Indianapolis Public Schools considers renewal of six Innovation Network schools

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat Indiana.

Indianapolis Public Schools central office officials have recommended renewing partnerships with six autonomous schools in the district’s Innovation Network that have shown mixed academic outcomes.

The school board on Thursday will consider approving five-year renewals through the 2029-30 school year for Adelante Schools, Enlace Academy, The PATH School, Phalen Leadership Academies at School 48, Phalen Leadership Academies at School 103, and Sankofa School of Success. The agreement with Christel House South and Watanabe High Schools is automatically renewed without a board vote, per the charter network’s existing Innovation contract with IPS.

When created by state law in 2014, Innovation schools were a solution to state intervention for chronically underperforming schools. They were also an attempt to quell the discord between the district and its biggest competitor, the growing charter school sector. The schools, many of which are charters, have operational autonomy and can contract with IPS for various services, including transportation and maintenance. They often operate in IPS school buildings. The district can also count Innovation schools’ student enrollment and test scores as its own.

The recommendation comes as the district once again changes its approach to Innovation Network schools. This year, it launched a streamlined application process. The district also changed the pathways by which Innovation schools can launch, eliminating the “jumpstart” and “restart” path for operators who want to turn around an existing underperforming school.

Innovation schools are central to the district’s ongoing relationship with charters, which has become a key point of contention in recent years as charters have demanded more property tax funding from the district and IPS has tried to prevent its unused buildings from going to charter schools. Currently, there are roughly 30 Innovation schools in the district.

The schools up for renewal this week served a total of roughly 3,900 students last year and show varying levels of increased, decreased, or stagnant test results in the years immediately preceding and following the pandemic, as compared to similar schools and measured by the state’s third grade IREAD test, the ILEARN test for grades 3-8, and SAT rates.

Restart schools have shown a similar mixed bag of results with little to no improvement in test scores, according to a previous Chalkbeat Indiana analysis.

While the K-8 data “hasn’t necessarily had a significant impact” from an academic standpoint on overall scores, Innovation high schools have boosted IPS graduation rates and SAT scores, Brian Dickey, the executive director of the district’s school portfolio who oversees Innovation partnerships, told the school board in August.

Renewal recommendations also take into account factors such as staff retention, school culture, enrollment, and overall family satisfaction.

The new Innovation contracts for charter schools—which include all schools up for renewal except for Sankofa—also change a previous clause allowing termination of the partnership due to academic performance. The district can end the agreement if a school fails to meet a majority of set educational goals — such as growth and proficiency on the ILEARN—for at least two consecutive years.

Here is academic data for the schools up for renewal:

Adelante Schools at Emma Donnan

The K-8 Adelante Schools at Emma Donnan on the southeast side, launched as a restart school in 2020-21, has slightly outperformed the average of the district’s entire portfolio of schools on ILEARN. The portfolio, which includes charter schools, had an overall proficiency of roughly 19% in English and around 17% in math for 2023-24.

The school had a roughly 14-point increase in IREAD pass rates from 2022-23 to 2023-24, with about 72% passing.

Suspension and expulsion rates, however, have historically been higher than those in the district, according to an analysis of state data by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation.

The school’s new Innovation agreement allows both Adelante and IPS to engage in “good faith” discussions for the potential sale or transfer of the Emma Donnan building to Adelante, which is interested in acquiring the facility at the end of the Innovation contract in 2030.

Christel House South and Watanabe High School

The K-8 Christel House South school, which joined the Innovation Network in 2020-21 and operates out of the former Emmerich Manual High School, shows English and math proficiency rates at 15% for 2023-24. Those fall below the IPS portfolio average as well as rates for comparative schools, which show roughly 20% proficiency in math and 17% in English.

IREAD pass rates have historically been above the IPS average, although they declined by 17 percentage points to 70% in 2023-24. That’s still well above the district’s pass rate of about 60%.

But Christel House Watanabe High School, which operates at the same location, had higher rates of English and math proficiency on the SAT compared to the district’s four traditional public high schools. Those rates stood at 36% for English and 11% for math, compared to the district’s roughly 21% for English and 5% for math.

Enlace Academy

Academic data at Enlace Academy, a K-8 school in the district’s west side International Marketplace neighborhood, has dropped over the past five years, according to the district.

Proficiency rates on the ILEARN, which were roughly 8% for English and roughly 9% in math, fall below the aggregate rates of comparative schools showing about 13% in English and 12% in math. IREAD pass rates inched up from 38.7% to 40.5% in 2023-24, but still fell below the roughly 49% aggregate pass rate of similar schools as well as the roughly 60% IPS average.

But the school has consistently strong attendance rates and family engagement with a welcoming culture, IPS officials noted. Its attendance rate is consistently one of the highest across the Innovation Network at around 94% last year.

The school’s new innovation agreement also allows for a potential sale or transfer of the school building to Enlace. The agreement also reduces the $300,000 that the district has historically given the school for transportation. Since charter schools in Marion County now receive a portion of property taxes for operations, part of those proceeds will count toward the district’s transportation payment.

The PATH School

ILEARN scores at the K-8 PATH School on the west side have increased since it joined the Innovation Network in 2020-21, with proficiency rates above the district’s cohort of chronically underperforming “emerging” schools, according to the district.

ILEARN English proficiency rates for the school stood at around 15% for English and 10% for math, above the emerging school average of roughly 10% for English math. IREAD pass rates have also steadily recovered from the post-pandemic dip to roughly 52%.

Attendance rates are still below what they were before becoming a restart school.

Phalen Leadership Academies at School 48

English and math proficiency rates at the K-6 Phalen Leadership Academies at School 48 have steadily increased since joining the Innovation Network as a restart school in 2020-21. They stand at around 13% for English and 20% for math, rates that surpass the emerging school averages that hover around 10%.

IREAD pass rates have improved since COVID but dropped to 60% in 2023-24.

Enrollment, however, has declined since 2022-23 to 253, below the 311 students it had in 2018-19 before it became a charter school, according to the district.

Phalen Leadership Academies at School 103

ILEARN math proficiency rates at the K-6 Phalen Leadership Academies at School 103 on the Far Eastside are at 14%, higher than the emerging schools average, according to the district.

But its English achievement levels, once above comparative schools, have declined to roughly 8%. IREAD pass rates have also fluctuated since the pandemic, with roughly 54% passing the test last year.

Student enrollment has steadily increased over the past six years, and a majority of the school’s students last year were multilingual learners, according to the district.

Sankofa School of Success

ILEARN scores for the K-6 Sankofa School of Success on the east side have surpassed prepandemic proficiency rates in English and math to around 8% for both subjects.

But those levels still fall below the roughly 10% proficiency rates of the emerging schools cohort in both subjects.

Sankofa has also reduced suspensions since becoming a jumpstart school in 2020-21, according to the district.

Because Sankofa is not a charter school overseen by a charter school authorizer, but rather a nonprofit without a charter run by its own board, the school’s new innovation contract ties academic performance to the district’s own academic framework.

Chalkbeat Indiana is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.