Indiana Chamber of Commerce | Indiana’s Education Best Buys

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Indiana’s Education Best Buys

Letter from the President
Kevin M. Brinegar

The challenges of today’s economy make it increasingly important that our young citizens receive a solid educational foundation before they leave high school. In recent years, Indiana’s K-12 education system has made significant strides, with reforms implemented to ensure higher standards and greater accountability. These reforms will shape the state’s economic strength in the 21st Century. Our children must be able to perform in the high-skill, high-wage jobs of the future. They will also need to have more technical, reasoning, communication and interpersonal skills to succeed in a global marketplace. As parents, educators, and business and community leaders, we must rise to the occasion and ensure that our children are equipped for this high-tech future.

Today’s economy also makes it increasingly important that our schools produce the greatest possible educational value for the dollars that they receive from taxpayers. The tightening of available tax revenues cannot be made a reason for abandoning continued improvements in academic achievement.

This 11th edition of Indiana’s Best Buys report recognizes those Indiana high schools that are producing the greatest academic achievements per dollar of taxpayer funds. Best Buys schools are those that offer all of us, as taxpayers and stakeholders in the public education system, the greatest return in student academic achievement for the taxpayer dollars that are invested. The report is not designed to criticize any school or school corporation. Rather, it is a celebration of schools that are producing the best results from taxpayer investments.

The multifactor analysis used in Indiana’s Best Buys represents only one way to measure the quality of our public high schools. It is by no means the only way to measure return on investment or student performance. Indeed, as new data become available or new insights are revealed, we continue to refine the data that are used in this report and we welcome your recommendations for future editions. Details of this year’s refinements are included in the report.

The staff of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce looks forward to working with you and others to help expand and replicate educational programs that are successful. We also look forward to helping strengthen those school programs that are not achieving at the highest levels possible. Hoosier taxpayers deserve the strongest possible return on their educational investment; and all Hoosier children deserve a future that can be afforded them only through a high-performing K-12 education system. As this report demonstrates, those two goals can be achieved simultaneously.

Sincerely,
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Kevin M. Brinegar