Education was at the forefront of the 2024 gubernatorial debate season. The newly elected governor, current Sen. Republican Mike Braun, proposed a seven-part education plan in September.
Braun’s plan is mostly consistent with current Indiana Republican education policies.
According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Braun developed his education agenda with conservative public policy group Hoosiers for Opportunity, Prosperity and Enterprise or HOPE.
Braun’s top policy proposal is universal school choice.
School choice refers to government programs that allow families to use public dollars to send their students to non-public schools, including private and charter schools. School choice diminishes limits on who can afford to attend private schools by providing taxpayer-funded vouchers to parents.
Indiana spent $439 million on school vouchers during the 2023-24 school year, a $127 million increase from spending during the 2022-23 school year.
Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, the president of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, said school choice vouchers funnel funds into private schools and leave very little funding for public schools. Fuentes-Rohwer added that public schools are important because they implement a high standard for teaching, which is applied to students from different backgrounds, allowing any student to learn important life skills.
“When you come together from all different walks of life, instead of being in an ideological bubble, you learn about people’s differences, and you learn to respect those differences,” Fuentes-Rohwer said.
Ashley Pirani, a Monroe County Community School Corporation school board member, said that school choice still comes with access limitations, such as private schools’ common lack of transportation for students. Even if a family is given funding for private schooling, the choice might not be feasible for the family.
“In my opinion, school choice only benefits some and not all,” Pirani said.
Indiana operates a nearly universal school choice scholarship program that Braun seeks to expand and reform.
School choice and state-funded vouchers were originally implemented to help children from low-income households receive equal access to a private education, Fuentes-Rohwer said. However, for the 2024-25 school year, a family of four in Indiana making a combined annual income as high as $230,880 can still qualify for a voucher.
Even if a family receives funding for private schooling, those schools aren’t required to accept all students, Fuentes-Rohwer said. Kids can be turned away, unlike in the all-inclusive public school system.
“Why are we prioritizing paying private tuition for schools that are not inclusive for all kids over, for example, preschool, which is proven to show that kids could come to school ready to learn?” Fuentes- Rohwer asked.
Braun also proposed doubling the Indiana Education Scholarship Account Program for students with special needs, since its allotted $10 million funding was maxed out for the first time during the 2024-25 school year. The Indiana Education Scholarship Account Program provides scholarship money for students with special needs and their siblings that can be applied to therapies, tuition, fees and educational programs.
Focusing on teachers, Braun proposed increasing teacher’s base salaries, which currently sit at $40,000 annually. He would guarantee professional benefits such as new parent leave and improved health insurance options as part of the plan, as well as fostering programs to transition professionals into teaching positions. Braun suggested cutting “red tape” for out-of-state teachers, including expanding teaching license portability and certification reciprocity. He also seeks to target recruitment to ease teacher shortages state-wide. There are 2,641 unfilled educator positions in Indiana at the time of publication.
Braun’s plan does not detail how much raising teachers’ pay would cost Indiana, or by how much he seeks to increase teachers' pay.
Teachers’ salaries in Indiana vary greatly, as the lowest salary from the 2022-23 school year was reported as $38,000 and the highest salary was reported as $108,318.
Christopher Lubienski, a professor of education policy at IU, said the issue with teacher pay is equity. He said research conducted by the IU Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, which he is the director of, found increasing the state standard teacher salary by just 20% would bring in more teachers. However, the already higher pay rate for teachers in wealthy areas would also increase, driving teachers away from schools in poorer areas.
Lubienksi said, because of this, increasing teacher pay across the board does not really solve the issue of a teacher shortage.
School safety, a major theme in 2024 education policies, is also part of Braun’s seven-part education plan. He plans to increase funding for security, implement training on cyber safety for students and improve the Indiana Office of School Safety.
Pirani said cyber security training is great, but education policy should focus on all aspects of safety, including mental health services for students.
As for academic standards, Braun seeks to focus funding on in-classroom needs and student achievement and maintain clear metrics for accountability. His plan also includes enforcement of the recently passed legislation that limits the usage of cell phones in schools and use of evidence-based materials for teaching both reading and math. Braun also seeks to stop “divisive, non-curricular materials like Critical Race Theory and gender identity from being taught in our public schools,” according to his joint education plan with HOPE.
To promote success beyond high school, Braun plans to reward schools for preparing students for post-graduation achievement, put money into career scholarship programs and support students’ extracurricular exploration. However, Braun’s plan does not detail the specifics of how he plans to achieve these goals.
In order to improve accountability for educational outcomes and reading levels, Braun has emphasized the significance of improving the education system by listening to what teachers have to say.
The final point on Braun’s plan is titled, “Put Kids First by Protecting Parental Rights.” It includes giving parents access to their child’s education information, notifying parents directly if their child requests a pronoun or name change different from their biological sex and name given by parents and "protect girls’ sports from biological male competitors.”
“This could affect LGBTQIA+ students in school where their identity is celebrated and school could be a space for them to feel comfortable sharing those things,” Pirani said. “This could be something a student might not be ready to share with their family for a myriad of reasons.”
Lubienski called issues like these “culture war issues” and said this issue only affects a small number of people while issues more central to American education such as inequalities in funding and opportunity affect more students overall.
“In states where this has been implemented, people have reported a kind of chilling effect for classrooms,” Lubienski said. “Teachers feel like they can’t talk about these issues as much.”
Editor’s note: Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer is related to a writer currently on staff at the IDS. That writer was not involved in the reporting, writing or editing of this story.
