Summary
Signature School Inc is a public charter high school serving grades 9–12 in downtown Evansville, Indiana, with 384 students. Because it is a charter school, students apply rather than being assigned by neighborhood attendance area, and it operates as its own single-school district. That structure has produced a remarkable record: it has ranked among the top two high schools in Indiana for ten consecutive reporting years, including six years at #1, and its district ranks 2nd of 374 districts statewide.
The academic results are exceptional and consistent. In 2025–26, 90.1% of 11th-graders were proficient in SAT Math, compared with 25.6% statewide — the next-best nearby school, Castle High School, reached 44.2%, and every other area school fell between 15.6% and 35.5%. Reading and writing proficiency was 95.6%, versus 51.9% statewide. Graduation has been 100% in each of the last five reported years, and chronic absenteeism is 7.9% — less than half the state rate and the lowest in the region. Every student group the school reports, including both female and male students and its low-income students, ranks at or near the top of the state.
Notably, Signature achieves this while spending $10,641 per student, about the same as Castle and $600–$2,100 less than every other nearby school. It is also by far the smallest high school in the comparison, with a 14.2 student-teacher ratio that is mid-pack locally. One important context point: its free/reduced-lunch rate is 10.7%, lower than every surrounding school, so the student population it serves is not directly comparable to the larger comprehensive high schools nearby. Absenteeism has also drifted up from about 2–3% a few years ago to roughly 7–8%, and some student group data is not reported — worth watching, even though the numbers remain outstanding.
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