05/06/2024

Indian Prairie School District (IPSD) provides numerous meaningful learning experiences including Project Arrow (PA), an enrichment language arts program in grades 3-5 with a broader continuation in middle school. This program is provided to meet the needs of academically talented students.

The other program for some of these students is Math Acceleration (hereinafter MA), which is as its name suggests an acceleration program. These students complete the 4^th grade math curriculum in 3^rd grade. This continues through 5^th grade, and some students are accelerated again between 5^th and 6^th grade. Thus, some students have completed one year of high school math or two by the end of middle school.

IPSD recently contracted with Burns/Van Fleet (BVF) to conduct an audit to determine the level of consistency in admission criteria, instruction, formal assessments, and financial and administrative resources. BVF has evaluated numerous academically talented programs recently as a vital part of its work with districts’ leadership transitions. BVF Consultants spent ten (10) days in the District. Twenty-five (25) interviews were conducted with central office administration, principals, and teachers.  More teachers and principals engaged in discussions during school visits to twelve (12) campuses, which also included lunch forums with students.

In addition, three (3) dedicated forum meetings were facilitated for both parents/guardians of PA/MA students in both virtual and in-person formats. These sessions were further supplemented by a dedicated in-person forum for IPSD faculty and staff. Moreover, an extensive campaign of surveys was undertaken. Virtual surveys were developed with tailored questions for a variety of populations.

Read the audit results here. The district is examining short and long term actions of the report. In the future, the actions and a timeline will be shared.