SB 458 would require the State Board of Education to reinstate high proficiency standards in place in 2024, and the education bureaucracy insists on keeping the lower standards in place. They contend that the proficiency standards are not lower, but the facts show otherwise.
Sudden jumps in student proficiency levels in math and reading last year prompted the proposed legislation that discussed before the Senate Education Committee last week.
SB 458 would re-establish proficiency standards, or “cut scores”, which are similar to the dividing lines between an “A” and a “B”, a “B” and a “C”, etc, to 2024 levels, the year before the Kansas Board of Education voted 7-3 to reduce proficiency standards effective with the 2025 state assessment.
The chart below shows reading proficiency levels (English language arts) for grades 6, 8, and 10 were relatively unchanged in 2023 and 2024, but spiked in 2025.
Sudden, dramatic changes in proficiency levels occur whenever the State Board of Education lowers and raises proficiency standards.
Proficiency standards were reduced in 2001, prompting a jump from 34% to 65% in 8th-grade reading. The State Board went back to having high standards in 2015, which caused proficiency to plummet from 85% to 30%. Results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which didn’t change standards, remained in the mid-30s for many years before noticeably declining from 2017 to 2024.
Testimony for and against SB 458
Education representatives don’t believe the Legislature has the authority to order the State Board of Education to set specific proficiency standards because the State Board is charged with general supervision of schools in the Kansas Constitution. However, the law and case history indicate broad authority for the Legislature.
Attorney Mike O’Neal, representing Kansas Policy Institute, which owns The Sentinel, and a former Speaker of the Kansas House, testified in support of SB 458. He reminded committee members that the Kansas Constitution imposed upon the legislature the responsibility for the administration of the public school system:
Article 6, Section 1 states:
The legislature shall provide for intellectual, educational, vocational and scientific improvement by establishing and maintaining public schools, educational institutions and related activities, which may be organized and changed in such manner as may be provided by law.
And…
Article 6, Section 2: required the Legislature to provide for a state board of education having “general supervision” of public schools but further provided that:
“The state board of education shall perform such other duties as may be provided by law.”
The phrase “as may be provided by law” means the Legislature can pass laws to direct the Department of Education and the State Board to take specific action. O’Neal also cited the Kansas Supreme Court as defining general supervision to mean “something more than advise, but something less than control.”
O’Neal added:
“In 2024, Kansas launched the Blueprint for Literacy. The State Board of Regents, the State Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and the Kansas Legislature united around a shared goal: improving literacy outcomes. Teachers are being retrained in structured literacy. Evidence-based reading practices were adopted. Policy changes were enacted. And we were told success would be measured through state assessment outcomes.
“But if you change the test and lower the cut scores, you eliminate the ability to measure longitudinal progress (year-to-year results). You remove the baseline. You make it impossible to determine whether Blueprint policies or other educational policies are working. The Legislature has been requesting true longitudinal tracking for years, but has been frustrated in those efforts.
“SB 458 simply requires that state assessment performance levels and cut scores remain based on the 2024 levels. It protects continuity. It preserves longitudinal data. It ensures we can accurately measure whether literacy reforms, for one, are succeeding and whether Kansas students are truly improving.
“This is not about lowering standards or raising standards. It is about maintaining honest standards.
“Kansas students deserve high expectations. Parents deserve accurate information. Lawmakers deserve reliable data. SB 458 safeguards all three.”
Among opponents of SB 458 were representatives of the Kansas Parent-Teachers Association (PTA), the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA), the Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB), and United School Administrators, all arguing a return to the 2024 standards would be disruptive to the assessment process. State Board of Education Chair Cathy Hopkins, who supported the new standards, took exception to the notion that they were reduced to artificially inflate test scores and proficiency results. She related her conversations with educators and administrators who saw disparities between results in the classroom and those in state assessments that led to the current standards:
“Inconsistencies, they didn’t see in the classroom, but they would then end up seeing on an assessment, and it was very difficult and frustrating to them.
“Nobody’s trying to cover up bad learning, or the fact that kids may not be learning… all the more working harder and harder to get more and better quality instruction and materials in our classrooms, our educators, supporting them, to have the development they need, the education they need themselves, and structure of literacy, and many other things, and seeing those collaborative times, having such a huge impact. The new assessments were made out in the field from what was given as feedback; the cut scores, the indicators for proficiency, were taken all into account, not to lower anything, but to truly align and to keep our expectations high.”
Saying the proficiency standards were set based on what teachers saw in classrooms, which they believed was higher than reflected on the previous state assessment, seems like an admission that the standards were reduced.
Kansas Policy Institute CEO Dave Trabert explains:
“Look at the 8th-grade results. The previous test and standards showed 22% of students were proficient, but educators contend that didn’t reflect reality. So what they’re really saying is that the previous standards were too high, and that sure seems like an admission that the new standards are lower.
“Think of it like a grading scale where 90 to 100 earned an “A,” and teachers thought there should be more “A” students than reflected by the test results. Lowering the standard so that 80 to 100 is an “A” will put more kids in that category, but it doesn’t mean they are capable of doing what was considered “A” work.”
Dispute over when standards were changed
Hopkins testified that the vote to create a new assessment “was taken in 2019.” That was brought up because the Legislature passed a law in 2024 that forbade the development of new assessments, so progress could be monitored against the Blueprint for Literacy goals. The goal is to go from 33% proficient in 2023 to 50% proficient by 2033. Progress cannot be measured because standards were changed, and the intent of SB 458 is to allow measurement against the goal.
State Board of Education member Debby Potter says her research of board action doesn’t indicate that any vote was taken to create a new assessment.
“I reviewed the Nov 2019 meeting using the available YouTube stream. I have listened to that YouTube discussion, the vote, and the final chair’s comments several times now. I also transcribed the meeting and reviewed the transcript with two of the Board members who were present at that meeting. What I heard being declared before the Senate Education Committee was that “KU won the contract” to change the assessment test.
“What was clear to me is that what was on the Nov 2019 consent agenda was simply a vote to ask the board to continue KU’s contract and to continue the work associated with the administering and ongoing development of the test that it had already been doing.”
The Education Committee hasn’t announced when it will take further action on SB 458.
