Indiana school safety

The most useful thing on this page may be the schools that show no score at all. There are a lot of them, and the reason is deliberate.

We publish a safety score only for schools whose reporting we believe — the grades A and B. For the 2021-22 federal collection, 1,097 of Indiana's 1,933 schools clear that bar. The rest carry a grade but no number. That is the method working, not a gap in it.

The lower grades say different things. A C means a school reported almost nothing and is small enough that a genuine zero is common — not evidence of safety, but not implausible either. D and E mean schools of the same size normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and this one reported almost none. In Indiana, 328 schools fall in that doubtful range: 17.0% of the state, against 11.3% nationally.

That gap is about paperwork, not playgrounds. Every grade comes from a national comparison. Each school is measured against roughly 1,500 American schools closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grade levels, and the bar is the 25th percentile of what those peers reported — deliberately low. Nothing in it is adjusted for state. A state's share of doubtful records tells you how forms were filed there, not how children fared.

What the district ranks cover

Indiana has 426 school districts. Sixty-four have enough scoreable schools to rank. A district needs believable records from a real share of its schools before a rank means anything, and most here do not reach that.

Among those that do, Franklin Township Com Sch Corp and Lake Central School Corporation both rank safer than 100% of ranked US districts — 10 of the 11 schools in Franklin Township's scored set have data complete enough to score, and 8 of 10 in Lake Central's. Hamilton Southeastern Schools ranks safer than 99%, with 16 of 22. Muncie Community Schools, 97%, with 8 of 11. LaPorte Community School Corp, 92%, with 6 of 11.

Start with your own school rather than the district list. Read the grade before the score. If the grade is D or E, the honest answer is that the record is thin — that is a question to bring to the school, not a verdict on it.

Safest ranked cities in Indiana

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every Indiana city with schools

Every Indiana school district