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President Donald Trump’s plan for schools nationwide is a familiar one to observers of Indiana education policy.
Since 2021, the state has taken steps each legislative session to limit content in schools and minors’ access to gender-affirming care and social transition procedures, while expanding access to vouchers and school choice. That push continues in the 2025 session, with dozens of bills filed that expand on similar issues.
Advocates for these laws say they’re necessary to protect parents’ rights to choose how to raise their children — rights that they say need to be on par with constitutional rights, and which they hope to see reflected in national legislation.
“When parents drop their children off at school, they want to know what’s going on,” said Matt Sharp, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group.
But the laws’ critics say they haven’t led to mass bans of content or revelations of indoctrination in schools because schools weren’t teaching objectionable content to begin with. Instead, they say the primary effect has been increased anxiety among educators and already vulnerable students.
Jessica Heiser, an attorney with Imprint Legal group, which helps districts understand educational civil rights laws, said that these curriculum laws often oversimplify the difficulty of running a classroom, which can cause problems for the districts left to implement them.
“They really don’t want laws around what they’re allowed to teach and not teach,” Heiser said of school administrators, regardless of their politics. “When you get into the nitty grittiness of you shall teach this, or you shall not teach that … legislators are out of their depth.”
To apply some of these laws on a national scale might require the kind of heavy-handed federal enforcement Trump — who praised Indiana schools as “well run” last year — professes to dislike, or else leave schools to police themselves with inconsistent results. Still, Trump’s attacks on “woke” beliefs before his second term and his actions immediately after his inauguration suggest his desire to fight particular cultural battles through American schools has not subsided.
The available evidence doesn’t clearly show that the statutes targeting curriculum, library books, and transgender students have accomplished their stated goals. But there’s reason to believe they’re increasing families’ interest in vouchers.
Some observers say it’s no coincidence that a major consequence of the new laws about public schools has been a surge in private school enrollment and voucher use. Discussions this year about making Indiana’s voucher program universal also often center around parents’ rights to choose a school for their children.
Fights over social issues can lead to citizens losing “trust and confidence in public schools,” Heiser said.
“You end up creating an atmosphere where public schools are so unpredictable and public schools are such a place of confusion and such a place of dissatisfaction, that you open up a conversation better for vouchers and for privatization,” Heiser said.
But some Indiana lawmakers have characterized concerns about how such laws affect the state’s broader reputation as overblown, as evidenced by what they say is Indiana’s ongoing economic and population growth.
In remarks late last year, Republican House Speaker Todd Huston chided doomsayers who had told him that “if we pass this bill, no one will ever come to Indiana again.”
“All that extreme hyperbole didn’t age well,” Huston said.
Classroom content bans seem slow to catch on
Lawmakers have made several attempts over the years to restrict the teaching of certain kinds of content in Indiana classrooms. It’s part of a nationwide push to ban “divisive concepts” related to race, racism, gender, and sexuality.
There are new versions of this legislation this year in Indiana. One bill would prohibit instruction on American history from promoting the idea that the national identity or culture has been established by racial identity or racial discrimination, gender identity or gender discrimination, victimization, class struggle, a hierarchy of privileges, or systemic exclusion. Others would require schools and state agencies to prohibit certain statements in training and curriculum related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
But the push began in Indiana in 2022, when lawmakers considered a wide-ranging bill that sought to restrict how teachers teach about race and racism. It failed in the state Senate following an outcry from a broad coalition of educators, parents, clergy, and others.
The following year, lawmakers scaled back their ambitions and passed narrower restrictions on content in schools. One new law required schools to adopt procedures to challenge books that contain material deemed harmful to minors. Another banned teaching human sexuality to students in preschool through third grade.
Since then, there have been instances of complaints at local school board meetings about books and lessons in schools. One example is the community uproar last year over a class discussion about gender identity in an elementary school classroom in East Noble Schools.
But there have not been widespread reports of public backlash to classroom material leading to curriculum changes. And Chalkbeat and other outlets’ reporting have found few formal complaints about books, and even less action taken to move or remove them.
Supporters of the laws like the Alliance for Defending Freedom say this simply means the legislation is working, and schools have taken care to purge their curriculum of objectionable material.
Other observers say the effect has been a chilling one. Some teachers have told Chalkbeat they or their colleagues avoid topics related to politics due to fears about how some parents might react.
Even relatively straightforward events in national politics that students might encounter independently can be affected by this environment. Kevin Melrose, a social studies teacher in Washington Township schools, said he avoided instruction about national politics in order not to be partisan, per district policy, even as the class held mock debates for class president on the same day of the 2024 vice presidential debates.
One thing that makes Indiana unique is Eyes on Education, said Christopher Lubienski of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. That’s a portal launched last year by Attorney General Todd Rokita for people to file complaints about how schools teach race, gender, and political ideology. (Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin launched a similar tip line, but it has since shut down.)
If the Trump administration launched such a tip line launched nationally, it would require large-scale monitoring and investigation, which might conflict with Trump’s plans to run a smaller, leaner federal government.
So far, Rokita has posted complaints from just 18 out of the state’s 300 school districts and more than 150 charter schools, as well as from two universities. The substance of these complaints ranges from the material available in a school library catalog, to an invitation for Black students to meet with a college representative.
And records show that even a politically charged event like the 2024 presidential election didn’t lead to complaints about inappropriate or politically biased instruction. A Chalkbeat request for material submitted to “Eyes on Education” that was related to the election yielded two complaints that were apparently jokes.
Student pronoun law yields murky data, inconsistent approaches
Indiana has passed several laws that affect transgender students, including a prohibition on
transgender girls playing on girls’ sports teams at the K-12 level.
When the law was passed in 2022, the Indiana High School Sports Association, which had procedures in place for transgender athletes’ participation, said just one student had gone through the outlined process to play on a girls’ team in recent years. The association did not return a request for comment on whether there have been any additional instances since the law passed.
Data shows that trans students are a tiny fraction of school enrollment. Researchers estimate that 1.4% of youth ages 13-17 nationwide are transgender. In addition, very few openly trans students compete in U.S. school sports.
The author of the law, Rep. Michelle Davis, said at the time that the legislation was important whether it affected one student or 100. Davis this year has filed an expansion of the law that would affect collegiate and out-of-state teams. She did not return a request for comment.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of a transgender Indianapolis Public Schools student. But the group dropped the lawsuit in early 2023 after the student transferred schools.
Lawmakers then passed a law in 2023 requiring schools to inform a parent of a student’s request to use a different name, nickname, pronoun, title, or word to refer to themselves. Supporters say parents have a right to know about such cases.
“It’s been helpful and effective in putting school officials on notice that when a child is asking questions about gender, or any mental or physical issue, the first call should be to mom and dad,” said Matt Sharp, the ADF attorney.
But without specific guidance from the Indiana Department of Education about how districts should notify parents, or whether they should categorize such requests in any way, the result has been a lack of transparency and a grab-bag of local approaches.
From a legal perspective, this inconsistency can open districts to lawsuits and other conflicts, according to Heiser, the attorney who consults with districts.
In addition, such laws can affect students, even — and sometimes especially — when they are applied inconsistently, said Brian Dittmeier, director of public policy at GLSEN, a nonprofit focused on supporting LGBTQ+ students.
“When hostile laws are passed, and especially hostile laws that are vaguely drafted, it leads to a chilling effect on LGBTQ free expression,” said Dittmeier. “It leads to self-policing that harms students’ free expression and inclusion in the school community.”
A Chalkbeat survey of Indiana’s 10 largest districts found little willingness to share or discuss their policies.
Some districts use the notification requirement to hold a meeting with parents about how to support their students. Another district requires parental permission to use a nickname or pronoun that a student has requested.
Some districts’ policy interpretations obtained by Chalkbeat focus on students making a request related to their gender identity. Others applied the policy to all nicknames, including nicknames that cisgender students had used for years, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Some districts informed students that their parents would be notified about such changes, and gave them the chance to rescind their name or pronoun change request. But it’s unclear how widespread this practice is.
From 2023 to 2024, three districts — Perry Township, Fort Wayne, and Tippecanoe — each sent between 56 and 67 notifications to parents to inform them of a student’s desire to use a nickname or different pronoun, title, or word.
Students later rescinded some of their requests, indicating that the law may have pushed some transgender students away from publicly expressing their identity.
But it also isn’t clear from the districts’ data how many such requests or notifications were related to gender identity to begin with. The law doesn’t require schools to collect or share that specific information.
In all three districts, the notifications involved fewer than 1 in 200 students, or less than 0.5% of enrollment. The notices were most common in high school.
Several districts, including Indianapolis Public Schools, said that only individual schools track the notifications.
School voucher use surges as wealthier families qualify
If Indiana policymakers want to change schools’ approach to social issues, the stats don’t really say clearly whether they’ve succeeded.
But with private school choice, numbers tell a plain story — one that poses a different long-term challenge to public schools than culture war clashes, albeit a related one.
Over the last few years, as conservatives nationwide have pushed back on transgender student rights and certain classroom content, their reasons to support school choice nationwide have also begun to focus less on helping just students from low-income households or struggling schools, and more on giving choices to all families.
Private school enrollment in Indiana has surged since 2020, reaching an all-time high of 92,000 students in 2023-24.
The growth has been partly driven by Choice Scholarship Accounts — Indiana’s decade-old school voucher program. Though vouchers began as a targeted program offering state funding for private school tuition for low-income families, the qualifications have incrementally expanded.
Last year, the program saw a statewide 32% increase in enrollment, driven largely by wealthier families who became eligible for the program in 2023. Families can now make 400% of the amount required for students to qualify for federally subsidized meals — or around $230,000 for a family of four.
This year, lawmakers could remove the final income limit on which families can receive vouchers to make the program fully universal. That’s a priority for GOP Gov. Mike Braun and legislative leaders.
“I’m not going to apologize that our caucus will be very supportive of universal vouchers,” said GOP Rep. Bob Behning, chair of the House Education Committee, at a December legislative conference. “I think letting parents make that choice as to what’s best for their son or daughter is the best way to move forward.”
Since 2021, lawmakers have also added new voucher-like programs to pay for special education expenses and career training. Both of those programs reached maximum capacity this year, and some lawmakers have pushed to make the former available to all families to purchase classes and services using state funding.
It’s unlikely that many Indiana politicians believe in the complete privatization of the education system, said Lubienski of Indiana University. But the implicit effects of the social issue laws include raising questions about the public education system.
“The social issues put a target on public education and create a narrative that they’re serving special interests, or students who feel they’ve been ignored, at the expense of the wider population,” Lubienski said.
Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.
Kae Petrin is a data & graphics reporter who covers data related to K-12 education, voting rights, and public health for Civic News Company. Contact them at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat Indiana Bureau Chief MJ Slaby contributed to this article.