Frequently Asked Questions
To receive a Choice Scholarship, a student must have legal settlement in Indiana, be at least five years old by October 1st of the school year for which they are applying, and meet certain income eligibility requirements. As of 2023, about 97% of families in Indiana are now eligible. The current income requirements are listed here. Students whose families are residents of Michigan will not be eligible. Full information regarding the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program may be found here.
All eligible families who receive a voucher may apply it towards the total they owe for GSMS tuition and fees. For example, if a family has a tuition payment of $15,000 and a voucher worth $7,000, the outstanding tuition bill would be $8,000.
Yes. Good Shepherd provides additional support to qualifying families through its Family Support Fund (FSF). Eligibility is determined through the school’s financial aid application process administered through a third-party software system that uses a family’s financial data to calculate financial need.
The voucher amount is 90% of the state’s share of education funding per pupil for a student's home public school district. Families will receive slightly different amounts depending on the school district in which they live. Estimates of the voucher amount will be published in the spring and not finalized until the fall.
For the majority of the year, a child at Good Shepherd will have little awareness of anything being different. Their daily routines (morning circle, work cycle, art, atrium, land-based learning, etc.) will remain the same. Near the end of the school year, students in grades 3–8 will notice a difference in their schedule on a handful of days as they participate in several short testing sessions interspersed throughout the spring.
All students in grades 3–8 will participate in the ILEARN (Indiana’s Learning Evaluation and Assessment Readiness Network) assessment. ILEARN is an untimed, computer-adaptive test that adjusts in difficulty based on a student’s progress through the test. Students in grades 3–8 will take both language arts and math components. There are additional science components for grades 4 and 6 and a social studies component for grade 5. Students in grade 3 will also participate in the IREAD-3 (Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determination) assessment, which measures foundational reading skills. Both assessments are held in the spring. There is no testing for students in grade 2 or below.
Testing will occur outside students’ classrooms to quietly signal that the activity differs from their regular language arts and math work. We have developed a testing schedule for each grade level that minimizes the disruption caused by testing and keeps the number and length of testing sessions for any one grade level to a minimum.
No class time at any level will be spent preparing for the test (aside from a state-required practice test session). Classrooms will also refrain from discussing the test or reviewing test scores. Instead, guides will prepare students by explaining the purpose and value of practicing computer-based assessments for their future success. They will also provide context that students around the state of Indiana also practice taking these assessments. They will communicate to students that how they perform on the tests does not indicate how much or little they have learned or how smart they are. Guides will encourage all students that practicing something new is a great way to grow, just like doing challenging works in the classroom. Guides will reinforce the achievement of completing the tests rather than the results.
Test scores will not be discussed with or distributed to students at school. Parents will receive test results from the Good Shepherd administrative office as prescribed by the state.
In the primary (preschool) classroom, practical life activities are designed to build a child’s confidence and set the foundation for more complex learning. The activities must be purposeful and support a child’s development of independence. Good Shepherd believes that taking computer-based tests is an activity that meets these criteria: it has a purpose – preparing students for taking such tests as their education progresses – and it supports their intellectual independence as they will be required to navigate and interpret the test with limited support from their guides.