Providing teachers with data-driven feedback, aligned professional development and opportunities for advancement may help limit attrition, contribute to more effective teaching, and improve student learning. However, research shows that much of the professional development teachers currently receive does not improve either teacher or student…

The Indiana General Assembly increased the state grant funds for full-day kindergarten from $8.5 million for 2006/07 to $33.5 million for 2007/08. Following the increase in funding, the Indiana Department of Education and the Indiana State Board of Education requested assistance from Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest to analyze Indiana…

Indiana legislators are currently debating the merits of a proposal to adopt a statewide tuition scholarship tax credit program. The proposed program would make available $5 million in tax credits that businesses and individuals could claim by making donations to non-profit Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). SGO donations would be matched…

Training, recruiting, developing, and supporting talented and effective educators throughout their careers is known as human capital resource management (HCRM) in education. HCRM has been identified in recent literature as one of the ways in which districts and states may increase school effectiveness and improve student learning (Heneman &…

The Indiana General Assembly passed charter school enabling legislation in 2001, and the first charter schools opened their doors for the 2002-03 school year. As of fall 2008, 49 charter schools are operating in Indiana. A total of 17 of these schools are sponsored by the City of Indianapolis, Office of the Mayor, 29 schools are sponsored by…

One of the oldest and more popular forms of school choice in the United States is educational tax credits. Like many other types of school choice, educational tax credits enable parents to send their children to the K-12 school of their choice, public or private, religious or non-religious. One type of educational tax credits, tax-credit…

In July of 2007, the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) at Indiana University was contracted to conduct an evaluation of the Indiana charter schools. The evaluation has been designed to ensure that all objectives of the provisions of HEA 1001-2007 are fulfilled. In addition, the framework of the study is based in IC 20-24-2-1,…

This booklet provides data on a series of related measures of child and family well-being in Indiana, following national guidelines established by the Kids Count project to help Americans better understand the problems faced by children and adolescents and to foster greater commitment to improving outcomes for vulnerable children and their…

This Kids Count report is the second in a series examining statewide trends in the well-being of Indiana's children. After an introduction and an explanation of the statistics, sections of the statistical report contain data on several indicators of well-being: (1) Indiana's children and their families, including population estimates, ethnicity,…

This Kids Count report is the third in a series examining statewide trends in the well-being of Indiana's children. The report combines statistics of special concern in Indiana with 10 national Kids Count well-being indicators: (1) percent low birthweight; (2) infant mortality rate; (3) child death rate; (4) birth rate to unmarried teens ages 15…