Report finds achievement gaps among Marion County students based on race, ethnicity

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation released its Education for All report Tuesday that addresses educational gaps between Black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian peers in Marion County.

Claire Fiddian-Green, the president and chief executive officer of the foundation, said the research came from wanting to specifically look at how students in Marion County are doing in schools based on race and ethnicity.

With 11 school districts, minus public charter and private schools, there’s over 150,000 students from kindergarten-Grade 12 in Marion County.

The gaps between the performance of Black and Hispanic students vs their white and Asian peers have grown since last year, according to the report.

“Predominately, because of the on-going impact of COVID. I want to be clear those gaps have existed prior to COVID, but they have certainly gotten worse. Two examples, [of that] we found in Marion County, Black and Hispanic students in grades 2-8 achieved proficiency on ILEARN, which is our state’s test for English and Math, at about quarter of the rate of white and Asian students. In 11th grade, white 11th grade students in Marion County are four times as likely to be proficient in Math than Black and Hispanic 11th graders. So, clearly we have to do a lot more to support Black and Hispanic students in Marion County schools,” Fiddian-Green said.

The report lays out specific, actionable steps stakeholders can take to help ensure Marion County becomes a place where all children, regardless of background, are provided an equal opportunity to receive a high-quality education that leads to a better quality of life for all. You can learn more about the recommendations here.

The report shows 10 research and evidence based recommendations:

• Mandate participation in Indiana’s Paths to Quality rating system for early childhood providers
• Shift the state’s Paths to Quality system to focus on learning outcomes.
• Differentiate state aid in the K-12 funding formula based on local wealth.
• Increase K-12 funding for students from low-income households and for English language learner students.
• Increase racial diversity of teachers and administrators and improve staff retention rates.
• Increase state funding for teacher scholarship programs to mitigate teacher shortages and enhance diversity in the teacher workforce.
• Enroll more Black and Hispanic students in advanced K-12 coursework.
• Require FAFSA completion as a prerequisite for graduating from high school.
• Automatically enroll eligible students in the 21st Century Scholars program.
• Increase wraparound support provided by colleges to students from low-income households and to Black and Hispanic students.

“We recommend that the state mandate participating of early childhood providers in our Path’s to Quality, which is the state’s quality rating system. That way we can be assured that every parent when they’re looking to enroll their child in an early learning program, can ensure their child is in a high quality program. At the K-12 level, we recommend that we examine the K-12 funding formula and provide increases based off family income as well as increase funding for English language learners in our community. We recommend that the FAFSA completion be an automatic requirement for graduation,” Fiddian-Green said.

The foundation as a whole focus their work in education, health, vitality in Indianapolis and prevention matters. They publish reports on a regular basis across these focus areas. They did a prior Racial Equity Audit of Marion County’s academic outcomes in 2021 with this follow up report released Tuesday.

“I think we need to ask ourselves, can we be content with these disparities and outcomes between Black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian peers? I don’t think we can be. I think the gaps in performance has been at crisis level for a while and those gaps have worsened. We need to take action now. If we are not ensuring that every child in our community is coming to school prepared to learned, graduating from high school with the skills and knowledge to go on to get some form of post-secondary education or training than those student’s future is not going to be as bright as it could be,” Fiddian-Green said.

Over at the Indianapolis Urban League, director of advocacy and family services, Mark A. Russell said he was surprised by the report.

“We need systematic reform. The report was great in not only pointing out the problem, but giving solutions. They offered specific recommendations that took some real political courage to offer. No one in the general assembly wants to talk about increasing funding but that’s exactly what’s needed, because there’s been a systemic under-investment by the legislature. Every school district is given the same amount of money regardless of their ability to increase their funding via tax based of their own. There use to be a comprehensive, complexity index that the late representative Bill Crawford shuttled through every year to make sure that struggling students had extra funds in those districts that they attended,” Russell said.

He said the state needs to invest and be serious about eliminating the education deficits that the county’s children face. It’s not a Black or brown issue. It’s an issue of state performance in terms of being competitive and filling industry jobs.

In session last year, he claims talks about critical race theory consumed the importance of discussion, but he hopes this year with ally’s, including the foundation, they’ll be able to address these issues now.

“As tax-payers, and Black and Latin parents, we demand that we get a return on our investment. That’s not happening now, and it’s not responsible for this to continue. It’s negligent,” said Russell, “We cannot keep throwing students off the boat of progress and continue moving forward.”

Taylor Hughes is the vice president of policy and strategy at Indy Chamber.

“For us, we’re a business entity and an economic development entity, but when it comes to talent development that’s the number one asset that all economic development decisions are made on these days,” Hughes said.

When it comes to the report, Hughes said it’s not only about attracting people to come to Marion County, but it’s also about retaining people already here. He said they’ve had an unemployment rate somewhere between 2.8% and 3.2% over the last year, which means there’s not a lot of extra people looking for those jobs on the market. Back in October, he said there was around 18,000 jobs in the region that was left open.

“There’s a moral imperative to delivering on ensuring that all Indiana students have an opportunity to succeed and to be trained to compete in today’s global marketplace, but there’s also a business imperative that goes along with that. If we can’t produce talent here in Indianapolis that can access opportunities, they’ll go elsewhere,” Hughes said.

With a tight labor market for a while now, Hughes said the pandemic made it that much tighter.

“It’s something that we’ve been confronting for a really long time. Our organization has had a really long history of engaging. Whether it’s working with the public school systems here in Indianapolis, or advocacy on the state level for what our educational system needs. It’s something we care about a lot,” Hughes said.

Hughes adds he’d like to see the recommendations of the report be brought to reality. From those 18,000 jobs that were open last month, some require a two or four year degree, which means steering students to college would help fill those roles.