Not too long ago, before the COVID-19 social distancing practices, I attended many more functions than I have in the last two months. One of the most recent gatherings I attended was a local club meeting with a guest speaker from the local township school district. The presentation regarded dialog around the potential call for a referendum to increase property taxes for the township school district.
My goal today is not to discuss the successes and failures of referendums. I am much more concerned with some of the information presented at this meeting. The Treasurer was explaining the expedient population growth in this particular Township and was worried about adequate funding to maintain their academic achievement level.
Ultimately, he presented very concerning figures from the surrounding township school districts. His information led me to reach out to the individual and ask him where he got his information. He was delighted I asked him and shared this link with me: https://inview.doe.in.gov/
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INview is a website hosted by the state of Indiana that provides information about the performance and progress of Indiana Schools. I consider that to be a reliable source, and I started to dig deeper into some of the curiosities I had.
Curiosities:
How much is the total spent per student by each of the 9 Township School Districts?
What is the State Accountability Grade?
What is the total enrollment and number of fulltime Educators in each School District, to identify the student to teacher ratio?
What is the graduation rate for each school district?
What did I find?:
Admittedly, there is much more to learn from INview. However, I want to chart this information and then begin to ask why.
Above is the information gathered from the Inview Website for the year 2019. There is a lot of information to collect from the table, but I want to focus on a few Items.
The School District, with the LOWEST amount spent per student, has the highest State Grade and Graduation Rate.
The School District, with the HIGHEST amount spent per student, has the LOWEST State Grade and a significantly lower graduation rate.
Take a look at the graphical representation of how much each township school district is spending per student.
Take a look at the graphical representation of the student to teacher ratio in the township school districts.
The worst performing, highest funded school district, has the lowest student to teacher ratio, for every one teacher, there are 11 students.
The best performing, lowerest funded school district has the highest student to teacher ration, for every 1 teacher, there are 17.4 students.
The Why:
Why does the school that receives the most money have the worst State Grade?
Why does the school that receives the least amount of money have the best State Grade?
Why is the School District not being held accountable for this?
As always, please share your thoughts and inputs to this concern in our city. I would like to hear an explanation from the Superintendent of IPS about these figures. If I can get a comment, I will be sure to share it!
Mike