School Transfers in Indiana Public School Corporations 2022-2023

School Transfers in Indiana Public School Corporations 2022-2023

Policy Report #23-B • October 2023

Authors

Key Takeaways

• Transfers and choice options have led to significant enrollment shifts for school corporations.
• 47% of the net transfers out were from public school corporations to other public school corporations.
• 53% of the net transfers out were to nonpublic schools due to the choice scholarship program. These transfers result in irregular trends among schools gaining enrollment from school choice programs, where a small set of corporations gain or lose relatively higher proportions of enrollment than others.
• Within school choice programs, public/parent choice comprises the largest proportion of transfers out.
• Systemic and sustained inquiry with advanced statistical techniques can reveal valuable insights about the patterns and effects of school transfers in Indiana.

Overview

Over the last three decades, policymakers around the globe have emphasized parents’ choice of schools. Such policies are complex and highly contested and have led to mixed outcomes. Nevertheless, the number of school choice programs is increasing. The state of Indiana has one of the largest school choice programs in the country, with seven types of school choice programs.

1. Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Also known as the voucher program, this program started in 2011, allowing students in low- and middle-income families to receive vouchers to attend private schools.
2. Education savings account: enacted first in 2021 for students with special needs; recently expanded to almost all students, who receive a portion of their assigned state education funding for private school tuition or other educational expenses, including special needs services and therapies, individual classes, testing fees, and transportation.
3. Private school/homeschool deduction: Indiana’s program is a tax deduction for individuals who make educational expenditures for private schools or homeschooling on behalf of their dependent children.
4. School scholarship tax credit: Indiana offers donors tax credits for contributing to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs), nonprofits that distribute private school scholarships to students from low- and middle-income households.
5. Public School Choice: Students in Indiana may choose public schools outside of their home corporation via open enrollment policies.
6. Charter schools: Indiana allows for publicly funded but privately or independently run schools, often run by charter management organizations.
7. Homeschooling: Homeschooling is allowed in Indiana, providing that parents follow certain laws and regulations.

Indiana's school choice programs have been the subject of national attention, as they are some of the most extensive and expensive in the country. School choice advocates argue that these programs empower the public/families to make choices about their children's education and can improve educational outcomes (Chubb & Moe, 1990). In contrast, opponents claim that they drain resources from public schools and exacerbate inequality without improving outcomes (Abdulkadiroglu et al., 2017; Canbolat, 2021; Fuentes-Rohwer, 2019; Lubienski et al., 2022; Ravitch, 2021). Despite the contention over the issue, school choice programs continue to expand and impact school corporations. These impacts need to be examined closely.

This report examines the transfer data in student enrollment in Indiana school corporations as reported by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE). The reported school transfers and ADM file may be found at:  https://www.in.gov/doe/it/data-centerand-reports/.

Indiana collects data on the transfer of public school students each year. This current report breaks down the information from Fall 2022. In total, 99,017 students transferred out from their home districts/corporations to other school corporations. Of those students, 46,345 (47%) transferred to other public school corporations, and Choice Scholarships went to 52,672 (53%) students.

The information provided by IDOE includes public charter schools as public schools.

Review of Public Transfers OUT to Other Public Schools (including Charters)

Table 1 shows the 25 school corporations with the largest number of students transferring out to another public school corporation. Six out of the 25 school corporations experienced a loss of more than 2000 students, with two school corporations experiencing a markedly greater loss than others. As might be expected, larger corporations generally lose a larger number of students. For instance, the Indianapolis Public School Corporation has the highest number of transfers, including 9,192 students who attended the IPS Innovation Charter Schools. The next 12 school corporations, in descending order of number of student outflows, experienced outflows ranging between 1000 and 2000 students. The remaining seven school corporations experienced outflows of less than 1,000 students. Table 1 presents student outflows only. Net outflows are presented in the subsequent tables.

Table 1.
Top 25 school corporations with outflows to another public school corporation.

Net Transfers Out

The analysis of net transfer out revealed that 165 school corporations have a net outflow to another public school corporation. They lost more students than they gained through student transfer provisions. Table 2 shows the net outflow numbers and percentages for the 28 school corporations with the largest net losses to other public schools. The top two school corporations experienced a net outflow of more than 100%, meaning that these schools lost more students than they gained, and the number of students that transferred out was greater than their enrollment in 2022. The next 11 school corporations, in descending order of net percentage outflow, experienced a net outflow between 25% and 53%. The remaining 15 school corporations experienced a net outflow between 15 and 25%.

Table 2.
Top 28 Corporations which LOST ADM by percent to other public school corporations (represents at least 15% of ADM loss in net transfers out).

Where Are Students Transferring To?

Analyzing the proportion of transfers out to nonpublic schools reveals that for a majority of the school corporations — 150 out of 290 (about 52%) — 2% or less of their transfers out are attributable to school choice scholarships. Within these school corporations, most of the transfers out from public school corporations were to other public schools, including public charter schools. Public charter schools are public schools that operate independently of the traditional public school system and are authorized to provide education services accessible to all students.

However, it is important to note that the overall proportion of transfers out (53%) are from choice scholarships, or “vouchers,” so while there are schools whose transfers out are largely to other public school corporations, the overall transfer out due to vouchers is higher than transfers out to other public school corporations. This trend is complicated due to public charter schools being presented as public schools in the IDOE data. Disaggregating public charter schools presented in Table 7 changes the net transfer out to other public schools trend presented in Table 2. Tables 3 and 4 present the top 25 school corporations with nonpublic transfers, accounting for 62% of the total nonpublic transfers out.

Table 3.
Transfers out to nonpublic school corporations.

Table 4 presents the top 25 school corporations based on transfers out to nonpublic schools. The total range of transfers from these 25 school corporations is between 7% and 23%, with 13 school corporations experiencing more than 10% transfers out and the remaining 12 between 7% and 10%.

Table 4.
Top 25 transfers out to nonpublic by percent of ADM.

When analyzing the transfer data by a corporation, charter, or nonpublic school, some trends address which public school corporations, charters, and nonpublics gained from choice programs. These trends are presented in the tables below.

Table 5 presents transfers out disaggregated by “Parent Choice” and “Public Other”. Public other is when a student has an alternative placement, to an alternative school or onsite behavioral school, where students are sent by a school’s and not a parent’s choice. 36 corporations gained at least 500 or more students from choice programs combined. 28 out of the 36 school corporations gained from 500 to 1000 students from parent choice, six school corporations gained 1000 to 2000 students, and the top two received 2859 and 6939 students, respectively. For public other transfers, 20 school corporations gained from 1 to 59 students, whereas 12 school corporations did not gain any students.

Table 5.
Top 36 corporations that gained at least 500 students from choice.

Figure 1 below shows how a few schools have disproportionately received more enrollment boosts from public/parent choice than others. The first eight schools comprise more than 50% of the enrollment gains from public/parent choice programs among schools that gained at least 500 students from the program.

Figure 1.
Enrollment gains by schools from public/parent choice.

Table 6 lists the 62 school corporations receiving over 20% of their enrollment from public/parent choice programs. The top two school corporations gained 95.87% and 71% of their students from parent choice, which in large part can be attributed to online schools administered by these two school corporations, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows the trends in enrollment numbers from 2006 – 2022 in Union school corporation and Clarksville community school corporation, which indicates that while enrollment in in-person schools in the two school corporations remains approximately constant, the total enrollment gains are from enrollment spikes in online schools post2018 (i.e., 6795 – 7131 – Indiana Digital Jr and High School, 6795 – 7142 – Indiana Digital Alternative School, 6795 – 7122 – Indiana Digital Elementary, and 1000 – 1007 – Indiana Gateway Digital Academy). To reinforce the significance of online schools in these enrollment spikes, it is noteworthy that the school corporation (Union School Corporation) with the highest enrollment increase has three online schools, two starting in 2019 and one in 2020. Whereas, Clarksville Community School Corporation, with the second highest enrollment increase, has only one online school that started in 2022. It is also important to highlight the huge enrollment gap (1252.66%) between the two school corporations with the highest enrollment gains that can be attributed to the number of online schools and their duration of operations. The availability of state-wide data on online schools might also reveal other interesting trends. However, here, it is evident that online schools have played a significant role in boosting enrollment for those two school corporations, whose enrollment gains are markedly higher than gains observed in all other school corporations.

Table 6 shows four school corporations gained 42% to 52% of students from public/parent choice. 22 school corporations gained 30% to 40% of their students, while the remaining 34 school corporations gained between 10% and 30% of their students in this manner.

Table 6.
62 school corporations that receive 20% or more of their enrollment from public/parent choice transfers in.

Figure 2.
Enrollment trend 2006 – 2022 in two school corporations with online schools.

Table 7 presents the 64 public charter schools that received students transferring from public school corporations. The school corporations are organized in descending order based on the number of students received by the public charter schools. The top three school corporations received more than 1000 students, of which the top school corporation received 5863 students (about more than four times the students received by the second highest school corporation). 31 school corporations received 500 to 999 students, while the remaining 30 school corporations received less than 500 students.

Table 7.
The number of students transferred to charter schools from public school corporations.

Table 8 presents the number of students nonpublic providers gained from Indiana’s Choice Scholarship. Overall, 304 nonpublic schools received funds from the voucher program for 52,674 students in total. The 48 schools presented in the table below gained 300 or more students. The top five schools gained 600 to 700 students, followed by eight schools that gained 500 to 600 students, followed by 13 schools that gained 400 to 500 students, while the remaining 22 schools gained 300 to 400 students.

Table 8.
The 48 top nonpublic schools receiving choice scholarship students.

This report presents Indiana DoE data on student transfers through some of Indiana’s school choice programs. The findings demonstrate a pattern of “winners” and “losers” under these choice policies. The data show some intriguing patterns of student movements, including shifts in students from multiple corporations to a small number of corporations with online schooling. Additionally, many students have moved from public to private schools, but often not in areas with the greatest economic or educational needs, contrary to policymakers' expectations.

As a descriptive presentation of these data, the report offers possibilities for further, more in-depth analysis of questions surrounding such choice programs. For instance, analysts may want to consider the inflows of transfer students to certain schools relative to the size of their actual enrollment to determine the proportion of students in these schools who are supported by tax-funded choice programs and, thus, the degree to which specific private schools are reliant on public funds. Similarly, further research might consider the popularity of schools relative to their actual academic performance, socio-economic needs, or educational underperformance in the surrounding communities.

References

Abdulkadiroglu, A., Pathak, P. A., Schellenberg, J., & Walters, C. R. (2017). Do Parents Value School Effectiveness? (23912). https://doi.org/10.3386/W23912

Canbolat, Y. (2021). The long-term effect of competition on public school achievement: Evidence from the indiana choice scholarship program. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 29(97). https://doi.org/10.14507/EPAA.29.6311

Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Brookings Institution. https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/4173422

Fuentes-Rohwer, C. (2019). The threat to Indiana’s public schools, and why it matters. In Blog. Indiana Coalition for Public Education. https://www.icpe-monroecounty.org/blog/the-threat-to-indianas-public-schools-and-why-it-matters

Lubienski, C., Perry, L. B., Kim, J., & Canbolat, Y. (2022). Market models and segregation: examining mechanisms of student sorting. Comparative Education, 58(1), 16–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2021.2013043

Ravitch, D. (2021, January 14). The Dark History of School Choice. The New York Review. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/01/14/the-dark-history-of-school-choice/