Indiana stands at the height of a twin addiction epidemic fueled by the rise of opioids and stubbornly persistent tobacco use in our state. Today more Hoosiers die from drug overdoses than auto accidents each year. The death toll from smoking equates to more than two fatal 747 airplane crashes each month. And we’re outpacing other states in our abuse of opioids and tobacco, ranking among the nation’s worst for the number of drug overdose deaths and percentage of residents who smoke. These findings were captured in two reports released by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. They should provide a wake-up call to action. Consider some other key findings of […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. It’s well known that good jobs often require a strong understanding of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Yet K-12 performance in STEM lags in Indiana, driven in large part by substantial disparities across race and income. In 2017, only 51 percent of Indiana students passed the math portion of the ISTEP+ in grades 3-8. The pass rate for students with free- and reduced-price lunches was just 36 percent. And the pass rate for black students was 25 percent—less than half the rate for white students. Raising STEM achievement, particularly for low-income and minority […]