Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education released the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card.” Indiana’s scores are disappointing and mirror the state’s recently released ILEARN results. In 2019, only 37 percent of Indiana 8th graders demonstrated proficiency in reading and math on NAEP. In 4th grade, 37 percent of students achieved proficiency in reading, while 47 percent were proficient in math. Average scores in reading declined and average scores in math held relatively steady since the test was last administered in 2017. While average scores in […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The opioid epidemic, and related behavioral and mental health issues, is wreaking havoc in the lives of Hoosiers across the state and in Marion County in particular. To help address the crisis, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation is making strategic grants to expand access to treatment for those struggling with addiction. It’s important to our Foundation and the people these grants are designed to help that we target our grants to areas of greatest need, which we do by tracking several key metrics related to access to treatment. One metric we monitor is the behavioral […]