2020 ICPE Legislative Positions
- ICPE supports not only holding our public schools “harmless” from the latest state test results (ILEARN), but disconnecting the link between test scores and their use in the evaluation of teachers and schools. We support the use of multiple measures when evaluating our schools.
- ICPE supports maintaining Indiana's constitutional mandate to provide K-12 public education by keeping an independent Department of Education which is focused on K-12 education.
- ICPE supports legislation that would protect school corporations from declining enrollment by providing a financial fail-safe floor, so that no school corporation can lose more than a specific percentage of its funding from both local property tax funds and state funding in any one school year.
- ICPE supports a remedy to the school funding formula with a recalculation and expansion of additional exceptional pupil count weights. Exceptional students should include those currently identified as special needs, gifted and ESL. The expansion should involve weights for students needing RTI (Response to Interventions), conduct and social/emotional disorders as well as a high school STEM class weight for STEM classes that are offered with fewer than 15 students enrolled.
- ICPE supports the use of the current state budget cash reserves to provide additional support for Indiana’s public school corporations for the benefit of students and teachers.
- ICPE supports legislation that requires all Indiana schools receiving public funds to be financially transparent with the same reporting requirements.
- ICPE supports legislation that requires all Indiana schools receiving public funds to meet and report the same academic, operational and accountability requirements. All schools receiving public funds must also adhere to legal standards and be held to the same equal access and public access requirements as those of traditional public schools.
- ICPE supports a moratorium on the expansion of funding or enrollment for voucher, charter or innovation network schools until a comprehensive study is conducted to examine the effects of the “money following the child” on the quality of education in Indiana’s traditional public schools, which educate an overwhelming majority of Hoosier students.
- ICPE supports legislation and policies that promote transparency in the state budget regarding Scholarship Granting Organizations and how tax dollars are being used in choice scholarship (voucher), charter and innovation network schools.
- ICPE opposes K-12 Education Savings Accounts, a concept that would reverse academic and financial accountability to taxpayers.
- ICPE supports tax credits for public school families for textbooks and related education expenses equal to the tax credits received by home school and private school families.
- ICPE supports a moratorium on legislation that would expand tax credits for contributions to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs).
2019 legislative positions can be found here.