Last week, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly vetoed an expansion of the Kansas Promise Scholarship program, a long-established program enjoying bipartisan support. The expansion would have added the Wichita Technical Institute and the Heartland Welding Academy to the list of schools students can attend with state financial aid. She must have had a good chuckle when drafting her written statement:
“I have serious concerns about the precedent that would be set by providing state funding to for-profit educational institutions that are not accountable to the state or taxpayers. This program is meant to support Kansans as they pursue an education, not funnel public money to private, for-profit institutions.”
It is hypocrisy of the highest order for Kelly to veto the Promise Scholarship expansion on the bogus implication that private schools are not accountable like the public education system.
Two audits found that Kansas school districts are not spending at-risk funding on above-and-beyond services for students who are academically at risk of failing as state law requires. Six years running now, Governor Kelly and the State Board of Education still allow schools to break the law and deny kids the education they need. (To be fair, Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature are equally guilty. The Senate Education Committee approved a bill requiring the State Board to strip accreditation from districts not following the law, but the full Senate was not permitted to vote on it.)
Another law requires the State Board of Education to have an accreditation system based on improvement, referencing the constitutional requirement for “intellectual, educational, vocational and scientific improvement.” Again, the adults don’t like to be held accountable, so the State Board of Education, Governor Kelly, Department of Education officials, and the Legislature look the other way.
Accreditation is routinely granted despite the fact that student outcomes are declining from levels that were never acceptable. ACT College Readiness in English, Reading, Math, and Science has plummeted from 32% in 2015 to just 18% now, and the state assessment shows that about one-third of students are below grade level in reading and math.
The state’s higher education is also not without accountability issues. Taxpayer funding for the state’s six primary universities exceeded $1 billion this year, including money for the KU Medical Center and the veterinary school and ESARP at Kansas State University. Each university received significant funding increases over the last five years, but 4-year graduation rates are 55% or below.
Governor Kelly likes to call herself the education governor, but her veto of the Promise Scholarship expansion shows she is really the government governor. To her, government systems matter more than anything else. She likes education provided by government-run schools and thumbs her nose at respectable private institutions like the Heartland Welding Institute and Wichita Technical Institute. Kelly provides cover to the adults in public education administration with no regard whatsoever for the hundreds of thousands of students it leaves behind each year.
The next time someone says public education is accountable to taxpayers, ask if they believe schools should lose their accreditation if they violate state law or have perpetually low student outcomes. If that person is a legislator, ask if they would vote to strip accreditation in either circumstance.
Any response other than a resounding ‘yes’ means they are more concerned about the system or their re-election than about educating students.
