���Ի徱���Բ�’s is officially on the books, pending a few final signatures.

The State Board of Education on Wednesday voted unanimously to formally adopt the new statewide model, locking in a that state officials said better reflects student progress, literacy and post-graduation readiness.

“This has been something that has been a long time coming,” said Katie Jenner, ���Ի徱���Բ�’s secretary of education. “Many, many stakeholders around Indiana weighed in.”

after Indiana dismantled its previous accountability framework and rewrote high school graduation requirements. Schools have been without a grading system in the interim while the replacement model was in development.

The rule now heads to state Attorney General Todd Rokita, who has 45 days to sign off, and then to Gov. Mike Braun for final approval.

“This model values academic outcomes as well as skills and experiences. It’s so much more than just creating a robot who can memorize things,” said Paul Ketcham, assistant secretary of education. “It is a very granular model. Every student will have the opportunity to grow, and it’s our responsibility to grow them.”

“In 49 other states, it’s an accountability rule,” Ketcham said. “In Indiana, it’s a roadmap for schools and students and families to be successful.”

A familiar framework — with a rebuild

Indiana schools will continue to receive single-letter grades — A, B, C, D or F — under the new system, but those grades will now be calculated in a fundamentally different way.

Rather than relying primarily on schoolwide averages and standardized test scores, the new framework assigns points student by student. Jenner and other education officials have described it as a model in which schools earn credit for each individual student based on a combination of academic proficiency, growth and additional “success indicators” that vary by grade span.

Those student-level scores are averaged within separate grade bands — elementary, middle and high school — and combined into one overall A-F grade for each school.

The model was intentionally designed to move beyond an “all-or-nothing” approach and incorporate multiple measures while keeping academic mastery central, particularly reading and math in the early grades, according to a .

“No longer does an indicator encourage schools to dismiss certain students that might be way behind,” said Ron Sandlin, senior director of school performance and transformation for the Indiana Department of Education. “We fundamentally flipped the paradigm. Every student in a school generates points.”

At the high school level, the model more directly ties accountability to ���Ի徱���Բ�’s newly redesigned diplomas and diploma seals.

Graduation rate and SAT performance each make up 10% of a school’s grade-12 score, alongside measures tied to coursework, credentials, work-based learning and student engagement.

“What we’ve tried to do is understand the student in their entirety,” Jenner said. “So that they don’t get washed in simple numerator-denominator math that we’ve been doing for so long.”

Multiple education groups and other board members additionally voiced support during Wednesday’s meeting.

“This framework gives teachers the tools to celebrate and support success beyond a single test score,” said Rachel Hathaway, Indiana executive director at Teach Plus, a national nonprofit focused on education policy. “Accountability should not be about labeling schools. It should be about improving them.”

Todd Bess with the Indiana Association of School Principals emphasized that the new model “prioritizes student growth alongside proficiency.”

“It recognizes the progress schools make every day with students at all starting points. Moving up those that are below (proficiency). Those that are just about there — and then obviously, those that are still wildly proficient — keep moving them, too, and finding those success indicators,” Bess said. “Families and communities can better understand school performance … and what I like is we can say we’re going to add these things up. Every kid matters, and here’s the greatest outcome.”

A transition year before grades ‘count’

The new accountability system will roll out through a transition period Sandlin tagged “Year Zero,” which applies to the 2025-26 school year.

Letter grades for the current academic year will be calculated and publicly released under the new model, but they will be informational only and will not trigger any timelines or consequences tied to ���Ի徱���Բ�’s accountability laws.

Sandlin said that the goal is to give schools and communities time to understand the new calculations and respond before the grades formally carry weight. Year Zero, he said, is intended to “set a clear baseline” and provide families and schools with transparent information about where performance stands under the new system.

IDOE plans to begin sharing detailed performance data with schools later this year, followed by the public release of Year Zero grades.

“This is different than any past A-F years,” Sandlin said.

As part of the transition, the grading scale will also be temporarily adjusted. For Year Zero, an A grade will span 85 to 100, rather than the traditional 90 to 100 range.

Starting with the 2026-27 school year, letter grades will once again count for accountability purposes. At that point, the cutoff for an A will gradually increase over time, rising by 2.5 points in any year when at least 25% of schools earn an A, until it reaches a final target of 90 to 100.

State officials said the approach is intended to allow an initial transition period while steadily increasing rigor as schools improve under the new model.

Wednesday’s vote followed months of revisions and public feedback led by IDOE, as well as parallel negotiations with federal education officials over ���Ի徱���Բ�’s accountability obligations.

Jenner said the — which would give Indiana added flexibility in how it aligns accountability and funding — to avoid locking in a model that was still being revised.

The seeks permission from the federal government to overhaul how Indiana spends and tracks billions of dollars in education aid — a request that Hoosier officials said would align the state’s accountability system with federal law and allow more freedom in how schools use their funds.

Hoosiers officials specifically requested exemptions from multiple provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, the federal law governing K-12 education, plus permission to combine funding from more than 15 federal education programs into a single “strategic block grant.”

The U.S. Department of Education has 120 days to review and respond to waiver applications once they’re received. ���Ի徱���Բ�’s was submitted in October, but the pause extends that timeline.

“We intentionally paused our federal waiver process as we were working through the final touches in our accountability model ….  in order to get this at the best place,” Jenner said. “We will unpause our waiver timeline shortly.”

“The fact that we’re doing this accountability work simultaneously as we’re working on our waiver has been a huge advantage to Indiana,” she said. “In addition to stakeholders in Indiana pushing us on some things, (federal officials) have also pushed us on some things. … A lot of people think policy work is threading the needle. We’ve had, like, multiple pieces of yarn.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

In the three years since Pennsylvania overhauled its high school graduation requirements, Philadelphia students have increasingly graduated without passing state exams.

Instead, students last year were most likely to graduate by fulfilling alternate requirements, according to .

All students still must earn a certain number of course credits. But they can meet additional graduation requirements by being accepted into a four-year college, earning a certain score on career and technical education exams or SATs, and showing “evidence” that they’re prepared for college or jobs, among other options.

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The change has been fast. The Class of 2023 was the first to graduate via the new system. Since then, the portion of Philly students who graduated by meeting certain score thresholds for their state exams dropped from more than 50% to around a third.

But lawmakers and state officials have published little follow-up that examines whether the shift has left young Pennsylvanians more or less prepared for their futures.

Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesperson Erin James said in a statement that it is “difficult to correlate graduation pathways with other postsecondary metrics” because it is hard to track students after high school. Researchers partnering with the district in Philadelphia say understanding the impact of the new system in the city will likely take years.

Since the switch, one alternative pathway to graduation has ballooned in popularity: submitting industry-recognized credentials. That’s a broad term used to describe certifications that are sought after by certain sectors, like medical assistant credentials, emergency first aid certifications, and auto mechanic qualifications.

Last school year, more than 3,400 Philly students — around 40% of those who had completed enough credits that made them eligible to graduate — submitted at least one industry-recognized credential to graduate. Some submitted them exclusively.

Neither the district nor the state publish a list of which credentials students are using to fulfill this requirement.

When then-Gov. Tom Wolf signed the new graduation requirements into law in 2018, he that the aim was to give students “several options to demonstrate what they’ve learned and that they’re ready to graduate from high school to start a career or continue their education.”

The move permanently did away with the legislature’s previous plan to make passing the Keystones a requirement to graduate.

“How a student does on high stakes tests is not a useful way to decide if someone is ready to graduate from high school,” Wolf said at the time.

Yet amid the booming number of students earning industry-recognized credentials in Philadelphia and nationwide, some researchers worry that there isn’t enough evidence that they’re all useful.

“It’s great to have an alternative option, because there just are going to be some kids who aren’t going to go to college,” said Jay Plasman, a professor at The Ohio State University who has studied how earning credentials affects student outcomes. “The problem is not all credentials are created equally.”

Earning credentials is part of what’s called the “evidence-based” pathway to graduation. It requires students to submit three pieces of “evidence” from a pre-approved state list. Credentials count as evidence, as does being accepted into a two-year college; attaining a guarantee of full-time employment; earning a college-level course credit; achieving certain AP, IB, or SAT scores; and other options.

There are a total of 12 evidence options. Submitting credentials is the most popular one by far.

The state’s includes everything from certifications for barbers and child care workers to credentials related to Microsoft Office and ladder safety. Experts warn it’s important that states carefully review credentials to ensure they’re valuable to students and can lead to good jobs.

Philadelphia offers credentials from a subset of the state’s list, along with additional options based on student interest and industry recommendations for students graduating via the “evidence-based” pathway, according to district Executive Director of Career and Technical Education Michelle Armstrong.

It’s unclear which credentials are most popular among students, given the lack of public data about them.

The district’s graduation rate has risen in recent years, with more than 77% of students graduating within four years in the 2023-24 school year, the most recent year of data available.

Obtaining a high school diploma is valuable, and researchers have found that those who graduate high school are likely to earn more and live longer than those without.

But the increase comes as Philly students’ achievement on some state exams . Last year, Keystone. Even fewer achieved proficient scores in algebra and biology.

Alyn Turner, co-director of the Philadelphia Education Research Consortium, which partners with the district, said her team is working to analyze which pathways students are accessing and what evidence they’re using to fulfill requirements. But she said the larger question of whether students are more prepared for jobs or college is still unknown.

“The extent to which this policy is supportive of that, or adding additional barriers to that, we just don’t know,” Turner said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

As new go into effect in Indiana, more students will likely take college and career courses to prepare for life after high school. But making sure students can access these classes — and succeed in them — takes some patience and creativity.

When Sheridan High School teacher Jill Cali noticed her students struggling with the longer deadlines and open-ended questions typical of college assignments, she began to teach them how to break tasks into more manageable steps. Soon, her students were reaping the benefits.

Other roadblocks to students’ success in college courses, especially in rural communities like Sheridan, a town of 3,000 people in northwest Hamilton County, include accessing these credits and paying for them.

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Cali said being part of the , sponsored by the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis, allows her students to earn college credits for free. The network also serves as a source of support, allowing her to exchange ideas with teachers at other schools.

“The struggles that students typically have in early college courses are some of the same things that prevent many students from being confident that they will find success in college,” Cali told Chalkbeat. “When students believe they don’t have the ability to be successful in completing college-level work, their first instinct is to shy away from it.”

Read on to learn more about how Cali approaches her early college classes.

This interview has been lightly edited for length.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I decided to become a teacher during my sophomore year of college when I realized that I was not meant to be an accountant! I had always loved working with kids and had a natural talent in Spanish, so becoming a [Spanish] teacher seemed like a good fit. The longer I teach, the more sure I am that this was the right path for me. I was made to be a teacher.

What was the process like to become a dual-credit instructor?

Our superintendent suggested I pursue a Master of Science in Curriculum and Instruction so I would be able to teach the dual-credit Education Professions courses. During our conversation, he convinced me that the degree program would be flexible enough to work with my busy single parenting and teaching schedule and that I would see the return on my investment very quickly. He was right.

The following week, at the age of 42, I enrolled in a program to complete my master’s degree online, working at my own pace. I finished in six months, after working tirelessly to make sure that I only had to pay for one term.

In order to be approved as a dual-credit instructor, I had to coordinate with my high school’s higher education partner, Ivy Tech Community College. This involved submitting my [college and grad school] transcripts, along with a proposed syllabus for each of the courses I planned to teach. The process was honestly pretty quick and painless.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

In my Principles of Teaching class, the introduction to teaching course, I teach about differentiation and making accommodations for students with special needs. My very favorite lesson to teach is the one in which I give students various tasks, but each has a different limitation. Their reactions, creative thinking, and “aha moments” are the reason it is my favorite lesson. During that lesson, my students realize that some of the most basic tasks can be entirely impossible with just one small limitation. Their internalization of how frustrating learning can be for some of our students really helps us to move forward with the unit of study in a productive manner.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, I was a student who strived for excellence in every subject. Realizing that I finally understood a concept I had been trying to grasp or persevering through a tough problem to find an answer always gave me immense satisfaction. I loved the “light bulb moments” as a student, but I enjoy them even more now that I am the teacher. A natural lifelong learner myself, it has always been my goal to inspire my students to be inquisitive and curious investigators of anything that interests them.

How is your early college classroom different from a standard high school classroom?

At a glance, my classroom looks a bit more like a college classroom than many high school classrooms. I was fortunate enough to be able to use grant money to furnish the room with flexible seating options. What you can’t see is that my early college students work with elementary students, getting experience in the field. The flexible seating allows them to move seamlessly between working independently and cooperating and creating with their peers.

How do you help students adjust to those expectations?

Students in early college learn that when something feels overwhelming or difficult, they have the tools to tackle it on their own. This doesn’t mean that they can’t ask for help or guidance. It means that before asking for help, students should make sure they have exhausted all options for figuring it out on their own.

I send a letter to each student and one home to their caregivers prior to the start of school in the fall, explaining what dual-credit means and what the expectations will look like in my early college class. This ensures that there is no confusion about what will be expected of early college students and also opens the lines of communication with students and families.

Having taught these courses for a few years, I’ve found that students struggle with a course that has larger assignments and more time between deadlines. The first thing I do to support them in addressing this is to show them how they can break larger assignments and projects into smaller tasks on their own. Many students are used to having teachers do this for them. I show them how they can establish their own, smaller deadlines based on what they know about their personal schedule, how fast they tend to work, and the support they think they might need.

Students also find it challenging to write nearly everything for their dual-credit courses using a formal tone with proper grammar and spelling. In addition, students tend to have trouble answering multi-part questions … particularly when they are higher-level thinking questions. I spend a full class period — more, if needed — showing them and having them practice how to appropriately respond to the types of writing prompts and questions they will typically see in their early college courses.

Another area where students tend to struggle is with attendance and deadlines. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools insisted that students be shown grace in both of those areas. Unfortunately, this instilled in them the idea that as long as they completed all graded assignments, it didn’t matter whether they participated in class or how late assignments were submitted. Though their learning is always my primary focus, much of what my students learn builds on itself. In addition, much of the learning takes place through class discussions.

What are some barriers your students face to postsecondary opportunities, and how does the Rural Early College Network help you help them overcome those?

The greatest barrier to postsecondary opportunities for students in my school is the financial barrier. The dual-credit courses we offer are all free to our students, so when they successfully complete those courses, the number of semesters that will be required for them to complete their degree can be reduced. This translates to money saved for the student and makes their postsecondary options more affordable and attainable.

Rural Early College Network schools meet throughout the school year to share ideas and support each other in building programs that provide our students with the tools they need to be successful in our classrooms, in college, and beyond.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

The best advice I have ever received with regard to teaching is, “Student behavior and choices are almost never personal attacks against the teacher.” It was the great reminder that my teenage students’ brains are not fully developed. When they make poor choices or when they act out, it nearly never has anything to do with how they feel about me or anything even relating to me. Letting that go and remembering to see their behaviors as something completely separate from me has really made it much easier to create consequences when appropriate, support my students when needed, and establish a welcoming environment in which every student starts fresh every day.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Yet, these post-secondary paths are riddled with inequities, especially for students of color and those from lower-income backgrounds. Recent statistics are troubling: only 41% of eighth graders statewide were proficient in math on the 2023-24 New York State assessment. The situation is worse for students of color, with only 31% of Black students and 32% of Latino students achieving math proficiency, and less than half of Black and Latino eighth graders proficient in reading. This gap not only hinders immediate academic success but also foreshadows future struggles in high school, college, and the workforce.  

The New York State Board of Regents is moving forward on to current graduation requirements that would be phased in by the start of the 2029 school year. That would eliminate the requirement for passing the vaunted Regents exams and allow alternative routes to receiving a diploma. We are deeply concerned that the proposed changes, which still must be approved by the Board, may create a system that perpetuates rather than dismantles inequities.

The state’s push for additional graduation pathways, while well-intentioned, fails to address the root causes of inadequate student preparation. During and after the pandemic, graduation rates rose from 83.4% in 2019 to 86.5% in 2023, a trend our New York Equity Coalition attributes to exemptions and waivers for Regents exams, while proficiency rates in literacy and math declined during the same period. In many states, graduation rates fell after the pandemic.

As New York considers eliminating Regents exams as a graduation requirement by the fall of 2027, we must ask: What is the plan to address declining proficiency rates? What is the plan to ensure that our schools adequately prepare students for life after high school, given the incoming presidential administration’s plans to further reduce the federal role in education accountability? 

While additional flexibility is necessary, especially for multilingual learners and students with disabilities, these broad changes raise legitimate concerns that districts will continue to under-educate students, particularly Black, Latino and Native American students, while graduating and passing them on to other institutions.

A meaningful diploma should signify that a student has mastered essential content and skills. Our education system must provide access to college and career-ready coursework, so students do not need remedial classes upon entering college—classes that often lead to increased debt and lower completion rates.  

The state’s initiative for additional graduation pathways also raises equity concerns across districts. It’s true that exams are not the only way for students to demonstrate proficiency and often carry racial bias and discriminate against multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Increasing opportunities for performance-based assessments—where students can demonstrate knowledge and proficiency through cumulative projects and performance tasks —provides a research-backed alternative. 

However, implementing such alternatives requires significant investments in time and training for educators. Will already under-resourced districts have the funding and state support needed to move in this direction? Or will high-wealth districts and schools be the only beneficiaries of increased flexibility? The state’s proposal, which allows these alternatives while recognizing that not all districts will not be equipped to provide them, risks creating new inequities: Depending on the wealth of a district or school, students may access different methods to demonstrate proficiency. 

Additionally, New York’s proposal raises concerns about exacerbating inequities within schools. Who will determine which students graduate by passing Regents exams—making them eligible for a new policy of direct enrollment in selective State University of New York campuses if they graduate in the top 10% of their class—and which students will use alternative measures? When school staff make these decisions, we know that racial discrimination significantly influences which students are considered “college material.”   

These unanswered questions underscore the potential unintended consequences of proposed graduation reforms and the need for strong state policy guardrails that ensure students who have been undereducated are prepared for success. While creating alternative pathways to graduation is desirable, it is crucial to address these issues to prevent deepening inequities. Students from all backgrounds deserve a diploma that accurately reflects their readiness for the future—a diploma that opens doors rather than closes them.