Purdue to expand Polytechnic High School to South Bend

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — An expansion to South Bend for Purdue University’s innovative Purdue Polytechnic High School is a step closer to reality following a vote by the South Bend Community School Board on Monday (Dec. 16).

Watch Building a Pipeline: PPHS Origins Story to learn how and why Purdue Polytechnic High School is revolutionizing education and changing students’ lives.

The board approved moving forward with negotiations for an agreement to house the STEM-focused charter school at Washington High School with classes to begin in fall 2020. The Indiana Charter School Board approved the third location earlier in December.

“Purdue is deeply appreciative of the South Bend Community School Board’s action supporting our hopes to open a Purdue Polytechnic High School in the city next year,” said Purdue President Mitch Daniels. “The school would join our two Indianapolis facilities in trying to build our own pipeline of low-income and minority students to augment the unacceptably small number emerging from Indiana’s public education system.”

Over the past five years, there has been a total of 21 students from South Bend Washington who have had the credentials to be offered admission and only seven, barely one per year, have gone on to attend Purdue. According to the Indiana Department of Education, 5.5% of Washington 10th-grade students passed the math portion of the 2019 ISTEP, 23.5% passed English and 5% passed both portions. In the last five years, Purdue has averaged exactly 30 students per year from the entire South Bend Community School district. Statewide, among the 82,551 Indiana high school graduates in 2018 who took the SAT, only 298 African Americans and 470 Hispanics had SAT scores and GPAs in the range of the average Purdue first-year student. Among that same set of graduates, only five African Americans and 13 Hispanics fell in the range of the top 15 percent of Purdue first-year students.

“Purdue cannot be the engine of upward mobility that it seeks to be without taking direct and extraordinary action, and that’s what our high school network is meant to deliver,” Daniels said.

Purdue Polytechnic High School opened its first Indianapolis charter school in 2017 and its second in Indianapolis’s Broad Ripple neighborhood in 2019, and today enrolls a total of 430 students, 115 of them high school juniors who will graduate in 2021, many with both the qualifications and desire to attend Purdue. The schools are focused on providing underrepresented students authentic STEM-focused experiences that will prepare them for a successful future, said Scott Bess, Purdue Polytechnic High School’s head of school.

“The unique Purdue Polytechnic High School model is set up to encourage students to be passionate, self-directed learners with the grit and determination to see them through to a rigorous postsecondary education, or a challenging, sustainable career,” he said.

These experiences include internships, industry projects, dual credit courses and technical certifications. PPHS South Bend will replicate the innovative model that has been serving students successfully in the Indianapolis area.

PPHS South Bend will continue the mission of providing a high-quality, STEM-focused education to underrepresented students and will enroll up to 125 students in its freshman class in 2020 on a lottery basis. PPHS South Bend, like its Indianapolis campuses, will operate a slow-growth model, adding a grade served every year.

Media contact: Tim Doty, 765-494-2080, doty2@purdue.edu