INDIANAPOLIS – Today, the State Board of Education (SBOE) approved new graduation pathway options at three Indiana schools. Additionally, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) provided an update to SBOE on the upcoming release of the Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (Indiana GPS) dashboard.
Locally-Created Graduation Pathways
Locally-created graduation pathways support school and community partners as they develop innovative opportunities to prepare students for success after high school. The newly-approved local pathways are available for students at Yorktown Community Schools and School City of Hammond, as well as the Excel Center Gary, a high school program for adult learners.
“When it comes to opening as many doors as we can for students, the best ideas occur when school, community, higher education and workforce leaders come together to determine local solutions – in this case, developing locally created college and career focused pathways,” said Dr. Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education. “I applaud the leadership in these communities for creating innovative pathways that allow students to gain skills and hands-on experiences before graduation, thus giving them a leg up in their future education and career.”
Local graduation pathways were adopted by SBOE as an option for schools in 2017, allowing schools flexibility to work with local partners to develop pathways to graduation for students that help meet local needs. These pathways meet students’ graduation requirement to demonstrate postsecondary competencies. Statewide, four locally-created graduation pathways are currently active.
More information about the locally-created graduation pathways approved today is available here. Schools interested in learning more about creating a local pathway can learn more here (under postsecondary ready competencies) or contact IDOE’s student pathways and opportunities team for guidance at DOEGradpathways@doe.in.gov.
Indiana GPS
Ahead of the upcoming public release of the Indiana GPS dashboard, Indiana school leaders are actively previewing the dashboard and providing feedback, with several updates already made or underway to make it easier for users to gain meaning from the data. This includes clarifying the methods and calculation, creating a threshold for trend arrows and a legend for what they mean, as well as explaining instances where no data is available (i.e. redaction for FERPA).
IDOE is currently prioritizing a list of all planned enhancements and will make that list publicly available. The development of this dashboard is an iterative process and will continue to be improved over time, with new data and features added.
