Indiana set out to answer a fundamental question: what does it actually mean for a student to graduate ready for life after high school? The state brought together educators, families, and community leaders to build the Portrait of a Graduate, a statewide framework defining the knowledge, skills, and experiences students need before graduating — spanning strong academics, consistent attendance, and meaningful progress toward college, career, or workforce pathways.
Defining readiness was only step one. To make the framework actionable, Indiana needed a way to measure it consistently statewide, so the Department of Education translated the Portrait's goals into specific, trackable readiness indicators and launched Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (Indiana GPS), an analytics platform that shows how students are progressing toward those goals across schools and districts.
The underlying challenge was that much of the necessary data already existed but was scattered across disconnected systems, requiring manual work to compile and analyze — while other indicators were still being developed alongside the framework itself. Indiana solved this by implementing the Ed-Fi Data Standard, aligning data across systems and connecting it to the state's broader longitudinal data infrastructure. With consistent data definitions and automated data flows in place, the state can now calculate readiness indicators reliably across every district, replacing what used to be manual, inconsistent compilation with fast, standardized reporting.
The result is a working system rather than just a static framework. Teachers, counselors, and school leaders can see individual student progress on readiness indicators and step in where support is needed; district leaders can track trends across schools and student groups to guide resource decisions and program design; and because indicators are measured the same way statewide, educators and policymakers now share a common understanding of what "readiness" means and how it's trending across communities.
Indiana frames this work as a foundation for continuous improvement — informing high school redesign efforts and a new accountability model — and as a springboard for strengthening the links between education, workforce pathways, and long-term outcomes for students statewide.
This Story from the Field is a supplement to the 2026 Project Unicorn State of the Sector Report which analyzes K-12 school system capabilities and infrastructure for leveraging education data. Read the full report.
