You might think that the State Board of Education would be laser-focused on addressing the serious literacy problem in Kansas. The map below shows that more than 150,000 students in Kansas have a limited ability to read and may be functionally illiterate.
Rather than address the issue, the State Board of Education and the Kansas State Department of Education is once again allowing school districts to violate state laws intended to improve student outcomes.
According to an editorial by Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute — which owns the Sentinel — KSDE is apparently ignoring parts of the Every Child Can Read Act passed by the Kansas Legislature in 2022.
The act requires literacy to be attained through the Science of Reading, evidence-based reading instruction, and necessary competencies to attain proficiency. KSA 72-3622 requires school districts to report precise information on or before June 30 of each year:
- The number of third-grade students in the school district,
- The screening and assessment data from at least the preceding two school years that the school district is using as a baseline to evaluate student progress in literacy; and
- The percentage of students who are proficient, moving toward proficiency, or deficient, with percentages provided for all students and student subgroups.
On Aug. 7, KPI requested copies of this year’s reports for each district. After weeks of back-and-forth with KSDE General Counsel Scott Gordon, he finally sent some documents on September 18. However, so much information is missing that it raises questions about whether the legally required reports even existed when KPI first made the request.
According to Trabert, reports were provided for only 229 of the state’s 286 districts, and none of them contained all the required information.
- Outcomes were reported in Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 instead of proficient, moving toward proficiency, or deficient, and no definitions were provided for the reported groups.
- Instead of reporting data for at least the preceding school years for all students (the district average) and student sub-groups (low-income, racial categories, etc.), only the district average for the 2024-25 school year was provided.
“Districts were required to fill out report templates prepared by KSDE; therefore, much of the blame falls on Commissioner Randy Watson’s team for not requesting all the required information, and for either not knowing or not caring that 67 districts didn’t submit anything,” Trabert wrote. “We asked Gordon to provide the missing information on September 18, but he didn’t respond. We wrote again on September 24 and copied Watson, State Board of Education Chair Cathy Hopkins, and Vice Chair Danny Zeck, but no one responded as of today.”
State Board of Ed ignores outcomes to defend bureaucrats
Despite a 6-4 “conservative majority” on the Kansas State Board of Education, Trabert said the board continues to defend the “system” rather than make student-focused decisions.
“Unfortunately, students are arguably worse off, as the system-focused board members often prevail,” Trabert wrote. “For example, the new board knows school districts violate state laws requiring over $500 million of targeted funding to be spent on ‘above and beyond’ services for students who are academically at risk, but won’t take action to help students.”
Moreover, the board recently voted 7-3 to dumb down proficiency standards to make the system look better with higher achievement levels, with State Board of Education members Dombrosky, O’Brien, and Potter dissenting.
“They bought KSDE’s claim that they didn’t reduce rigor, while expecting Kansans to believe 8th-grade reading proficiency jumped from 22% last year to 46%,” Trabert wrote. “That’s like trying to convince someone it’s raining when your dog is whizzing on their boots.”
Additionally, ACT and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores continue to decline — as did state assessments before the board lowered the standards.
College readiness in English, Reading, Math, and Science declined from 32% in 2015 to just 18% now. NAEP says Kansas has more students who are likely functionally illiterate (Below Basic) than proficient.