Indiana Charter Innovation Center will advocate for public charter schools to access property tax dollars during 2025 legislative session.
INDIANAPOLIS – A statewide association led by a trusted charter school founder will support Indiana charter schools, with an immediate focus on ensuring these public schools access the same sources of funds as district-run schools do.
The Indiana Charter Innovation Center, established this fall under the leadership of Purdue Polytechnic High School founder Scott Bess, today unveiled its launch and highlighted funding parity as its key legislative objective during the 2025 budget session, which begins January 8.
About 5% of Indiana’s K-12 schools are charter schools, public schools that operate independently of school districts under the accountability of an independent authorizer and an appointed board. All of Indiana’s 123 charter schools are run by nonprofit organizations.
While public charter schools receive state and federal funding, they do not receive local property tax dollars, which means they operate with about two-thirds the funding of district-run schools in Indiana. That makes it difficult to provide key services such as transportation, for example, or offer robust extracurricular activities.
Advocates say this funding disparity is unfair to the many students who benefit from the high-quality education that public charter schools provide.
“Charter schools have been operating in Indiana for almost 25 years, consistently delivering strong outcomes, despite receiving less funding than traditional public schools,” said Bess, who also serves on the Indiana State Board of Education. “This legislative session, we’ll be emphasizing the need to ensure that dollars truly follow the student and that charter schools gain access to the same property tax revenues as traditional public schools.”
Numerous studies have documented charter schools’ effectiveness at helping students, particularly those from low-income communities, achieve strong academic outcomes.
A 2022 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University showed that students in Indianapolis’ charter schools achieved 64 additional days of learning in reading and 116 additional days in math compared to their peers in district-run Indianapolis Public Schools. Indianapolis charter school students also outperformed the state average, with gains equivalent to 12 extra days in reading and 47 extra days in math. And a 2023 study by the University of Arkansas showed that charter schools spend less money to achieve better academic results for students. For every $1,000 spent, charter students achieved 4.4 to 4.7 points higher on national assessments compared with peers at district-run schools.
Based in part on these results, enrollment in charter schools has grown over the last decade. Nearly 60% of students within Indianapolis’ center-city attend either public charter schools or Innovation Network Schools, which are similar to charters but operate in contractual agreements with school districts. More than half of Indiana’s charters are located in Indianapolis, and they are growing in both rural and urban communities across the state, including Gary, South Bend, Evansville, and Hamilton Count.