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 […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. There’s no question that opioid addiction is wreaking havoc in communities across Indiana, including in Indianapolis. The latest figures show that, in 2016, there were 18.9 opioid poisoning deaths in Marion County per 100,000 residents – which translates into 171 lives lost. What’s worse, a new study from the University of Virginia finds opioid poisoning deaths are likely much higher than official figures reported in Indiana and other states. Two years ago, in November 2015, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation adopted new funding priorities, one of which is to tackle the opioid crisis in Indianapolis. The first […]