In May 2026, as Indiana schools were ending their school year, a “working paper” about a “preliminary analysis” of a research study received wide publicity across Indiana media, following a press release by The Mind Trust, the Indianapolis arm of the City Fund, an education organization in the Portland, Oregon suburbs that funds initiatives that promote the growth of charter schools.

The resulting headlines were striking: “Study: Indiana charters edged traditional schools in academic gains post-COVID,” the Indianapolis Star reported.

But there is an important problem with that headline: the study was not a statewide comparison of Indiana charter schools and traditional public schools. The study excluded a large number of charter and traditional public schools, especially in IPS boundaries where the largest number of Indiana charter schools are located, and only looked at a few upper elementary or middle school grade levels. Most of Indiana’s rural communities were not represented at all. 

What the study actually compared

The researchers compared the growth in ILEARN state test scores of students who were enrolled solely in charter schools during the seven year period of the study with students who were enrolled solely in traditional public schools during the same time period. Students who went to both charter and traditional public schools during that period were excluded.

The study also excluded all high schools, all magnet schools, and any school that wasn’t open for all of the school years from 2017–2018 through 2023–24. It also excluded every school in most rural counties and any other county that doesn’t have a charter school. Finally, it excluded all virtual schools and all alternative schools. 

What was left seems to be a relatively small number of traditional public schools located in just 23 of Indiana’s 92 counties (25%), and an even smaller number of charter schools in those counties. Roughly 75% of Indiana was completely excluded from the study (see page 8 of the study).

Schools that closed were excluded. So were schools that opened.

Significantly, the study excluded every charter school that closed due to low test scores during that seven year period. In Indianapolis and Marion County alone, 13 elementary and middle school charter schools closed during this period. Those students did not disappear. They continued their education, presumably at other schools. But their experiences are not captured by this analysis.

The study also excluded charter schools that opened during the seven-year period. In Indianapolis and Marion County alone, 20 elementary and middle school charter schools opened during this period. Thus, the study does not capture the performance of students who attended those newly opened schools either.

So, while a total of 54 elementary and middle school charter schools operated in Indianapolis and Marion County during the seven year period, it appears that the study included just 22 of those schools (less than half). 

The methodology may have also excluded district-operated public schools that “closed” because a district moved students into a newly constructed building. Consider Washington Township on the north side of Indianapolis. John Strange Elementary School closed in May 2019, and students moved into the new Clearwater Elementary School, which opened in August 2019. If the study’s methodology treats those as separate school closures and openings, the students at both schools may have been excluded from the analysis. In other words, a school building program intended to replace an aging school with a new facility can potentially produce the same statistical problem as an actual school closure.

What about magnet schools? 

Every magnet school was excluded from the study even though magnet schools are, in some respects, more comparable to charter schools than traditional neighborhood schools are. Enrollment is based, at least in part, on parent choice rather than geographic assignment, and individual magnet schools often have distinctive themes, programs or curricula. So, if you’re in IPS, Fort Wayne, or South Bend, it says nothing about the dozens of magnet schools with a long history in those school districts. 

There are additional methodological questions.

The researchers themselves acknowledge limitations in the working paper. But the paper does not make it particularly easy for the average reader to understand the scale and geographic scope of those exclusions. It stops short of actually listing the number, location, or names of the schools it studied or excluded, or of noting the difficulty of trying to compare the two groups of students in counties like Marion where schools within the IPS boundaries are opening and closing so rapidly. Unfortunately, the headlines and the publicity (and apparently the news release) about the study fail to note that.

Finally, it should be noted that the study includes a number of assumptions, weightings and calculations of data in an attempt by the researchers to focus on the data of students they believe are the most likely to attend charter schools. I will leave it to academic researchers to determine the appropriateness of those assumptions and weightings, as well as the overall validity of the research methods.

So, what does this mean for you?

In the spirit of Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere,” the list of places and schools left out is long: rural Indiana, magnet schools, virtual schools, alternative schools, newly opened schools, closed schools—and much of the rapidly changing Indianapolis school landscape. 

While the study may provide useful information about the particular group of schools and students it analyzed,  it does not demonstrate that Indiana charter schools, statewide, outperformed Indiana’s traditional public schools after COVID. Simply put, this study cannot tell you how your community’s schools performed if your schools weren’t included in the study. And for most Indiana communities, they weren’t.