 2nd grade classes.
That’s why Tony Duffy, the director of elementary education, says he was expecting positive results.
“We jumped at the chance because we saw what Waterford did for other students, and we knew we had an opportunity to do that with our students that are coming in,” Duffy says.
Before beginning the program, kids take an online assessment. Then, with their parents, the kids use the program at home, 15 minutes a day, five days a week, for nine months. They take the same assessment once they’ve completed the program.
Claudia Miner, director of UPSTART, says the results of the follow up exam are compared to the exam each kid took before they began the program.
“And you might not think that was really long enough for children to learn much, but the software is so individualized that it teaches the children exactly what they need to know before they move on to the next things,” Miner says.
Currently more than 27,000 low-income four year olds don’t have access to high-quality pre-K in Indiana. Several counties have limited options or even no option.
The Indiana General Assembly is putting $1 million toward online pre-K, and it’s not exactly clear yet how the money will be distributed. Continue Reading →
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