Public school districts exist to academically prepare students to succeed in life, yet the Kansas State School Board’s accreditation system ignores student outcomes and rewards paperwork over academic performance.
The chart below shows the percentage of students proficient in English language arts (ELA), Math, and Science for the state average, USD 500 Kansas City, Lutheran Schools, and USD 412 Hoxie. Guess which districts are recommended for full accreditation? The two with proficiency levels far above the state average, or the one with miserably low results?
In the upside-down world of Kansas public education, only USD 500 Kansas City is recommended for accreditation. The other two are the only ones in Kansas that are NOT recommended for full accreditation by the Kansas Department of Education.
Credit for discovering this assault on common sense goes to eagle-eyed Trish O’Neal, a Certified Paralegal at O’Neal Consulting.
Page 212 of the report submitted to the State Board at its July meeting has the accreditation recommendations. Apparently, Hoxie and the Lutheran Schools committed the unforgivable sin of missing the reporting deadline for their teacher licensure reports for two consecutive years.
But wait, it gets worse.
O’Neal notes that these two districts weren’t docked for having a low percentage of licensed teachers (36 districts did not meet that particular compliance criterion), but because they were late in sending the report. So, it’s OK to fall short of teacher licensing requirements, but don’t you dare be late in sending your report.
State Board of Education grants accreditation to districts that break laws
The Department of Education does not dock districts for ignoring the state law requiring them to spend their at-risk funding on “above and beyond” services for students at academic risk of failing, even though the accreditation system requires compliance with all applicable state and federal laws. KSDE officials say they don’t believe the at-risk law is “applicable” to school improvement, so they allow districts to routinely violate it.
But don’t be late filing some paperwork, or it’s off to accreditation jail.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but shouldn’t the focus be on student improvement rather than school improvement? It’s too easy to justify school improvement with bureaucratic wordsmithing, e.g., “We improved the school by upgrading the IT system.”
The State of Education will decide at its August meeting whether to accept the department’s recommendation not to fully accredit Hoxie and the Lutheran schools. Here’s hoping board members make a better decision than they did last week by allowing a teacher to keep his license after he admitted to inappropriate behavior with a student.
