Educational success requires a balanced assessment system that combines multiple quantitative and qualitative metrics, including state assessments, NAEP scores, graduation rates, postsecondary success rates, and chronic absenteeism data, rather than relying on single measures; effective educational improvement depends on using data to drive instruction, maintaining quality over quantity in staffing, and ensuring literacy instruction is foundational to all other learning outcomes.
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Education Funding Task Force 05/27/2026Added:
Please, I've got I think I have most of them. If you haven't sent yours down yet, please do that. So then that's one less thing. We don't have to worry about them. And I can do some signing while Representative McDonald introduces her intern, which is a lovely tradition we have here at the House. Um, I'd like to represent or introduce stand up. Um, my intern, her name is Melanie Schwarz, and she is a elementary education major from Overland Park, but she goes to school at the University of Wisconsin. So, yay.
She said she's like really excited about the education funding task force. So, glad she's here.
A as she should be because she'd like to uh get paid someday, right? Um we are going to get started and hop right into our agenda and uh first up we are going to have an overview of current outcomes and results and that is going to be brought to us by Jenny and Matthew. I'm just going to let you two go ahead and control your own microphone and switch out when you need to. And um would you guys prefer to take questions as they come or at the end?
or on kind of common sense breaks.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Jennifer Light, KLRD. Um, I am happy to if it looks like that people have lots of questions, pause at any point when we're talking.
Uh, you're going to get me for a little bit and then Matthew's going to talk a little bit more in depth on some of the later sheets. And so just so that we uh cover the people who are standing at the podium, I'll make sure that we if we have questions that are on the topics that I'm covering, we get that before we move on to Matthew standing up here. And then of course, if you think of something later, I'm happy to go ahead and come back up and talk about whatever or Matthew can answer it.
We'll play tag team on on the answering side, too. So, welcome back everybody.
Thank you. So, you have a large packet of information in front of you. We did try to provide at least some of this last week to the members that we knew were going to be here and then we did provide more last night. Um, we appreciate your patience as we continue to try this new method of getting things to you slightly earlier.
Um, so if you did not receive something from us either last week or last night and you believe you should have, please talk to either Matthew or myself afterwards so that we can make sure you are on the list and we can figure out why you did not.
I do want to start by saying that we're going to do an overview of what uh the outcomes currently are, but there is going to be further presentations by KSD by Dr. Nent. Did I say that correctly?
So close. Okay. Uh later today. So if we can't answer it, hopefully she will have more insight than uh we do at the beginning of the meeting.
All of that being said, I'd like to start with the first piece of paper in front of you after the celestial blue sheet, which should be a school district's student absentee rates for fiscal years 21 through fiscal years 2025.
There was some discussion last time about absenteeism and what the last several years have been like. And so we wanted to make sure we provided to you a five-year look back on what absentee rates have been. As you can see, as with almost all of the KRD documents, we start with statewide totals and US totals at the top and then break it down by each school district. Uh from there, in 2021, the statewide total was 17.5% and in 2025, it is at 19.5%.
So there is a slight increase of 2% from uh 2021 to 2025 but you can see that it has dropped significantly since 2023 when it was up at 21.8.
The US totals that we have are from 2022 and 2023 and that would be 31% in 22. So you can see we are well below that at 24.5 and then 27.8% 8% in 2023, whereas Kansas was at 21.8%.
The tables have some color coding for them in the 5-year absentee rate and the school year 25 difference to the statewide total.
Uh, as it gets darker in color, it increases.
I thought we had put a key in here.
I don't see the key. So, I'm going to look at I'm going to look to my table to make sure that that key is correct as to how this is working.
>> Uh, Madame Chair, members of the committee, I apologize that was on me.
So, the darker the kind of pink purple, the higher the positive number. So, in essence, for the five-year, the higher their five-year average absenteeism rate, the brighter or darker the yellow is kind of towards the lower or the negative side. Uh, it was just an attempt to kind of put in a gradient and see if that um was helpful at just kind of drawing to. So basically the darker and and more vibrant the color on either spectrum, the further from um either the further from zero or kind of the further from the average either of them would go in that spectrum.
>> Does anybody have uh Representative McDonald?
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. On the back it's cut off when it when we're trying to read the footnote. So I didn't know if if there was much more to that sentence.
I believe the rest of that sentence says it may not equal 100% when you're at the end. We will go ahead and get that updated for the online version of it as well as make sure that the online version has the chart for everybody.
Apologize about the cut off and we can get that fixed.
Thank you. Did anybody else have any questions about the gradients or the key? All right, Jennifer, please go ahead. Thank you. Okay, that is kind of just the overview on absenteeism. If there is questions or comments that we want to talk about with absenteeism, I'm happy to stand for any now or we can just move on to just the overview of the documents we have in front of us and take questions later.
>> Uh, Chair Gats, >> thank you, Madam Chair. Uh Jennifer, thanks for this. On the not having US totals in certain years, is there a definitive explanation on that or just I was curious.
>> Sure. You can see that there are asterisks. Uh on the last page, page 66, it says in 2021, there was data not consistently reported nationally due to the pandemic disruptions. And then for 24 and 25, their national figures have not yet been finalized and produced on a from the national level. And so therefore, we don't have the totals for those yet. Once we get them, we are always happy to continue to update these tables for people.
>> Thanks for showing me the asterisks. You had already answered my question. I just didn't look. Thank you.
>> Uh, Vice Chair Ericson.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for this. Just a couple of quick questions as you were looking at the data. Um, first of all, I noticed Chase County on page two.
Is there any background or explanation as to why their numbers are like they are the pink and then on the right column the difference is 71.1% is there looks like they've got pretty high numbers there. I just didn't know if there was an because that's an outlier to what we're seeing in the rest of it.
So is there an explanation that you know of? Madam Chair, I don't have an explanation as I stand up here, but I'm happy to go ahead and touch base with the rest of my team and see if they had some extra information that I do not have and we can get that answer for you.
>> Yeah, I'm just wondering if something extraordinary happened to lead to that outlier there. My other question is as you looked at the data, did you did you look at like percent of students so that we could get are there patterns related to the size of district versus, you know, so we could maybe get some type of sense of demographic or size of district and absentee rate. Thank you, Madam Chair.
>> Madam Chair, I know that was one of the things we discussed that we would be compiling for you. uh that is not ready as of today's meeting just with all of the different aspects we were trying to get aspect a little bit of everything to you for this meeting that is still planning to come in a followup which would be more of a ratio not just of so you'd get an idea of the density of districts as well as just the absentee but that is a followup that will be coming in a either in a later email or in a future meeting.
>> Do you have a follow-up Senator? Okay.
Um, it's been suggested that that 90% in 2005 for Chase County, I'm sorry, for 2025, uh, might be a typo.
Um, Dr. Nent.
>> Yes, thank you so much. It might be an input error on their part. So, it could have been something they submitted incorrectly or that's pretty high. So, it flags me immediately. I want to go back and check on that. But I would imagine it's an error on someone's part.
>> Thank you. If you can let us know, um, if the department's watching, maybe somebody will send you an answer to that question. Uh, Chair Williams.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I'm looking at I'm just going to use one as an example. 500 District 500 Kansas City, four out of 10 kids over four out of 10 kids are gone on average at any one time. Is this part, do you know? And if not, someone else can maybe respond. Is this part of accreditation to lower absenteeism? Because clearly there's a correlation between outcomes if you're not in your seat. Do we do we know?
>> Madam Chair, I don't have information on that right the second. If uh we don't have any answer for you today, I'm happy to follow up with some more information.
>> And Madam Chair's one last >> Yes.
>> One last item. And this is really scary honestly because I'm just looking at their longitudinal performance for third grade ELA for Kansas City and it's between 53.77 and 60.19% of your third graders that are not at that are in the first level. That means they are below grade level at age three.
I'm just putting out that alert and warning that this I really appreciate this absenteeism because it's identifying part of the problem is they're not there and pretty scary.
Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Any other questions? Uh Senator Francisco.
>> Um thank you u Madam Chair. Um I think it makes sense to look um to see if there are just um typo errors entering.
And so I would also ask that they might look at 492 um Butler Flint Hills um because the 2025 information was 48.2.
>> Thank Thank you. Um we can certainly put that on our request. Dr. Nent, did you catch that one? Okay. Thank you. Uh any other questions or comments?
Seeing none, we'll move along. Okay. The next document that I'm going to talk about is the 11 by17 that says Kansas comparative information fiscal year 2007 through fiscal year 2025.
Just as a refresher because we've hit summer break. When we say fiscal year, we also mean school year that ends in that. So that would be school year 26 uh school year 2006 2007 to school year two 2024 to 2025 is what this data is that we're looking at.
So this is a highle overview of documents uh and an updated version of a document that you all received last year from uh in this in this task force. We did provide a little bit more of a breakout uh as a as per the discussions that we that you've been having about outcomes on the first page with everything that has got the blue outcomes. These are outcomes that are currently being tracked by KSDE that have been discussed within this uh task force at some point within the last year. So we do have the Kansas the NAPE scores which go every other year and then I would remind you that in 2021 they were not given due to the COVID uh pandemic and so they restarted in 22. So you will see a two-year gap between 19 and 22. That is not that is just the way that the test information happened due to the pandemic.
We also provided the Kansas state assessments for ELA and math. There was uh from the information we pulled from KSD's data central. As we have discussed before, the assessments have changed over the last 20 years. And so the way that it was reported up through 2013 is by an average. And then starting in 2015, we broke it out into the levels two, three, and four and levels three and four. Uh, as the discussions have been about those two different breaking points for the levels in the state assessments, we did also call out that 2020 there was COVID and the testing didn't occur. Uh, so there are no numbers or percentages for those years.
After the state assessments, you can see that the ACT scores we have going all the way back to 2007. We have the Kansas average composite score. In 2007, it was 21.9 and then in 2025 it was 19.1.
Um, the information for the ACT scores comes both from KSD's data central back to a certain date, I believe it's 2016, and then comes directly from the ACT state um, profiles that they have for the previous years.
You can see at the bottom of that section how Kansas compares to the national average composite score. So again in 20 in 2007 Kansas had an average composite score of 21.9 and the national average was 21.2. So Kansas was above the national average. And then in 2025 the Kansas average composite score was 19.1 and the national average composite was 19.4. Alo slightly below the national composite for the SAT scores up through so from 2005 through 2015 or 16 the SAT scores were done in a 2400 and not a 1600. Uh the SAT scores for that time frame are um not currently available on the public side of the SAT, but they are available upon upon request. And so we have requested that information from the SAT um body, but we have not received it back yet. Once we do, we will update the data in that section. But since 2017, we've been working off of the 1600 score again. And so we do have the scores for 17 through 25. You can see that the Kansas average total score in 25 was 1238 and then the national average was 1029.
And as you can see in the estimated percentage of grade of graduates tested, you can see that it's a significantly smaller portion of students who are taking the SAT, anywhere between 2 and 4% since 2017 as opposed to between 70 and 70 and 82% over the course of that same time. for the ACT.
The graduation rates we have broken out by free lunch, reduced price lunch, special education, and English language learner. And um we have the total graduation rates going back to 2007.
Again, uh just for timing purposes and discussions with the KSDE and um our own internal discussions, we do not have we will come back with the information for free lunch, reduced price, special ed, and ELLL for 20 or 2007 through 2009.
And then the other thing I would note here is that in 25 you can see that we have combined the free lunch and reduced price lunch into one section that says 86.3%.
That's because that's uh when you break it out on the KSD website, those are combined. We will work with KSD to get those broken out for you in a future update, but we did want to provide something that would give you an idea of where free and reduced lunch was. So, I just want to note that 25 is combined free and reduced lunch, not broken out for that reason, not because they won't have the information, just because of the timing.
All of this is stuff that we have discussed at different other meetings.
I'd be happy to stand for questions on that before I move into the post-secondary success or happy to finish that off and then stand for questions on the outcomes side of this paper.
I think I will go ahead and continue.
No, >> thank you, Representative McDonald.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just looking at graduation rates and was curious about national graduation rate averages. Uh, I don't think that's on here. So, if you wanted to add that, that I think would help us have a little context. Thank you.
>> We can absolutely get that, Chair Williams.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for putting this together. So, just making sure I'm reading this correctly. So, it looks like the NAPE score starting in 2007, CAS was really killing it between fourth, highest in the nation to uh 14th and then now we're kind of now reaching middle to second, you know, not not the top half. Anyway, so my question is it looks to me that if you look at our state assessments on level three and four, which is what is considered proficient, that it seems like there's a correlation with NAPE except for last year. Was that am I reading that right?
It's trending the same direction.
And then if so, I guess my question is would we expect to see NAPE scores in 2025 to go up by 10 points since they did with our state assessment assessment since there's been this correlation.
Just wondering.
>> So, Madam Chair, it's my understanding Dave scores are given every other year and I believe they won't be given until or they were given this spring for the 26 and so we'll see the 26 numbers, not a 25 number. Um it is possible that it would see the same sort of trend uh since they are different students being tested in fourth grade and eighth grade at that time as opposed to the same students being tested in fourth grade and then sixth grade and 26. I would hesitate to make a decision or a declaration on what the NAPE scores are going to look like for this year. Um, but I would agree that if you look at the trend lines for uh percentages for the levels, it does seem to be going in the same direction as the NAPE scores overall.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair.
>> Thank you. Any other questions?
Dr. Gibson.
>> Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Aaron, if I can go back one additional step first to the last because I'm I'm I'm going back to the previous presentation then I'm going to jump back to this one on absetism rate. Can we talk about the methodology because for example I look at the district in which I serve. We reported to the state that our attendance rate in 2025 was uh 95%.
But that's not what's reflected here. So I didn't know if the methodology was different as to what we report for KSD and what's public or if there was a different metric used on calculating that.
>> Dr. Dr. Jes I think u and I'm please correct my pronunciation. It's going to take me a minute to get it.
>> You you can just call me uh dean uh representative but it is dean zites. Um thank you. Um, so my understanding is, and based on the data that's on the on that sheet, uh, Dr. Gibson, this appears to be our chronic absenteeism rates, not just absenteeism rates. And so these and that I was double checking our figures, and they do match up with chronic absenteeism. So this would be a measure not of the percentage of time that students are actually in the classroom but rather the percentage of students who have been who have missed 10% or more of the entire year which equ equates to about 10 18 days depending on the on the district. Right? So um that's why it does not mean that they've actually missed 40% of their time in education if they have a chronic absenteeism rate of of 40%.
Dr. um Director Rooker.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I just to make sure I'm hearing and processing that right of the 5% that you're reporting in your numbers, whatever the percent on this paper is that let's say it's 42% of the 5% are chronically absent. Is that how to interpret this chart versus the methodology behind it?
>> Doc, Dr. Zites.
>> And it's not doctor. Um I I I appreciate it, but no, not doctor. Um so uh no, it so yes uh uh um it the sheet that we have in front of us again the numbers line align with what we have for our chronic absenteeism. So that's what it appears to be. And so all that tells us is for um just like that first district there uh Neo Show, right? 101. All that tells us is that 19.9% of their 19.5 of their students in 2025 um were in the seat for they they missed um 10% or more of the total time they could have been in the seat. It doesn't tell us like if they only miss 10 days or if they miss 20 or 30 days. It's just that they miss 10 days or or more um or 10% or more rather. So the that's different from days in attendance where if you are reporting a measure of how many days out of the entire membership in the district the kiddo is actually in attendance. So, if a kiddo, you know, missed 10 days, they might be chronically absent, but they still might have over 90% attendance, right? Um, and, uh, Dr. Gibson or or Dr. Narter can speak more probably to that.
>> I have a couple of follow-up questions and I don't know if if you want to a answer them or if um, board member Porter wants to answer them.
When you when the accreditation process happens, does absenteeism get considered on whether to accredit or not to accredit?
It is a requirement that they report their absenteeism rates.
>> No, that they have an acceptable low rate of absenteeism. um it is a part of their district report card, but it does not hinder whether or not they are accredited based solely on attendance.
Thank you. Um that's that surprises me. Um on that I had um Dr. Nuner and Representative McDonald. Dr. 9.
>> Yeah. So, to look at the attendance rate numbers, uh, in our district, for example, if we have a 95% attendance rate, that means throughout the year, we average 95% every day of the kids in there. The chronic absenteeism is at a student level.
And so, for our district, we might have 13.2% 2% of our kids missed more than 10% of the year and that could be for any reason. Um um but it is one of those thing whether it's doctors whether it's excused unexcused uh but that's tracked because back to representative Williams there is a correlation between chronic absenteeism and graduation rates academic performance. So with our accreditation model, that is one of the key factors that we work on is to make sure we're addressing why kids are missing more than 10% of the school year.
But that's on a student basis, not a daily >> how many kids are in the building.
>> Both uh Senator Ericson and I have a follow-up. I'm going to let her go first and then and then I I will go and haven't forgotten you, Representative.
>> Thank you and I appreciate it. I I believe I heard Dr. Nunes wonder say and correct me if I'm wrong that chronic absenteeism affects graduation rates.
However, if you look at the data, chronic absenteeism has gone um up and graduation rates have gone up.
So, how how does that square?
>> So, Dr. Knight's wondering.
>> So, when we'd work with a school district, if their graduation rates were low, we would always tell them first, go back to the early years and look at why do you have so many kids? Because if a when you look at an individual district, and I know statewide numbers are, you know, an average of 285 school districts, but when you look at an individual district that has low graduation rates, there's most likely a correlation that they also have high chronic absenteeism. And it it's just one thing that they need to look at and address. That doesn't mean necessarily every district, you know, we have a high graduation rate, but we still have 13% chronic absenteeism.
And it's something that we address heavily because if we don't turn that around, by the time they get into high school, there there is a correlation. It's not an exact, but that is one thing that we would always coach districts. You got to go back to the early years because one of your core issues is you have a lot of kids missing. It affects academics, it affects behavior, it affects so many things. So chronic absenteeism is a um a critical number for districts to look at.
>> Senator Ericson, thank you. and and I agree, but when you look at the data statewide, I mean, I'm looking at this chart and I'm looking at the absentee and the only thing going up is graduation rate. And I know we have a lot of discussion about this at that table, but it begs the question because I agree chronic absenteeism, kids fail, but that's not reflected in our graduation data. So again, I'm just wondering when you look at the data and you see every measure go down and graduation e even our postsecondary success is going down but graduation rates going up. I mean I just think it begs the question that we need to clearly define what do each of those indicators truly mean um in the context of the entire conversation. Thank you madam chair.
>> I think Dr. nines wonder wanted to uh respond.
>> Well, it might be worth looking at it a little differently and I this is just I try not to make up numbers, but I'm just kind of going off. You know, about 75% of our Kansas students are in 20 districts.
So, if we looked at those 20 districts, most of them are suburb. So, if you look at the largest population, I'm not asking for you to do more work, but the districts that have the highest population of kids may have I mean, you'll have outliers, you know, you've got Kansas City with the highest risk factors of any district in the state and just to the south is Blue Valley that has the low, you know, but those urban districts have a lot of number of students and they can really affect statewide averages where if you're looking at an individual district I would say as an individual district if you have high chronic absenteeism look at their graduation rates but it might be worth look because a lot of times when we looked at different data we had to look at the largest 20 because that's where 75 to8 80% of the 46,000 kids are.
And when you look at individuals, yeah, they may have high, but when you feed them into the statewide totals, kind of washes out. So, it might be worth looking at the largest 20.
>> I'm just thinking another way of looking at it. And I think the converse of what you're saying is also true though that if when it when it turns to average attendance, if you're a small district and you don't have a lot of kids, each child that's missing is a a higher percentage. But so it is a a complex issue, but um I be and director Rucker wants to weigh in on this particular line of conversation. Before I go there, I want to ask what I was going to ask and then we'll go to Representative McDonald. Um, so don't parents get a letter that says if your child's not attending you, they're not going to get promoted.
Is that correct?
>> It doesn't. the letters we send we we send one at five days then we send one at eight days and then we send one at 10 and then but it's not necessarily because you might be academically or you may u what typically happens when they get to a certain number then we report them to the county for resources to give them supports as to what is causing your child and they have to report to the county and sometimes they don't like getting that letter, but it it's trying to give them the supports to help them familywise to get their kid back in.
>> You can be chronically absent and still graduate if you have the grades and 60% is acceptable for diploma. So, I'm trying to paint a picture in my mind So that just kind of seems not right in a in in a way with with a with a generous graduation criteria.
Do you use 60% for your district to promote kids? As long as you have 60% averages in all of your classes, you get promoted. or do you do something different? I'm and I'm sorry for the background questions. I'm just trying to make sure that I'm understanding what you're telling me.
>> So, chronic absenteeism is an indicator that a kid is struggling.
That doesn't mean that they're not academically or they're not doing what we need. We just work with the parents to say if this continues, all research will show that your child is going to fall behind.
And we would rather have them at the the A to B, the top, but if you're consistently year after year, you're you're going to struggle to get promoted. We do have some kids that don't get promoted because they didn't meet the requirements, but we have some that show up every day and struggle. We just know chronic missing school is a leading indicator that you're going to struggle to be successful. So, our letters that go out is to let the parents know where they're at and then at some point at 10 days they have to go to a county resource to get supports because, you know, it's not always the child's fault that they're not there.
>> Thank Thank you. Um, Director Rooker, >> thank you, Madam Chair. I I just I don't want to discount that there there are plenty of reasons why a a child who is chronically absent may be an indicator of real problems. But I want to flip that around because my son had has a chronic illness that affect he was not correctly diagnosed till he was in it was spring of his seventh grade year. We worked very closely with his school administration because he was just physically not able to always show up to school. Therefore, he lapsed into this category.
Jack is currently in his second year of residency at University of Vermont Medical Center. So, he clearly had the the intervention and support at home to help and from the schools that he attended to help get us through a really rocky period of his life. And I don't want to discount that there are valid reasons why a child might be struggling to have his little self in the seat in school but not necessarily reflects an indicator that he's on track not to meet benchmarks and graduate appropriately. I also would be careful with socioeconomic factors that that play a part because you have parents of affluence who and means who say we're going to take a two-e trip to Europe. Now their kid has missed 10 days of school and it takes one round of flu in January for that child to tip into the the red zone of chronically absent for reasons that have nothing to do with with academic um inabilities to keep up. So, this is an interesting chart to look at and one piece of information, but I would be careful about drawing too many hard and fast conclusions from what we're seeing in this data because of all of the different variables that might come into play.
>> But at the same time, I wouldn't give outliers too much power because I I think some of what you cited is an exception that proves the rule. Um, Representative McDonald, >> I my thinking was a little bit along, Director Rooker. Um, but I because I needed some clarification. It is helpful to know that this is chronic absenteeism, not just absenteeism. That really changes the framework in my mind.
But I have only ever lived in and worked in large districts. Um, we have homebound programs that, you know, whether it's a mental illness or a physical illness, there are like like she said, chronic reasons to have chronic absence. Um, does this chart include children who might be on homebound services? And also, how often do districts offer homebound services to kids who, you know, need you to meet them where they are physically, but mentally they can with some support still be academically successful.
>> Thank you. Thank you. Um Jenny, do you know the answer to that or would this state would the department like to answer? I see Dr. Nent shaking her head. So um we'll call on her. A student uh Representative McDonald, thanks for the question. A student who is um on homebound services, then they're are they are not considered absent because they are receiving supports.
And if I could just ask the followup.
>> Yes, you may.
>> How common is it for a district to have homebound services? I know that's not anything in our writings here. Um, but is that offered universally or No, >> I believe boards set up individual policies on how to handle homebound services. most offer um for reasonable uh you know reasons. I I haven't ever served in a district that didn't offer it when the need arose.
>> Thank you. Because I think that would be kind of an ADA type of thing. Uh even if it's if it's temporary. So that the child who's sick at home and getting tutoring is not part of this statistic which is helpful to know. Um, any other questions or comments?
Uh, Mr. Zites, >> just uh, excuse me, just one more clarification that kind of goes along with what Director Rooker has shared and and and others for the chronic absenteeism. The way it's defined and the way it's collected, it explicitly includes both excused and unexcused.
It's simply a measure of whether or not that kiddo is actually in attendance for greater than 50% of the day on any given day regardless of whether they are going to a doctor's appointment or whether they are visiting a museum or you know participating in some other extracurricular activity. So, it's even um within our special education and title services team, we use this information as as an indicator of when we see higher numbers that that causes us to pay more attention to ask follow-up questions of districts to help dig into it. But taken by itself, it's it doesn't paint a complete picture of what's actually going on. So, you have to take it as one data point with the others.
>> Thank you. And I think we're in charge of the data we collect and it would be nice if we collected that um both ways because that would be much more meaningful for us. Representative Steel.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your explanation and you bring up a good point about excused and unexcused. Is there a statewide standard of what counts as an unexcused versus an excused or is that a district definition?
Mr. Zites, you looked like you wanted to answer that or or I can't I'm okay. Dr. Dr. Nineswander, you you and I don't have a clean line of vision to each other, but Dr. Nines wonder, please go ahead.
that excused and unexcused is a local decision because I've been I was a high school principal at a school district that unless it was a doctor's note or it was something legit. If you went on the family trip, they did not count that as excused.
The next district very flexible. If the parent excused, they counted it. So it the excused and unexcused is really a local decision which also um but with this number here you know most of the letters we send we already know why and some of them it's parents fault some of them it is a legitimate health reason you know and but we're a rural district so we know every parent we know every kid and sometimes, okay, by policy we have to send you the letter, but we also know your child is dealing with a health issue.
Are there supports? So, Representative Steel.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I think that that also causes confusion and and potentially can skew data one way or the other because there's not a uniform. This is excuse, this isn't excuse. I understand local being different, rural, urban. I I get that, but I think that that plays into to this as well is there's not a consistent kind of like graduation rate and passing and moving on. What one district says is a 70, one district says is a 60. That's vastly different. Thank you.
I my thoughts are running along the same line of yours because I can recall the bill that we heard um not this session but last session where parents who are uh we're requesting that um if you're going to the state fair for 4 type exhibitions where you are learning biology um in take in human uh animal you know animal science in those they wanted that to be to count because you are covering ing standards, but it it like Dr. Ninponder said, it can vary very much from district to district. So, it it sounds like this is a a good topic to keep um discussing. Any other questions?
All right, seeing none, um Dr. Gibson, you started us down this uh and I think you said you had two questions. Would you like to go to your second question?
Madam Chair, sorry for the birdwalk, but I just started thinking about the data and it did not correlate and I thought there might be a misunderstanding amongst the group. Um, yeah, I did have a secondary question and I don't recall the exact year. So, I'm looking at ACT and now I'm looking at percent of grads tested. Uh, at some point the state and most districts signed on to provide that opportunity for every student. And I know there are exceptions to that rule, whether it be an IEP, a 504, or a parent opt out, but that number doesn't seem to change much. And I'm I'm a little confused about there was a time that mainly students who were heading into a four-year track would take the ACT by choice, and now it is we provide it as an option, sometimes twice in their high school experience in certain districts like my own. I just I'm confu confused a little bit about that percent of students participating.
>> Thank you for Dr. Dr. Gibson for that question and because I put that in because when I was a freshman legislator, we were waiting to see how the the uh p the anticipated spike of kids who were getting tested would change that. And um I was told that that that number actually stayed kind of flat, but I'm going to let Jennifer put uh the official uh methodology uh there and what they found on it.
So, Madam Chair, I I do know of what um Dr. Gibson is speaking. I don't have at the top of my brain what year that happened. Um so, I would have to double check what year that happened. My understanding was from conversations with KSD over the time is that it didn't produce a spike that was anticipated in more test taking um by students that the amount of students stayed about the same but it due to the fact that it was being paid for there was less burden on the parents that were happening at that point. Happy to double check what year that was and get a little bit more information on that.
>> Thank you. And and we do see some variance because in 2020 that was 82% and now we're we're at 73% which is kind of where we we were that far back but I think Dr. Nineswander is doing a very good Dr. Harwood impression and being our phone a friend today. Dr. Nineswander go ahead and help us out.
>> Well it was just because I met in the basement here with a few people that were are even in the room and if you because I was there at the time. So if you look at from 2019 to 2020, we jumped from 72% of our kids taking the ACT to 82%.
And then it went down to 79 and then it dropped back down to 73. I don't know why whether it that was co time. I don't know why, but it's kind of like there was a a spike and you can see we I remember that year we dropped our composite by a full 1% and then uh participation started. I don't know if it was not as exciting anymore because it was free, but I believe the year that the legislature started paying for it was the 2020 school year. And that was the year because I remember my son was the first year that it was paid for. I was like, "Yes, let's get this through." and and then COVID hit and but I believe that was the first year.
>> Uh Nick, were you wanting to confirm that that's the correct that's the correct year?
Thank you. That's the um the same year.
Um thank you for that history, Vice Chair Ericson.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. And this may be a question that we need to get an answer to, but as I'm looking at that, I'm just curious.
the state contract with ACT, what is it?
Is it based on the number of students who actually take it? Is it based on? We pay for every student whether they take it or not. I'm just curious as to how we pay for every student to take it because it doesn't look like there's, you know, an increase. If we were wanting to remove a financial burden, it just doesn't look we had that one year of bump up, but it doesn't look like that's sustaining. And I might throw out a very unpopular notion here, but um you know, our scores are going down. I don't know about the rest of you who have been parents, but when my kids had to pay for their own car, they took a lot better care of it than when uh maybe mom and dad gave it to them. And maybe there's not the skin in the game. I don't know how we get around that, but paying for it for every child. I don't I don't know. But I'm more curious about how we fund the test for every student. So thank you Dr. Ninponder remembers some of that history.
Dr. Ninponder.
>> So during the time of the contract with ACT, they looked at Kansas compared to our population, other states that take the ACT. So the contract was based off of an estimate of what it would cost, but they only build the state based off the number of kids that actually got it once for free.
So it was it wasn't a flat amount, but that was six years ago, but at the time signed a contract, but they'd only bill us.
But that was nationwide. the number I think the number of kids that took it started going down because I remember ACT was concerned that there weren't that many kids through that time and they were on a billable not a contract amount but that was six years ago.
>> Thank you. I represented McDonald.
>> I just remember during COVID that was a time like 2021 when universities stopped requiring ACT and started looking at other things too. So that might that is a change that has happened since we passed this bill to start paying for ACT scores. So that might be something that we look at in the future to save some money.
>> Thank you.
Any other questions on this topic?
Uh, Vice Chair Ericson.
>> Thank you, M. I'm sorry. Just along those lines, do we know how much approximately we pay for the ACT test?
I'm just ballpark curious.
>> So, nobody is remembering off the top of their head, but our fantastic research department uh is is uh thinks they know where the answer is handy.
>> I don't know what they think it costs anymore. And then a after the this line of questioning, we're going to take a break and move to the one o'clock portion of our of our agenda and we'll come back to this presentation because we do have um someone on on on Zoom.
Madam chair, I do have that information, but in lie of the fact that we have uh the person on Zoom, uh I would defer to answering the question about it until after that presentation and then we would be happy to come back up and continue the discussion on the Kard documents.
>> Okay. Thank you very very much. Okay.
Um, so we are going to play hopscotch on our agenda today and jump down to 1 p.m. and that is the presentation on effective indicators of student success. Our guest is Margarite Rosa who is the director of edunomics lab at Georgetown University.
>> Hi everyone. Just uh nod if you can hear me. Margarite, could you wait just a second? Uh, board member Porter, I am so sorry. I did not see your hand.
>> All right. Well, thank you very much, Margarite. Go ahead.
>> I was just going to say not if you can hear me.
Okay, great. All right. So, I'm gonna share my slides. Um, see if we can >> and for those in the room looking for the slides, we don't have them currently, but we're in the process of getting them for you. I'll save you from digging around papers. Margarite, go ahead.
>> Yeah, I am uh now not a a WebEx expert trying to figure out which how to do that. Um, it's not uh you just see the WebEx picture, right?
>> We do. We're um getting your PowerPoint sent to our tech person and they should be pulling that up very shortly.
>> Okay, let me try something else here.
Yeah, I'm not I'm not um seeing a way to share my slides.
>> Okay. um Artech operator in the room has a copy of your slides and he's the one who will pull them up. If I'm um and he's nodding his head yes, so very shortly you should see them um you should see it pulled up in front of you.
I apologize for the delay.
>> Yeah, no problem. So I I was essentially going to share them from my screen, but it doesn't seem to want to let me do that. I'm not really sure why, but um but I'll just give you a little bit of context. Edenomics lab is um a research and data and training center at uh Georgetown, and we do a lot of analysis that is designed to um help education systems use data to drive improvements.
And so I'm bringing some of our our data today. Um the one of the questions I got is sort of what metrics matter to to watch over time and and so we spend a lot of time thinking about that.
Edenomics lab isn't just about the outcomes. It's very much also about the money. We think about how how to leverage the money to maximize um outcomes for students. So if you jump to the next slide um what you can uh see somebody's going to be able to forward them, I'm hoping. Okay, great. There are some animations. So just listen carefully to when I say jump and and you'll um we can keep make sure we get head through it quickly. Um, sorry.
Yeah, but we have So, here what we have is in in Kansas, what you see is an ROI graph here on the right. And um, spending is um, over the last decade or so, has outpaced inflation, not by a lot, but just uh, by a bit. And that um, you can see are two metrics that we think are of critical importance. And these are NAPE reading, fourth grade reading, and eighth grade math. And I'll give you a sense of why we think those are critical. Um, but in in uh fourth grade reading is foundational for students to unlock the rest of what K12 education has to offer. If we haven't gotten kids up to speed on reading by fourth grade, um really either we're spending a lot more money on students through their special education programs or they're sitting in classes not getting the full value out of those classes of all different subject matters. Um but it appears that most kids really can learn to read by fourth grade. And if we give kids proper instruction and proper opportunities to practice, most kids, even kids with reading disabilities, should be reading by fourth grade. So, um, we really carefully want to track those scores.
That's why that one matters. As you can see, that trend obviously it fell during the pandemic, but it was falling before and falling since. And the next time NAPE scores will come out is in January.
And the reason those scores are helpful is they help us gauge things across time even when states change assessments and so on. The the next score that matters critically for uh what we look at especially at a state level is eighth grade math. And that's because 8th grade math is predictive of so many different outcomes for students um for their for their for themselves for their um uh their graduation um opportunities through high school, what they do postsecary, if they happen to go to college, what kind of majors they take on, whether they graduate from college, what careers they have, whether they go to college or not, their lifetime earnings, and even more so the state's future economy. So, um you know, it just seems like it's one score, but it's a score that is predictive of all these other things that we care about for individuals and for populations. And so, we we don't want to see drops in that one. And what you can see here is not unlike many other states in the country, but that Kansas has has fallen over the last decade with a recent bit of an uptick in math, but really a long way to go. It puts it puts students about a year and a half behind uh today's students where they were a decade ago.
So, um you know, that's that's why we pay attention to those. Um, I'm okay with people stop with me with questions along the way, but you'll you'll just have to cut me off because I'm I may not uh be able to see a hand or anything else like that. Um, otherwise I'm like the Energizer Bunny. I'll just keep going. Okay. In the in the next picture, um, what we have is a scatter plot. Uh, hopefully we can advance to jump to the next one. Uh, just keep going one more.
There we go. Okay. So here what you see are Kansas districts and it's not all the districts only the ones with 25 to 50% low income. So these are similarish school districts. These are their fourth grade reading scores um and their p per pupil expenditures. And just for a second a way to read this graph is the circles are all districts. The smaller ones are smaller districts, but in the upper right hand corner, those are districts that spend a little bit more and get higher outcomes. And as you go clockwise, so down to the right, these are districts that also spend a lot but have lower outcomes. Uh, move to the lower left and those are ones that spend less and have lower outcomes. And then in that last quadrant, I guess up at the upper left, these are ones that spend less but are are beating the odds for the students that they serve. Um, we would call those our ROI superstars. And if you click two more times to advance the slides, two circles should pop up.
Um, there you go. So, let's just compare these two. And the one in the upper left is a district. It has somewhere between 25 and 50% low-income students. and it has some really strong outcomes for fourth grade reading. Um it it's it's not spending more than the average and yet you're up that they're at over 70% of its kids are on grade level for reading or or or are at uh level three or four in the on the Kansas assessment.
In the lower right hand you what you see is the opposite. you see the more money there, but um you know down there at roughly a third or lower of the students are reading at grade level. And these are the kind of data metrics that I think you know that we find that districts need to grapple with regularly if they're going to seriously commit to um to getting their students back up on track. What we find is that uh district leaders, principles, um even teachers in the lower right hand quadrant don't know they're in the lower right hand quadrant. When confronted with that, usually what they say is, well, we have a lot of high need students that we serve. And they say, well, actually all the districts that you see here have similarly, you know, 25 to 50% low-income students. And then the next phrase is often like, well, we're we don't have much money. we don't have the resources to be able to do everything we want. And then then then the response is well actually you have more than than potentially average resources at least in this state. And then that is when leaders take seriously the task of of trying to fix it. How do we turn around and get better outcomes for our kids? Um but they have to go through this iteration of thinking about it. The data can't be something we don't really look at most days or that we go all the way through budget season and we don't, you know, acknowledge. It has to be something that we're confronting and engaging with all the time. So, I don't think we need new metrics. We just need to use them. So, if we go to the next slide, and you know, I said eighth grade uh math is one I care about a lot. Here I pulled the the slice. These are just districts with 50 to 75% low income. So these are higher poverty districts um than the previous picture. By the way, all of these data you can see which districts are which are on our website and um the link there I think I put in South Carolina, but should be Kansas scatter plots. But if you go to the edgenomics lab and look for the scatter plots, this is where they are and you can the the link should be on on um on the slides. But I think I may have put the wrong state on. Anyway, so um had I had South Carolina in the brain for another project in the last couple of days, but anyway, so these are um can Kansas districts with 7 50 to 75% poverty. These are their eighth grade math scores. And again, if you click two more times, some more circles will pop up, but you can really see that um individual districts are getting wildly different outcomes with their dollars.
So what we would see here is that we've got to figure out how for the districts on the lower half of the curve, how they can um take rethink the way they're committing their resources, recommmit to getting these kind of outcomes.
Understand that that you know if you're at fewer than 20% of your kids that are at eighth at grade level for eighth grade math, we have permanently affected their future. and um and and find ways to to refocus on um on getting these metrics up. Um and when we find that when um people at all levels in the system kind of uh grapple with the data and wrestle at it and go through all the stages of processing what could possibly be standing in the way, how can we fix those things? um and get to the point of rolling up their sleeves, then that's when you start to see uh broad systemwide improvement there. Um so you Yes.
>> What what page number are you on in your PowerPoint?
>> Uh so that would be page four.
>> Does that make sense? Does that look right?
>> Okay.
Thank Thank you. We we now have our hard hard copies and uh the room was trying to figure that out. Uh you may >> well if you go look up the data online you'll see I made a mistake in the footer. It says SC-CAP plots. If you you want to look up the scatter plots then the Kansas one would be KS- scatterplots. So they're by state but they're all on our website. You can mouse over every circle and see which district it is. Um, Kansas already has lots of districts that are beating the odds for its students and lots that are not. And part of what um it the work it takes for state to drive that kind of improvement is you know going district by district grappling with the data um bringing people together to say what what is it that we can that stands between us and getting these kinds of outcomes for our students and let's roll up our sleeves and get it to work. And if it's that we don't have the the the right people in the classroom, if it means that we're not allocating our time properly with kids, if we're not focusing on these kinds of things enough, if we're not, you know, giving kids enough strong opportunities to do math, there are districts that have done math classes two times a day. There are districts that put their strongest teachers to teach math because it matters so much. you know that um uh that will pay math teachers more so they can draw in some of the strongest math teachers and keep them there because they often have many other job market labor market opportunities um and so on.
But part of this is is being really honest with each other and with parents that these scores matter for your kids.
And we're going to work with your kids to make sure that your kids have the same opportunities in life as as other ones elsewhere in the state do.
Um, if we go to the next graph, I I wanted to bring one other uh metric just just because we have this one. This is the chronic absenteeism rate. So higher absenteeism um ignore the blue boxes there. I think these are uh probably not the best way to phrase that. But on the bottom is higher um absenteeism. So those are lower outcomes, but it's actually absenteeism. And um once again, if you if you click twice, you'll see two circles pop up. But you can see that otherwise similar districts get very different levels have very different levels of chronic absenteeism where the one on the bottom has a sort of a third of its more than a third of its students are chronically absent. That makes it very very difficult for a school district to um to to affect reading and math if the kids are not there. Right?
And if a third of your class is not there regularly, that disrupts actually that disrupts learning for everybody because it means that you constantly have kids in the room who weren't there yesterday or last week or whatever. And that makes it just excruciatingly hard for teachers to teach. So, um it's another measure we look at um really, you know, regularly to make absolutely sure that we're um you know, getting setting kids up for success at schools.
And um we're seeing a lot of states work on this metric with weekly dashboards to show how uh chronic you know how attendance is playing out by week by school with a leaderboard on ones that are beating the odds and um sort of doing um by hook or crook anything they can do to get the kids there whether it's you know chasing them down and doing all that kind of stuff. but it is a metric that um obviously is a a necessary precondition to do any of the other things we hope to do with kids. Um so these are again districts with similar levels of poverty and and sure they may have other different things going on but similar levels of poverty and yet really different levels of success at getting kids to come to school.
Any any before I I move on, I just wanted to Okay.
>> Yes, Margaret, you did have a a question. Uh, director Rooker, >> thank you, Madam Chair. I there will be other questions probably when this is all complete, but just to understand the scatter plot graphs, are we looking when we talk about student outcomes, this is the the NAPE outcomes you've singled out in for this presentation. This that's how this is. No. So, NAPE only gives you a state score. It will not give you a district or a school score. These are the um Kansas measures for the Kansas >> for which Okay. So, we're looking at eighth grade math outcomes.
>> Yeah. Students >> it says Yeah. And on the left it says level percent at level three and four.
>> Okay. That is helpful context. Thank you.
>> Yeah. So, the name just just because people do get confused about that one all the time. It's a federal assessment.
No kid takes the whole test. In fact, most kids don't take any of the test. It goes around and does like all these different samples like this kid will take this se se uh section, that kid will take that section and it samples across the state to get a measure for each state that is statistically reliable. but you don't get a score for each district. So, it's really a sense of how is the state doing over time.
Any others before I jump forward?
>> No, you can continue.
>> Okay, great. We'll move on to the next one. I just I want to put up a few other financial concerns right now because these will cloud how how districts respond. Um and you could click again two more times here on this one um for the rest of the stuff to pop up. Yeah.
Okay. So, states are projected to see to see a lot of enrollment declines in the next few years. Um, and the reason I bring this up is that it can be very hard to keep districts attention on math and reading scores when they feel that, you know, their district is financially sinking and enrollment declines cause this sort of financial sinking problem.
Um, in fact, 65 Kansas districts saw over 5% enrollment decline since 2019.
That's that's a lot. Um that would mean in most of those districts that they're feeling pretty significant budget gaps and often trying to figure out how do we, you know, resize our schools, which employees do we let go, who do we how do we afford to give people payraises and so on. And the the reason I say this is this is the backdrop of um what's going on while we try to keep people's attention focused on math and reading.
And those can feel for to districts to be like competing demands like you know how do we not lay off staff? How do we hold on to these people? I I don't want to have um pink slips out there. I don't want to upset my parents by getting rid of athletics etc. and often math and reading fall uh down on the list of priorities when these other things are happening. So that's not to say that districts that are losing students shouldn't shrink. They they should, but it means that while the system is doing this, that even more pressure needs to be um at the you know kind of at the uh at the top to make sure we're focusing on reading and math. and that in fact as we're shrinking, we're trying to hold on to what is working and and potentially shed what isn't working. And that again means going back and using these data because if we don't use the data, we get a whole narrative in our head about what we need to protect. and that may not line up with what has actually been successful at getting kids to come to school as making sure they're reading in their early grades and making sure they're on a steady progress to success by eighth grade math. So, um I I felt like I I couldn't come and talk about that without sort of bringing this up. And if you look at the the next chart on the next page, we'll jump to that one. Um you can see that um and you can click it one more time here. Part of what this is going to mean in Kansas very likely and and that Kansas is not the only state that this is happening. Plenty of states are in the same boat because birth rates are down in this country and they're and and they're and they're declining and so we will have fewer kindergarteners and fewer second graders and so on for years to come. But that means that schools are have a lot of employees right now and will likely have to shrink them. And the way to get to that success with kids isn't going to be focusing on quantity of staff. It's going to be focusing on quality. So it may mean that the next set of metrics that the state needs to come up with or which of our employees in our school districts are the ones knocking it out of park for kids. out of the park for kids. Where do we have um individual reading teachers or math teachers that are getting a year or more worth of growth um out of their classrooms? And that is a metric that states can do and and then states can make um take steps to make sure we're holding on to them. And whether that's like naming them as star teachers and star teachers get an extra $10,000 as long as they remain in the state and continue to teach math or reading. Those kinds of things or principles where students have seen outsized growth that principal effect can be um really u also significant and then we want to keep those principles in the state and continuing in those roles. Um, a lot of times what we see is soon as we have a successful teacher, we take them out of the classroom. Um, and and if if we liken uh teaching to sort of like a basketball game, we don't want to take our our star shooter off the court and and pull them on the side and say you can coach all the rest of them. You really want them on the front lines working with kids. If you look at the next chart on the next page, we jump to that one. That is some other data that we have um on our our website and that is what's happened to staffing um over time in Kansas and and you can see that the the state has been losing students.
So not surprisingly the fewer teachers but a lot of the addition has been in the category of pair professionals. You can click twice click twice more or three times more here to get those numbers up. Yeah. And then one more time. Um thank you. So the uh the addition has been around pair professionals. Generally speaking, pair professionals aren't um associated with delivering progress in reading or math.
And I there, you know, and schools love having more professionals around, but that is rarely the case that that translates to greater improvement for students. So um often those the positions get associated with special ed um uh and so on. But again if we can focus on core instruction and reading fewer kids will get referred to special ed behavior tends to be better when you have stronger teachers and you you avert a lot of these downstream problems. Um the second circle there shows that we've been adding positions that are likely former teachers that were strong and moved into these non-eing roles. Um and again here we we the idea is how do we keep our best talent in the core classroom roles versus these kinds of of promotions. And that'll be especially important over time even as uh as as Kansas school districts might start to shrink. So, we don't want to lose that talent, but we we want to hold on to it, but we want to make it student facing.
Um, and and that that's really the last picture that I had to show for you. The next one you'll see coming up. Can you go ahead and forward one more time?
Thank you. Um, just go ahead and hit forward until you see all the stuff pop up. Uh, there you go. Yeah. So, schools now tend to have more of these um interventionists, reading coaches, assistant principles, administrators, etc. Those were classroom teachers that got promoted. Often we maybe went in, got new hires from the labor pool, brought them in for the teaching role.
But but about the most important thing we can do is to make sure we have really that strong talent in the classroom. And that's kind of the next critical data element. A strong teacher can have an effect on a student's life 30 years later. And not just like from a sentimental point of view like I remember my you know fourth grade teacher really believed in me. I don't mean just that. I mean we can track it to future income and all these other kinds of metrics that we need for our students. So, we need to be doing a um using them the data to check where our classrooms really successful with students learning and um how do we hold on to them and and keep them in the classroom versus potentially adding this new layer. So, that that's what I brought for you today. I'm happy to answer any questions. There's a thank you slide at the end um and a way to to reach me if you want to reach out. All the data we have on our website is interactive. you can um log on to that.
But I'm I'm h happy to answer any questions or comments that you have.
>> Margaret, thank you very much.
Questions?
Uh Representative Steel.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Margaret. Great information. I was just curious if you noticed any nationwide trends around that 2016 2017 time frame.
I'm just curious if other states fell at that same time or if maybe there was a major change in how education was um if anything specifically changed in Kansas that would have made our um English and math score start decreasing.
>> Yeah. Um actually the patterns are not unusual nationally and something did happen in 2015 and that was ESSA a federal law and ESSA the federal law um basically walked back a bunch of the no child left behind federal accountability and said you know what we're going to turn it over to the states the states are going to be in charge of their own accountability now and um and really it it seems that um that coincides with uh a a lot you know of the beginning of some decline. Now, it's not the only thing that happened. Technology, right?
Cell phones, uh, all sorts of other kinds of things are coincide with that.
But the one thing I'll say is that the patterns across states are different.
So, a lot of them declined, but not all.
So, some states, and I'm sure you've heard about Mississippi as an example, but there are others that where um state leaders took it upon themselves to really actually commit to driving continued improvement and they did. So, um I I do think there are these these other environmental factors including technology and cell phones and social media and all those kinds of things, but at the same time it's clear that states can have an effect on the averages in their states. So, um where states have done that, they've said, you know, we we're not taking our foot off the pedal when it comes to reading and math. We are going to examine our data. We're going to have all these uncom We're going to tell parents if their kid is behind grade level. A lot of parents have no idea. We're going to tell teachers if their classrooms are not getting the same kind of growth that we would expect from their mix of students.
We're going to examine our data. We're going to drive um uh science of reading type reforms so that everybody is actually teaching the kind of phonics based curriculum in the early grades.
Um, we're not going to take, you know, sagging math scores as a given. We're going to jump in and address those with additional tutoring, mandatory summer programs, all that kind of stuff. And I think the states where we're seeing that prog that uh um more um progress even in those interim years are the ones that that didn't blink when it when when that 2015 federal law changed.
>> Do you have a followup? Representative >> Margaret. Thank you very much. I have in in the queue Senator Ericson. I'm sorry.
Director Rooker, then Senator Ericson, and then Representative McDonald. Uh, director, >> thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. I have a question about the the change the the graph with the spending and the NAPE scores and inflation. I I this does not unpack the the elements of spending factored into the the total that's being reported for Kansas and it would help us greatly understand what it is you you've categorized in that to graph the the total spending. Can you explain the methodology to that?
>> Sure. I mean, this is a federal measure that um includes annual operating costs.
So, it would include pretty much everything, state, federal, and local dollars, not facilities like major debt, facilities, improvements, things that are not single year uh that are not annual expenditures. So, it is >> so >> it's the whole pie.
So, does it include like the those um retirement benefits like what we call capers in Kansas?
>> It includes the public investment in retirement. Yes. And it does that for every state. So, uh because that's an annual expenditure.
>> It is. I It does help explain an anomaly that I noticed. We froze funding for two years um that that appear to be increase years, but I know um legislatively we prioritized restoring funding into the retirement system. So, we were escalating payments at pretty large numbers of hundreds of millions of dollars at that time and obviously school district employees um would be counted in that. So that is real spending, but it it just helps understand part of the increase. I'm also wondering if you account for the restoration of funding that happened over a six-year period in Kansas based on the settlement of our legal case, the the Ganon case.
>> Any public funds that would be spent annually on public education would be included in there. And that's like I said, it's a it's a federal measure. It has federal definition to it and districts all report their their spending on that. If you're so other states are in the same boat with kind of catching up on some of their pension stuff and so theirs might be included too. If the pension money is not about teachers then that would not be included, right? So if it's like for other state workers or higher education or something else like that, it would not be included. And the federal government doesn't always get the pension uh contribution calculation.
Exactly right. Um but it does have a um a standard definition down to the district level that captures most of that.
>> Thank you. I was just trying to understand why we don't see three flat years on the spending graph because that is the reality of of the school finance formula. Um >> five years starting starting when? Well, we we passed law that repealed the state finance formula. So, that was the 2015 legislative cycle and it froze funding at 2015 levels for 16 and 17.
>> Okay. So, 17 shows some So, yeah, it depends on because it does look flat before that, right? It does look flat up through 2016. it it was act actually flat and this this does show a variance. It froze funding. It didn't matter if population changed in in a you know the headcount of a district. Didn't matter if characteristics change the waiting factors of the student population.
Funding was frozen at 2015 levels for the subsequent two years.
>> Yeah. Two things. This is a per pupil measure. So if enrollment changed even if you have flat funding then your per pupil measure is that's one factor in your p per pup people. Secondly this includes state federal and local money.
So you know what whatever was happening out of local dollars whatever was happening in federal it's sort of all public funds in that measure. It's not just a state state dollars.
>> Thank you Vice Chair Ericson.
>> Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Rose. Always good to see you and thank you for being here and for this information. Just a quick question. I'm looking at the scatter plot. I went online um for ELA students 2425 and I found a couple of interesting tidbits um comparing >> ELA just a clarification is English language arts not bilingual ad kits.
Okay. I just want to make sure.
>> Okay. Got it. All right.
>> Thank you. So, one of our elementary schools, and I and I filtered out for same size of school, elementary, excuse me, elementary, um, and I compared two relatively similar uh, districts.
In one district, they spend 20,372 per pupil, 67% economic disadvantaged, and they're at 32% proficient. The other school 302 students they spend 13,883 per pupil 70% so higher economic disadvantaged population and they're at 51% proficient. My question is prior to your presentation.
There was an education group here in Kansas that said, "You do some good work, but it really doesn't apply to Kansas because it only matters if all schools have all the resources they need." In light of the information that I just shared, what would be your response to that line of thinking?
>> Yeah, I don't I don't know if I have quite the context to to answer that. Um, I I think every every state in the country, every district in the country believes they're underfunded.
And if I operated at a district, I I'd argue that, too, right? Because there's always more we could spend or do or and and we live in a reality of scarce resources. So, um, uh, we don't necessarily always get what we want and we still have this imperative to take whatever resources we have and leverage them to try to maximize the outcome for kids. And some years we might have more resources and some years we we might not. And yet that imperative is the same that we leverage whatever is available.
We don't give up because we didn't get what we wanted this year, but we leverage whatever is aa a available and we drive as much progress as we can get for the kids that um are in our our districts. And so my my thing isn't that there's a static dollar amount and once we get to that amount then we can start doing great things. my my um our our our line of thinking and it it bears out in the data that at any spending allow amount we have some districts that are knocking it out of the park. We should learn from them and we should strive to be like them and so more uh students can walk out the doors when they're 18 years old with the skills that they need to be successful in life. And um uh so that that's you know I just think the urgency exists regardless of the spending level.
There are states that spend less than Kansas. Kansas is not a particularly high spending state. There are states that spend less and um you know talk to the people in Idaho or um Utah or Nevada and some of these you know other states and my message to them is the same. We we've you really have no choice but to continue. Sure. go ahead and advocate for more resources and in the meantime leverage what you have to try to drive as much progress as you can for kids.
Learn from your peers who are beating the odds for their kids. Stay committed to this. Chase down every kid who's not where they should be and and make sure we get that improvement. And I I think that urgency doesn't go away. It's not changed based on the dollar amount.
>> Thank you. One thing I'll say when you when people go to the site, there's two maps of the US that you could click on your your district. One has um schools and one has districts. So, I just want to make sure that if you scroll down lower on the page, you get to the one with the districts.
>> Thank you, uh, Representative McDonald.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair and Margaret.
Thanks for being here today. I along with a couple other people here on this task force were able to attend your two-day workshop last fall and um it was kind of enlightening. I I take issue with a lot of a lot of the things you've said. Um but I I just want to focus on two things. When you come out of the shoot talking about return on investment that that's educa that's like business terms, right? And we're not creating widgets. We're educating children and we're meeting them where they are. And so when as legislator >> notice I didn't say return on investment. I don't think >> you started out with I wrote down spending has outplaced in inflation by a bit and it was a return on investment graph in your >> Well, I I think I called it um getting that return for kids. So I well and the reason I'm careful about that and you might remember that from our training is that you're you're exactly right that ROI language turns people off right um it is people think like you said and we we talk about in our training kids are not widgets and they're not sales on a spreadsheet and all that kind of stuff we're talking about public funds and driving outcomes for our kids in different sectors that language of ROI is acceptable it is a turnoff in our field. So, you know, excuse me if I said it. I don't think I'd spit that phrase out. It doesn't mean that we're not trying to leverage every available public dollar to maximize value for students and that that translates roughly, but I I stand by that agenda.
>> Okay. Um I think we all agree on that.
Um you're welcome to rewind the tape and I really don't want to harp on that part. What I really want to say is that, you know, when we talk about return on investment, whether you're the one that says it or other people, this really lacks a lot of nuance. It treats education as just a financial transaction. And it really ignores broader values from a personal and cultural and social perspective. And so I I just really get, you know, wrangle wrinkled a little bit when people come out of the shoot with that term. Um, >> so I I do I hear you on that that the turn is a turnoff to lots of people, but I don't think it allows us to excuse the task of trying to drive.
>> Nor did I nor did I suggest that it did, but I have a couple other things I know that we're in a time crunch. Um, I think when we argue that people should do more with existing resources, we really normalize underfunding of public education and we shift the blames to districts. Um, one other thing you you said in your or your chart said in one of the last pages, um, where we it talks about how we need to shift, you know, from we need to put people in the classroom instead of reading coaches, interventionalists, counselors, specialists, deans, administrators. Um, I would argue we have an increase in special education students. We've identified more of them for whatever reason, but they are more expensive to educate. We have regular um inflation to take into account. We have an increase in mental health issues. Our communities have asked for us to prioritize mental health. We've had a suicide epidemic that we've really been successful in addressing because of the investments we make in public school mental health. So, I think this is really an oversimplification. The other the other thing that um we in Kansas have focused on is reading coaches and the science of literacy. We're investing a lot of money in reading coaches because teachers learn how to teach with the science of reading best when they are coached one-on-one um in their classroom. So I won't continue. I've got a couple other things, but um there were things in your presentations over the two days that I agreed with, but those are some of the things that I fundamentally take issue with. Thank you.
>> So, uh one one thing, Representative McDonald, that I I would hope you do take the time to think about is whether those investments in reading coaches are delivering improved outcomes in reading.
And if they work, great, do them.
>> We have just started and I would argue a lot of times we cancel programs without giving them a chance to work. So I I'm sorry.
>> I I'm rooting for you. I'm rooting for them to work. And um and if and if two or three years have gone by and they're not, then I would say you try try something else. We have to have urgency for these kids. you only get one shot at second grade and then you're in fourth grade and then you're behind for the rest of your experience. So I I think that urgency around like it there is no such thing as a silver bullet in education. Um there are great reading coaches and there are weaker ones. There are like in lots of parts of the country, you know, reading coaches was a popular investment and and districts didn't see the value out of it and then some did. So, I just would dissect the data um and and don't go in with knowledge of all the answers, but really focus on whether or not you are realizing those benefits for kids in the end.
>> Right. Thank you. I'm I'm going to ask our our last uh question. Uh Dr. Rosen, and I'm sorry I didn't call you doctor before. I I missed that. My apologies and no disrespect intended. I am really fascinated with you how you're looking at the upper left and the lower right quadrants on your spending choices and I'd like to know have you taken a deep dive into uh Kansas districts and if not Kansas then kind of nationwide what are the best things most effective uh choices that are being made in the upper left quadrant and what are the least effective choices in the lower right quadrant.
>> So, um I I will say um like I said before, there's no silver bullet.
There's not something like if you follow this recipe, you get these better outcomes. What I will say is that it's a slog. It's a lot of hard work of focusing on the data, being honest about it. I mean, I think a lot of times in education, um people uh landed this field because they are positive. they're positive with kids, but they're that some of them are uncomfortable having conversations about things that are not working. Um, and that there's a hesitancy to end things that are not working or admit they're not working.
Um, but I would say there are a lot of polls out there that suggest that most parents are not aware that their kids are behind grade level. Um, doing the hard work of telling their parents their kids are behind grade level. And I hoping to get more your kid to do your homework more, come to school more often, uh come for our catchup days that we have and really stay focused and make sure they get enough sleep at home. That actually can help from both sides of this. Um, I I would argue the the where we've seen school districts uh realize better outcomes, it is a a continual focus on the data, honesty around that data, um, honesty with staff about what isn't and isn't working, honesty with parents about what isn't and work isn't working.
quality over quantity when anything we do like we we have this tendency in schooling to say you know what we need is more staffing counts and yet sometimes what we've done is dilute the talent that was in um our our employee base. So quality over quantity and um uh just urgency around trying to get those outcomes. Um I'm I'm really happy to hear that you guys have made progress on um uh suicide rates. That's another metric you can track. A what I think gets worrisome is when districts say we're doing this in the name of something that we can't track whether there's progress and some of the mental health stuff falls into that category.
Um, so we need to make sure that we're like are when we're doing things in the name of mental health, whether it's suicide rates or uh misbehaviors at school or chronic absenteeism or even surveys of students, that we're actually seeing progress um associated with our investments. And um we where we hear districts that are are getting outsides improvement, it's because they have that mindset as distasteful as it may think to think about this as an economics equation. Um that where districts are seeing outsized growth for their students, it's because they are unrelenting and thinking about I made this investment. I expect this outcome for my students. and if I'm not getting it, I'm either in there digging around trying to fix it or considering investing that money in a different way.
So, um, that's a mindset that we often don't teach in leadership. This is why we started our our certificate in ed finance program to to help spread that that mindset around um, linking our investments to what our expectations are for students. But that's that's really where I would focus.
>> Thank Thank you very much. and and we the conversation about the coaching and we're doing some preliminary studies and I think what we're finding is the quality of the coaching uh really has a lot to do with its effectiveness. Um so thank you so much. Last call for questions for Dr. Rosa. Dr. Gibson.
>> Dr. Rose, it's good to see you again. I went through that course you're just talking about a few years back. Um, one of the questions I think is important in this is I think it's easy to for people to jump from one state to the next and do comparison and I remember in our conversations previously that you gave some cautions about not just comparing dollar to dollar or state assessment rigor. Uh, do you want to kind of provide a little bit of insight because I can't remember all the details to that?
Yeah, I think what what we would we would argue is that you should look at your own context over time, right? Even if you compare one state to another, different states have different student demographics, right? Like one state can have multigenerational poverty, another one can have like lots of um uh immigration, another one can have lots of multi-year, you know, sustained economic growth. So I I really I don't think so much as like where the state is this year compared to where the other state is this year. I think it's each state's trajectory. So are you on a path that's increasing? The best comparison for your state is what your state did before and you know comparing your own state. That's why these are all trends.
We're not putting all the states on a single graph. We're showing each state as a trend over time. Um, and I think that's probably true for districts, too, where, you know, you could, if you're a district, you compare yourself to other districts with similar student populations, but when you dig way in, you might say, well, they may have similar income levels, but really different parental education levels or different um uh other kinds of variables in in communities. So again, the trend over time for us is maybe in any particular context is the is the most useful measure. Are we driving improvement for our kids? Are we able to on a continuous improvement basis leverage whatever resources we have to drive more dollars for each as for as each year goes by. Um so that's the way we would think about that and that takes care of a lot of the data variability across locations. Um what I you can do is compare one state's trend. So this state is seeing a lot of growth and another state is not seeing a lot of growth right a decline and then say well what are they doing to get their growth not what is their score in 200 25 what's my score in 2025 >> thank you for that response I think it's really important to note that obviously state assessment district by or excuse me state by state looks different in the level of rigor accordingly so I I I just want to be cautionary uh when I've presented this other places some people want to jump from one state to the next.
I don't really know that you can compare overall, but I do appreciate hearing looking at each individual district's growth is is a way to maybe look at it differently.
>> Yeah. And one one last thing. Um so there's a a new source out. It's just it doesn't have spending in it. It's an um uh the Ed Opportunity Project and you may have seen some of the media in the last couple of weeks. They translate every state's own assessment onto a normalized scale that allows for some more comparisons across locations. Um, it's worth looking at, I would say.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you. Um, Dr. Ninponder, we're going to let you take the last the real for real last one.
>> Well, mine's not really a question. I was on as she was presenting I was on hovering over um especially when you look at the ones u uh cost per pupil the what I could see just looking at it you know and you go stateto state sometimes the bubbles get tight because they have a different formula some get taller wider when I was looking at Kansas and you look at the outliers I I could notice probably the two biggest drivers of cost was if they're a small district, they're going to have high the the low enrollment waiting.
And then the ones that were far to the right typically hosted their own co-op or special ed.
So they had you could have someone clear on the other side because their special ed money flows through that district over on the right. So, so I was just noticing the two biggest outliers was low enrollment waiting with small districts and then if a district either ran their own special ed or hosted the special ed co-op because they have all the other districts that are members that money flowing through. So those were just when I looked at when I was moving the around touching on bubbles I was like very small with low enrollment waiting or that district host the co-op.
So those were just if you're on there looking that's one thing to keep in mind of outliers. It's also a good point of why we would like what goes into co-ops to be something we could track better because I think we need all the data we can get. Thank you very much uh doc Dr. Rosa. Thank you so much for being with us today and thank you for uh the time and effort that that you spent with us.
I appreciate it. I want to get us back on um the agenda and by this time we should have been uh going to Dr. Nent, but we haven't finished the previous item and then we have a um a 2:30 group that I know has to also be mindful of time. So, what I'm going to do is give us a short bathroom break, finish up the pre previous presentation. Um, I'm gonna kind of guess that that will get us close to the 2:30 presentation and then put Dr. Nent in in last. Um, and I think that will uh and then jump into kind of the follow-up items that we have from KLRD. So, why don't I give us a a uh 10m minute bathroom break? Um, my phone tells me that it's 1:55. So, I'll see you guys uh back here at 2:05.
So, I just wanted to call your attention that one of the things that just appeared on your on your desk was the updated school district student chronic absenteeism rates uh from 2021 to 2025.
And um and then Jenny, we're going to go uh back to you and re uh board member Porter was the first person in line and hopefully uh he remembers his question.
Member Porter, please go ahead.
>> Chair, not only do I remember our question, I've already asked Jennifer and she's given me the answer, but I just have one comment. uh when we had the discussion about the act, I represent a lot of rural poverty and I understand I mean everything needs to be reviewed and everything needs to be taken seriously but it is a barrier to many of the kids that I repres many many of the families I represent and I'd just like to make sure that that remains in consideration.
>> Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. Any other questions? Uh, Jenny, we're going to go ahead and and move along.
>> Yes, Madam Chair. I have a couple of follow-up answers from the earlier portion, and I did want to touch one second on the absentee the chronic absenteeism document. Uh, yes, we updated the title for you for chronic absenteeism. One of our eagle-eyed uh analysts also noticed that we had accidentally left the statewide total in the numbers below in 25. So, uh, as you can see in the updated version version, the Eerie Gailsburg is at 22.1%. So, everything slid up a row, which may help with some of those confusions and concerns. Um, we're still double-checking to make sure there isn't a mis mistyping somewhere for some of the other ones. But just so you're aware, we did slide there is a change in the 25 numbers. Uh, we also include defined chronic on the paper. We fixed the footnote And I believe that's all of the updates to this one that we included. Oh, and then then there's a key up in the upper leftand corner which talks about the yellow being low and the pink being high. Uh to kind of give you an idea on that. So just in the differences that we found in our our document in that meantime. Uh, one of the other questions that was asked about the ACT right before we broke uh, for the EDOM presentation was how much money is spent on that. So, $2.5 million SGF is budgeted for the preACT, ACT, and work keys assessments.
Um, this is for 9th graders and juniors.
We were saying it was the comment was made it was for all students and the answer is it's for all the preac uh is for ninth graders and it's for juniors for the ACT to do it one time.
So if you take the ACT multiple times it is my understanding that you would then pay for the second and or however many more you do after that yourself.
And so, uh, that answers the question of how much funding is going to that that is for all three of those, the preac, the ACT, and then the work keys assessments is that $2.5 million. I can't break it out lower than that, but that gives you an idea of the funding.
Uh, the other thing that was discussed is when did this go into effect. So fiscal year 2019 is when the ACT for the the juniors went into effect. The 2019 legislature then added the preACT to that grouping. And then in 21 uh the legislature added non-public schools to that group as well. So it is both public and non-public schools who can go have the ACT testing for the first time through the the contract.
Uh the other one that the question was m or the comment was made that there universities are no longer requiring the ACTs in 2021.
KU, KSU, and and Witchah State uh all made the ACT optional. So if you have a higher GPA, I believe it's 3.25, 25. Uh you do not need to take the ACT to apply to those schools. And so that was in 21.
And all of those things are factors that could go into the percentages for the number of students taking the ACT.
>> Thank you very much. I believe Representative McDonald had a question.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for clarification, if someone's a junior, we will pay for their preac or sorry, a ninth grader, we would pay for their PSA preac. And then when they're a junior, we would also pay for their ACT.
>> That is correct.
>> Or work keys. Okay. Thank you.
>> Any other questions? Jennifer, why don't you go ahead and move on then?
>> Sure thing. We are still on the blue side of the Kansas comparative 11 by 17.
Uh after the graduation rates, there is a section on postsecary success. There is two different places this is reported. There is the KSDE 5-year average success rate and the five-year average effectiveness rate.
And so each of those are determined.
So the success rate a student must meet one of the five following outcomes within two years of a high school uh graduation. They must either uh earn an industrially recognized certification while in high school. They earn a post-secary certificate. They earn a post-secary degree. They enroll in post-secary in both the first and second year following high school graduation.
And then there is a uh outcome for students with disabilities who meet the district graduation requirements for a diploma but remained in school to receive transitional services deemed necessary by their IEP team.
I believe uh KSD is going to talk more specifically about their uh average success rate and effectiveness weight rate when they do their presentation, but I'm happy to stand for general questions now on that.
>> Representative McDonald.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Just real quick, would it be possible for you to email us that list that you just said because I was not familiar with it?
>> Absolutely. I believe it is on one of the documents you have in in your packet in front of you from KSD, which is why uh but if it is not, I will make sure you all receive that list. Thank you so much.
So, outside of the ones from KSDE, there is also the Kansas Board of Regents High School student success that they track. And so, that is uh that information we pulled off of the Kansas Higher Education Statistics web page on the KBORE website. And so this is specifically for students who took career uh CTE during high school. And so when you look at these high school student success rates after two years or after five years, this is not of the total student graduating class. It is only for the students who had taken some version of CTE during high school.
Um and then the success is completed um if they've completed or they've retained they're retained in college after the two years or the five years.
On the document in front of you, you can see that there are some gray uh shaded areas and that is because we have not hit the point where those cohorts have provided uh information on either of the websites. And so that will be information forthcoming as time goes on.
But the gray shaded areas are are we are waiting still as they are still in the process of that two-year or fiveyear window that we are looking at for success.
That is all I have for that side of the document. The other side we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about, but we do uh in this committee spend a lot of time discussing dollars versus outcomes. And so we did provide for you uh the other side the same as we did last year where we broke every the funding down per pupil.
uh we included inflation numbers for you and then the dollars spent in major categories of state aid and then broken out by those major categories of state aid. With that, Madam Chair, I'm happy to stand for any questions on the 11 by 17 or turn this all over to Matthew to have some more discussion about assessments.
>> Any questions? Uh Director Rrook Rooker.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Jennifer, on the green side under inflation, help me understand, are we compounding that rate year over year?
Are you? So, the 2007 Kansas school funding per pupil adjusted for inflation starts at the 11558 and then the next year takes the annual inflation rate and increases and then for each year it is increasing by the uh that year the previous years. So when I look at sorry this is hard to read. Um I look at that bottom line the percent change from 2007. We read it that in 2008 it was it increased 3.2% from the baseline being used in 2007. The following year it's is it an additional 5.8% being added on top that's that year's inflation rate or is it 3.2 2 plus two 2.6%.
>> So the bottom line is just showing you the Midwest the CPIU Med Midwest percent change from 2007 in each year. That is not the number we are using to do the calculations. The number we are using to do the yearover-year calculations is the middle one where it's the CPIU Midwest percent change. So from for example in 2007 we have 115 558 and then the percent change is 2.1% and so that gets us to the 11 928 then you take 3.2% times the 11 928 gets us to the 12 236.
So each year it's just a single year increase. If we were saying we had started with this and we had continued from 2007 to present day, here's where we would be at if we had just where if the state had just followed inflation year overyear for base. So that is each year each column is that year's inflation rate using the CPIU Midwest. That is the percent of change from the prior year. The line below, the three-year average, is that the total that's used to calculate?
>> So, as of 2025, that is the three-year average is what we're using to calculate the increase in base year-over-year.
>> And so, do we read the 2025 4.4% as the percent of change from 2024 or the percent of change from 2007?
>> That would the 4.4 is the three-year average from the pre for the from the previous three years.
>> Thank you. So, the 4.4 4 is so 5.7% in 24 was used as one of the calculations to talk about base and then the 4.4 for was then used for calculation purposes to discuss increases in base that. Okay, very good. Um, Senator Murphy, did you have a question?
>> Oh, I'm sorry, Representative or Chair Williams.
>> Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, just double checking. So I'm looking at this and the CPI U Midwest change over that period of couple decades is 50 just over 50% and every other category of aid is exceeds the consumer price in index.
Is that correct? Some of them by many times.
>> That is correct.
>> Okay. Is that and special education as well?
Yes.
I would double check the math, but I believe it is. Yes.
>> Looks like special education exceeds the rate of inflation, too. Okay.
>> The special education percentage is not a percentage change from 2007. I that is the excess cost for that year. So, I'm happy to go back and do the math for the 2007 and get that added in as a line, but we do not have it on this document as a percent change from 2007 for special education.
>> All right. Thank you, Jennifer. It's great. Um, it's great to see mathematically that the taxpayers of Kansas are exceeding the rate of inflation in all categories for uh education spending. Thank you.
>> Any other questions? All right. Um, Senator Eric, Vice Chair Ericson.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Just real quick, Jennifer, I was noticing the footnote uh number eight and was wondering, okay, it says the total weighted FTE including sped data for 2016 and 2027 were pulled from blah blah blah.
>> Why the difference in pulling those two years from that versus where was the other data pulled from? Just curious.
>> Absolutely. So 26 and 27 is when the class act or the block grant was happening 1617.
Nope. But better to be clear when you're speaking on mic. So um so that is when the class act was happening and so therefore the information that we had for those years as uh director Rooker has indicated the dollar amounts stayed at the 2015 dollar amounts. And so getting the information about total weighted FTE, including the special education data, came from a a different source than our standard source of the legal max. And so we were just wanting to note that it did come from a different source than normal.
>> Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you, Madam Chair.
>> You're welcome. Any other questions for Jennifer? All right, let's proceed.
>> With that, Madam Chair, I'm going to turn it over to Matthew.
All right. Good afternoon, Madame Chair, members of the task force. Um, so the first thing I will be talking about is this packet of a yellow 8 1/2 by 11. Um, by and large these different uh pieces I'll be presenting on are all kind of the same data just organized slightly differently. So, hence the colored paper. So, the yellow sheet is um statewide the statewide assessment scores for English language arts, math, and science for all grades. Um, and I have them grouped by year but then broken out by subgroup. So, for example, on page one, uh, you will see for 2025, you will see there, um, under what I mistitled the school year, you'll see all of the different subgroups broken out, um, all students, English learner, students, English learners with disabilities, etc. And then you can look across and see for 2025, um, what were their the statewide all grade results for those different subgroups in ELA, math, and science. Uh I will note these are not mutually exclusive in the sense that you could have a student whose score is included in um self-paid lunch who would be included in um you know Asian who could then also be an English learner student like you will have one student who could fit in multiple subgroups.
um the um you would need to kind of break out some of those if you were wanting to try and see non-duplicative.
Um as far as 25 and just in the last few years in general, I would note that u by and large English learner with disabilities is the subgroup that has the highest percentage in level one across all three assessments. uh and seems to generally be at least for the last few years followed by English learner students followed by students with disabilities then homeless and then foster care. So as far as the kind of the top five subgroups who have the highest percentage uh in level one um pretty much across all three tests those are um kind of the ones to look at there. But in general you can kind of look each year. Uh as a reminder, I will note you will not see a 2020 because the assessment was not given uh that year due to CO 19. Uh as well as you will notice a little further in the back there's some gradeout boxes because the science assessment was not um did not begin until uh 2018 and so there are a few years um where that is not available. Um, so moving on, I will next move to the um lavender lilac.
>> Matthew, before you go on, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding the yellow one correct. Um, that is the new cut scores.
>> Um, Madame Chair, so this is just the percentages. So 25 would be the new cut scores. Um but given that when you look on um but as far as kind of where they have the levels and we had the concordance table, I included 25 in with the listings of 24 and everything like that since they were designed to largely be able to continue to correspond and compare just with that jump between them. So there will be some difference in a change from 25 to 24 due to them not perfectly overlapping in where a student might have fallen for the same performance. Um but my understanding is generally they are comparable. So I left I left them in there.
>> Okay. I I wanted to point that out because we do have a conversion chart.
>> Yes. Which is late. I apologize. It is later in your packet as part of our follow-up. Uh so if you are wanting to see the concordance table for all tests for all grades um that is there as well >> because to me you can say they get close but if you still need a chart they're not the same and I just wanted to make sure that we're all aware of which set of of cut scores we're using on each of the charts. Any questions for Matthew on the yellow document?
Seeing none. Um Matthew, go ahead.
Perfect. So, I will move to the lavender, lilac, whatever. Uh, I do not remember the actual name of this. So, whichever kind of shade of purple you would like. Um, this is the exact same data. It's just instead of broken up by year and then subgroup, I did it by subgroup and then year. Uh, so again on page one, you will see in this instance, you will see all students and then you will see the scores for the all grades, all students statewide for 15 through 25. Again, I left 25 in there. I am happy to um as far as the the difference amount kind of on the change on the very top part, I'm happy to add one uh for 24. Uh I just thought that would be um might be of interest to the task force to just kind of see what is the percentage change um for this group of students and again all grades from that time. Uh, one thing, um, you will not universally see, but it seems as kind of a very general off-the- cuff element is that it does seem by and large between 15 and 25 that most decrease in a lot of them has been in level two within level the other three levels um, growing. And then just depending on the subgroup will depend exactly on how much um but it does appear that in general over time for most of them um that you'll kind of see a a lowering of level two within that those students kind of getting dispersed to either side either falling down into level one or increasing into three and four. Um, but again, all the same data just done by subgroup this time. Um, so that you can kind of see how a group of students has done over the years. So, I'd be happy to stand for the purple sheet and then I'll get to the really big one.
>> Um, start with um, Vice Chair Ericson and then we'll go to Chair Williams.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. real quick. How hard would it be, Matthew, on the lavender one to calculate the change from 2015 to 2024?
>> U, Madame Chair, uh, vice chair, I can absolutely do that. It would just be inserting rows and doing some formulas.
So, um, I'd be happy to to do that or, um, and either reissue the document or just provide the committee with what those changes would be.
>> Thank you, Chair Williams.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And wow, there's a lot of information here, but I'm I just want to make sure. So, our English langu learner students who are receiving um a special waiting and getting the assistance over time, this population of students in level one has grown. And we don't we don't level one's the worst category.
That's below grade level. So in 10 years it's increased by 31%. They're doing worse with the increased spending and waitings.
Is that right? Am I reading that right?
>> Um Madame Chair, Representative, uh so the percent of those students in the subgroup. Yes, the percent of the that subgroup in level one has increased. I would note that these are percentages of the subgroup. I do not know elements such as has that subgroup grown? Has it shrank? There could be other elements that impact that, but as far as the percent of that subgroup, it has increased in level one and has decreased um across the board by and large.
>> And I guess just the last question is we've increased funding since 2015.
Ganon was settled in 2019 and it looks like those at risk students have also increased when even when we include the 2025 increase in cut scores by 9.21%.
So that means that the number of kids that are below grade level has increased by 9% in a decade with increased funding. Would that be a correct statement?
So, Madam Chair, Representative, so um I believe you're looking at are you looking at the free and reduced lunch or the Okay. Um so the free and reduced lunch, yes, that subgroup has from 15 to 25 increased in level one for ELA by 9.21%.
Uh I would again I would just note as you all know that free lunch is what is the proxy for at risk funding and that neither being on free or reduced qualifies you to receive the services.
>> Yes, absolutely. But it's the poverty principle that we're using and it's free lunch is 9% or 8.59.
So in a decade we've added more for at risk funding and we're getting worse results. This is troubling. Thank you.
>> Any other questions, Senator Francisco?
>> Um thank you. So following up on that, um what would happen if the number of students who were on free and reduced lunch increased from 2015 to 2025?
How how would that be reflected in these percentages?
Uh madam chair, senator, so it would largely be in obviously if you have say the number had increased by 50%. Then the change of percentage needed to dramatically increase any of the levels would require more students. So I think it is it is less likely that a growth would have a lot of measurables unless that growth was specifically in students who were only performing in a certain category.
Uh my gut feeling and I would defer to Dr. Nent um would just would be more that some subgroups that might already be small or historically be on the smaller side. You could see greater swings if you happen to get you know even a change of 50 students or something who suddenly are going to be a higher amount of a percentage for that subgroup. Uh I think with free lunch my get I know the number has been relatively stable for the last decade.
Uh, and so I would presume that a lot of this is likely not noise from um from a shift of a lot of students into that subgroup.
>> You're welcome. Uh, Director Rucker.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I I think as I look at this I see an emerging trend that since we reached the Ganon settlement target in 2023 we are trending and like we are beginning to see signs of improvement across most of the subgroups. The the period that that is captured here includes, you know, the first three years on these charts, funding was frozen by the block grants. We adopted remedies.
We gave ourselves six years to phase in funding from 2017 to current. So I'm not sure we're reflecting the net real world effect of that restoration of funding when we're looking at the raw performance statistics. I mean it there there becomes contextual conversations that I know we'll have I think Dr. Nent's presentation may shed some light that will feed further discussion. So I I think I'm not going to say wouldn't you agree to turn this into a question. I think that was more of a statement.
Thank you.
Representative Steel.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I I would kind of want to carry on the conversation um from the uh representative earlier who, you know, was making note of um the 9% growth and the at risk funding that has been associated with that. And as the funding task force, we have received multiple times that our at risk funding is not being available. And I'm going into the data central and I'm seeing district after district after district of large cash reserves that it grew again.
But yet we still have students in level one that are truly considered at risk.
So I I really think as a funding formula task force, we really need to look at this at risk funding category because it doesn't appear to be getting to our students uh that are needing it the most. Thank you, Madam Chair.
>> You're welcome. Any other uh comments or questions? Seeing none, Matthew, please proceed.
>> Perfect. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, um the last one is So, you have two of these 11 by 17. They are the same document. It is just one of them is all on one side of the paper and the other which is a little more readable, has most on the front and then a little on the back. We included both largely so that you would have a digital copy in case you would like to see it all on one page but have it on a computer where you could blow it up and be a little bit easier to read. So, same thing just whether or not you want to want to flip over a page just uh kind of start there.
Uh so this was out of a request from April wanting to uh kind of try and see the state assessment results in more of a cohort type of view. Um so what I have done here largely is you will see on the top I've done the the graduating year of the class uh so class of 17 18 19 etc. um and then if you go down that column you will see the state assessments or the NAPE results that would that would correspond to that class in that grade.
But then all of the assessment results are then horizontal because again the fourth grade ELA test is different than the third grade. And so, um, my understanding from conversations I've had with KSD and everything is that you, it would not be appropriate to say take the picking on the class of 24, the 20.2% in level one on ELA and see that in fourth grade that went to 14.7 and necessarily be able to say that that was growth of improvement because they were different tests. there might be other things you could tell from it and possibly get at least some general kind of view on how things are. Um, but this is then designed to still be able to kind of look and see, you know, tracking a cohort through the process. What were they, you know, results by each grade?
Uh, and then I did include NAPE in here.
um the dark gray boxes that are kind of angled and stacked that if you look really close you'll see has like a cross-hatch where diagonal is to represent that that was 2020 with COVID.
So there was no test given versus the just plain gray boxes just denote that there's no data either because um it was before our current set before 2015 with our current set of state assessments or they are not yet old enough to have taken that specific assessment things like that. Um so again and this is this is going to be um all students so no subgroups um but it will be kind of by grade level and then I I mirrored the years of the test and the grade to fit into the cohorts. So um and then on the on the far right side again just um I'm happy to do whatever numbers individuals want as far as years or anything. I again just did kind of a an earliest that was available. the farthest left score. Um the difference between it and the farthest right score.
Um happy to break it up in any other ways people might like as far as averages or uh different time spans. Um but again, just a a different way potentially of kind of looking at the data. So again, I'd be happy to uh stand for questions.
>> Any questions for Matthew?
I'll start us off with this was a hard thing to visually express and I really like how you guys um put this together.
It it reads easy and it and it makes sense and um yes, each test is different. Uh but I and so a cohort to cohort is a little bit of a challenge. Um, but I had enough people in education say, "Well, I would really like you to look at where my kids were the previous year before you look at my scores were this year and look if I've grown them or not." So, um, so I think this is important. I compliment y'all for doing a lot of work. Uh, Chair Williams, >> thank you, Mr. Madam Chair. This is this is really great. This is helpful. the cohorts are something that we've been wanting for a long time. So, thank you, Madam Chair, for helping make this happen. But I want to again make sure I'm understanding. So, if we look at the class of 2024, they start off in third grade with 20% below grade level. Um, and then the next year they improve and it's 14.7%.
So, fewer kids are behind in fourth grade. Is that correct? And then, I'm just looking at ELA. And then by the fifth grade it jumps back up to 24%. By the fifth sixth grade it's 34.8% and by the seventh grade now we're 36.
Is that correct? The trend is except for the one year in fourth grade the trend is the longer kids are it looks like in school the more students are following behind. Is that what we're seeing here?
So, Madame Chair, Representative, um, so first off, I would defer to Dr. Nent as far as a more nuanced kind of way of viewing. But yes is I think what it would be is to your point on the third versus the fourth is because they're different tests. It would be more looking and saying, you know, in their fourth grade test, you know, it did they improve or for instance, I believe, if I remember right, the fourth grade assessment under the old cut scores was generally viewed to be maybe a little more favorable, uh, or they tended to be a bit more of a bump in fourth grade.
Um, and that's where I think since you have the different tests, there could be some component that is due to the test by each grade. Um but yes, I would say you know your view of the trend that as it continues on um for the class of 24 you do tend to see more growth in level one would show that for the test for their grade to determine secondary post-secary readiness fewer of them are succeeding at the rate that they were earlier in school. um the actual percentage, you know, I'm not familiar enough and trained enough in testing to be able to say that, but I think general trend lines, I mean, you are seeing that they are performing worse on each test, even if the tests aren't completely comparable across grades.
>> Yes, it's not not good news. Thank you, >> Director Rooker.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I This one took a bit to absorb and and understand what it is depicting. But when I think about the class of 2024 and think about when they started their education journey, this this is just the raw the the percentages in each category.
This does not contextualize what was experienced. And I I've seen I'm anxious to see how some of the the um testimony exhibits that we've received factor into the next um day or so of of testimony because I I think that's the conversation I want to get to is contextually what is going on in that student's world is going to have an impact whether it we're talking about within the context of the the school building and and the state approach to funding and and education policy.
Whether we're talking about socioeconomic factors and other familial considerations that we're seeing in these um pieces of testimony that or supporting documentation have have relevance. It's also the the world at large. It's it's the Great Recession. It's COVID. It's it's the lawsuits. It's it's a lot of different things. So, this is interesting as as a piece of data to to factor into the discussion, but I I think there's more to come. We certainly don't have a holistic set of data and so I think through this process and looking at the patchwork that we can put together, yes, it all takes context, but I think it also was informative.
Representative McDonald. Thank you, Madam Chair. This visual is really helpful for me, but I appreciate what Director Rooker was saying. I have not always paid attention to politics, certainly not always been involved in politics, but the thing that got me fired up is I have a son in the class of 2025 and I have a son who just graduated in the class of 2026. And over the years, I watched their teachers do more with less. I experienced as a parent, a special ed parent by the way, those years when funding was frozen.
Um, you know, it's very easy to oversimplify and try to get get Matthew on the record of saying any particular sound bite for whether it's an election or, you know, whatever our plan is here when we go forward with rewriting the school finance formula. But at the end of the day, there are valid reasons that things are different now than they were then. And we aren't even funding special ed accordingly. So, I just would like to just interject as a mom.
If we were doing this well, I I wouldn't be here. I would I would like for us to make school finance boring again, right?
There is no reason we should continually be in lawsuit. So, I just want to be on the record saying that today. Thank you.
Vice Chair Ericson.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. And I think absolutely we have to look at factors that are affecting our families. My question would then become how do we deal with that in a school setting? For example, we know poverty is an issue, right? It affects our students. One of the fastest ways to get into poverty, one of the leading indicators of poverty is divorce.
We can put all the money in the world, but how do we how do we keep couples from divorcing because that's going to throw that family into poverty quicker and disrupt that student quicker? But all the money in the world, we can't keep married couples together.
drug abuse. How do the schools keep families together with drug abuse and the types of things I've seen things as an administrator and as a teacher that will curl your hair that our students go home to every night?
It's a reality. But my question is how on earth is it our role and how do we do that? It's got to be a cultural shift. And I'm not sure um our approach obviously isn't working. It's not that we shouldn't do something, but maybe there are other avenues such as getting the experts in dealing with um some of these issues instead of the school trying to be all things to all students because obviously that's not working. So, we need to have more partners with people who know how to deal with these familial issues. And I've said it and I'll say it again. As our families go, so go our communities.
So go our schools. So go our state, but we've got to have other partners. We can't do it all in the school system. So there's my two cents for the day, Madam Chair. Thank you.
>> Uh, Director Rucker, and then we're going to move on.
>> I thank you. I just as a followup, I'm intrigued because I know you were a principal. I What would have helped the students in your building during your tenure? What would you have wanted to have as a >> pause that question because we're getting into discussion and we've got some other people on on a schedule, but that's a great kickoff question to say for later and I think the superintendents would also like to jump in on that one. Um, Matthew, go ahead and proceed, please.
>> Madam Chair, that was the last I had for this bit. So, I'm happy to stand aside and let the next presenters come up.
>> All right. Thank you very much, Matthew.
Uh, and we are we are back to to Jennifer. No. Okay. So, then we are going to jump down out of order and thank you Dr. Nent for being flexible with us uh to uh learning lab and USD259 and part this this is kind of different than some of the other things that we've looked at but for for the last two years and as we've been in this task force I keep saying how do we measure success what's what's reasonable what's fair and sometimes you don't know what you don't know and I I paid a visit to the learning lab um la a couple weeks ago and I was so amazed and they were measuring success in ways I never knew of and um I thought it was also I learned about Seesaw and I thought that was the coolest thing ever and their PowerPoint uh matches that t-shirt back there and the pretty blue color. So, and the and the and the black one. Um so, thank you guys for coming. I'm going to let you take over. Introduce yourselves and we'll take questions um at the end.
And thank you for being patient.
a a uh collaborative space for a lot of micro schools and creative minds functions as one of those microschools.
It's one of seven microschools in that space. Uh it was a a great uh perfect storm that kind of came together that allowed us to have a space like the learning lab and operate in something like that and listen to families. So, one of the things that we did was uh we reached out to families that had exited to homeschool or other uh reasons for leaving public education and try to figure out and iterate a functional model that allows us to learn by doing.
Um I say that because I think really if you were to break apart elementary education, it's learning by doing.
Middle school is skill discovery and high school is skill development. And so when you look at uh the model that we have, it's a K6 one room schoolhouse.
Um you know, you think of, you know, back a 100 years ago, it it was probably quite common, especially in our rural areas to have a one room schoolhouse.
And I think there's some benefits to that that we'll see down the road as we start to build trend analysis because I think there's an advantage to staying with the same teacher uh multiple years to where you don't have the gaps that you have in transitioning that kid to another teacher in another space. So I think there's a lot of things that we'll learn through this process. Um, but even the day looks very different and I'll have Olivia talk a little bit about that. But what you see at Creative Minds at the learning lab is active learning all the time. We have a two and a half hour instruction model and then we move into project-based learning. And I think it brings great relevance to our elementary students. And I think by listening to those parents and listening to the students, it it helps us to find ways to bring relevance to uh the education that they're getting.
The uh working model of of creative minds uh came out of Olivia uh very much so like initially in that year one we just had one classroom and Olivia was that teacher. Today she'll function as our coordinator, but I'll let her talk a some more about Creative Minds.
>> I'm a little shorter than Rob, so I'm gonna come on down here. Okay. Yes. So, Creative Minds is all about intentional design and truly breaking down that red tape that exists when we have a traditional public school model by bringing back the partnership between parents and teachers. So, while I have kindergarten through sixth grade in one room, I like to say it's less Little House on the Prairie, more the Jetsons, because our students are truly creating in ways that matter to them and we're connecting those pieces to the real world issues. For example, we just finished conservation where students chose their animals, they researched those animals, they contacted community members, and then they held a public showcase to show their learning. Um we have big kids and little kids working together uh all in one big space. So our littles bring the big dreams and our big kids are the mentors to them. Our big rule is we don't say no when a student comes up with a big idea. We ask them how. So then we have to work together to truly make them change makers in our space.
And with that, our students grow with time in our classroom. So where kindergarten and first grade were of course learning to read, right? And even through third grade, and then as they get older, they are reading to learn. So we really focus on physical play, touch, movement in kindergarten and first grade. We are still teaching all of the district standards, all of the state standards for kindergarten through sixth grade.
We are using the science of reading and we are deeply in in embedded in all of those uh and rigorous standards. We just take those standards and we build them around our students. So as the students grow and they get ready to move out of our program into seventh and eighth grade, they are able to speak for themselves. They know what they're interested in. They know what they're capable of. They're willing to take risks and make mistakes. They truly have that growth mindset.
Did you Where did Miss Smoke go? She wanted to jump in about something. So, I don't want to speak over her. Where do you need to jump?
>> I'll jump right here. That's fine. Um, so back in 2015, Kansas started the Kansas redesign experience with schools, asking school districts to design what school could look like based on four foundational elements. real world applications, student success skills, that's learning how to persevere, the growth mindset. We looked at personalized learning, how do we help students meet right where they are and grow from there. And the last one was real world applications and I was on that group of teachers who were a big part of Kansas redesign and it was moving in really great movements and then co kind of shifted all the things that we were doing. This school is Kansas Redesign in 3D. And what I love about it is that family community partnerships is core to what we do. We hyper commmunicate with families. Uh Representative Estus, Madam Chair, you spoke of Seesaw. This is a tool that when students complete a piece of art or let's say they're working on their diarama, the students will snap photos of that and explain what they're doing either by voice or they can type it in or even leave a video that alerts their families on a text message or alert and says, "Hey, your child has something in here that's been generated. Take a look and see what they're working on." The families open it up and oh look, we you're working on a diarama. That's amazing. Families can also leave positive feedback right there in the tool. My favorite piece about it is we have students who come from homes with primary language that is not English. So if a student or a teacher sends a message to the families or shares what's happening in the classroom in English, the family then gets that information translated in their native language.
They can respond in their native language and it goes back to English to the classroom. So we are breaking down barriers between home and school saying what happened at school today. You're look what's happening at school today.
That hyper commmunication with families opens up doors so that we invite families to be a part of our school experience every day. We have some coming in actually to help teach.
>> Yes, they join us often. And my only rule for families is if they're coming to visit, they're going to get their hands messy, right? We're not coming to be a fly on the wall. are coming to participate and be a part of our experience.
So we we have all the standard assessments, we have state assessments, we conduct FastBridge quarterly, but our day-to-day assessing looks very different where you would typically have a multiple choice test sat in front of you. Our students have choice in how they will show their learning led by a rubric rooted in our standards. So, we have students that are making podcasts and interviewing community members. This last time we actually went to the zoo and we interviewed an a zoologologist there. And then we had a student who was um interested in whales and preserving whales. So, she actually got to speak with a marine biologist via Zoom and she recorded that present or that interview before creating a presentation. So, the rigor is there. It just looks different when we are assessing because the students are rooting their learning in real world issues and finding out how they can truly make a difference. So, we're not focusing on short-term memorization, but truly bringing that learning to life.
Our students demonstrate their standards through authentic, meaningful creation across the grade bands. I mentioned that our littles are typically more physical and then our bigs are focusing on big issues. Um, our first year, which was just this previous school year, 24-2, we had a community unit where my thought was, "My students are going to pass out socks. They're going to make survival bags for winter." It was around December. And I had a second grader come in and she says, "I want to build a tiny home. We're going to end homelessness."
Again, my rule is not no, it's how. So, I asked how. And all of the students were like, "Well, we're going to host a carnival. We're going to raise money."
And sure enough, we built our math into making cardboard carnival games. We read about houselessness. My sixth graders had to actually contact the county commissioners in Cedric County and figure out what those regulations were for a tiny home to exist in Witchaw, Kansas. We now have four tiny homes at 14th and Estelle that are helping to end houselessness in our community. So, this is truly what our program is about. Our littles, like I said, they bring those dreams and our big kids mentor them to help them make it happen.
Our big three pillars of creative minds um are essentially that our structure is what makes creativity possible. While our program looks and feels much different, that rigor and structure is higher than it would be in a traditional building because in order for students to truly have individualized learning, we have to have that strong structure.
So, our teachers truly have to have the autonomy and the expertise to be able to create and design conditions for deep learning. Again, we fall back on our focus standards for K through 5. Our sixth graders, we have the state standards for them as well. And we root everything we do in those standards and finding mastery in those standards. And again, student creation. We really want our students creating and doing something that helps them take their learning to the next level. It's great if they can tell me an answer about a fact in our history, but what can they do with that information? How can they take that and grow?
We believe innovation should scale responsibility with instructional quality leading every decision.
So, as we grow, last year and the year before it was just myself and this year we had added a second teacher. We do everything. We are music, we are art, we are PE. While our students are not getting the traditional roomto room experience, they are still receiving all of those standards. I teach kickball, right? I'm teaching weaving and crochet.
We integrate everything into our model and weave it into whatever project it is that we're focusing on. So, we have two sites this coming year with some amazing unicorns joining us to the team. team will have two teachers at each space.
Each space will never have more than 40 students because as I was listening to your previous conversation, we have a lot of familial concerns in our schools.
Waw public schools is an urban district.
Creative minds reflects those numbers and reflects that diversity. By keeping our school small, we are able to know those families very intimately and truly help them find the help that they need.
whereas a traditional building there are just too many students to be able to do that. As we grow um after this coming school year we will launch a third site and hopefully a fourth after that. The biggest concern for us is not interest.
Our weight list is extremely high. Uh it was over 200 students last time I knew and it is finding the talent. We have to make sure we have teachers that are prepared to teach in a very different way. teachers that are truly masters of the standards and focused on relationships first because as I said when we're pulling all that other red tape away it's the teachers, the parents and the students. Those relationships are vital.
Speaking of relationships, we have a 94% retention rate which reflects strong family trust in our innovative public education. As Rob mentioned, many of our families are coming from homeschool or they've had very poor experiences in the traditional models of public education, some of which have only been in private.
So, it's a huge deal that we have such a high retention rate because it truly does come down to building those relationships and the parents have a say in their students learning. We have to hit our standards. We always hit our standards, but our parents are front-loaded on what is coming in lessons so that if they have a concern, their feedback is heard and we adjust the lessons accordingly.
And of course, we would not be complete in our discussions without data. Uh we've seen students move from high-risisk categories into benchmark and college pathway performance levels in just one school year. These are some of our highlights, definitely not all of them. These are based on fastbridge which are quarterly assessments in math, reading, and comprehension.
We have had students go I've got 27 points of growth here. And what that means in math is we were in the red. We jumped all the way up to that college pathway or sorry that um benchmark. We were above benchmark at the end of the year. But I really want to highlight our comprehension and our fluency pieces because reading is vital for everything else.
And as students get older in math, they can't do the math if they can't read the questions. So as we see these students just skyrocket throughout their reading, a large part of that is because in this one room model, we don't have to keep kindergarten with kindergarten or fifth grade with fifth grade. we are able to put students where they need to be based on their needs and abilities right now.
So, while I have a first grader who was able to move into a third grade reading group and read and comprehend at that level, I also have a third grader that was down with first graders at the beginning of the year building those skills because in homeschool her mom did not have the science of reading, right?
So, she needed some of those basics and then she was able to excel.
And again, we have lots of growth. This is one of our larger ones. Strong literacy growth shows that personalized multi-ads instruction can accelerate outcomes. Everything that we're doing outside of learning to read is integr integrated into our project-based learning units, even down to the stories and books that we're reading for comprehension. The best uh benefit of this is the students are truly engaged in their learning. Uh, anyone who's been a teacher in the room knows how difficult it can be to have a student retain information about a text that they don't care about. But when you are learning about animals that are endangered and then I give you a text that is all about either that animal and its environment or how we can save them, they want to remember all of the things.
And so that truly helps their comprehension and the data transfers over. 91% of our students improved in their fluency scores, not listed here, but um also very viable. 94% of our students increased in comprehension this year.
Our st our students are meeting and exceeding Kansas benchmark expectations across multiple grade levels. I've got some data here for you that you can view. Students demonstrated strong benchmark performance. Literacy and fluency growth exceeded our expectations. growth occurred across all grade bands and our outcomes remained strong with a very diverse student population and our data is down below.
We are 49% white, 20% African-American, 17% Hispanic or Latino, 11% two or more races, 6% of our students are English learners, and 26% of our students are IEP or 504 students, which is higher than you'll see in a traditional building. We do most of this in-house.
We have a full-time sped parah. We do have a child study team offsite that comes to make sure that we are meeting all of our legal obligations. But we find that in this environment where again a lot of that red tape has been removed. Our students are able to be served with without having the pull out.
They are fully integrated into our classrooms. They're able to move their bodies if they need to learn a little bit differently. and we don't have as many issues as we ne necessarily would in a different environment.
Innovation and accountability can and do exist coexist when learning remains grounded in rigor and measurable growth which is always our goal at creative minds. Kansas schools are rebuilding literacy and engagement. Students have demonstrated measurable academic growth at creative minds where they have not had that success in the past. Our technology supports authentic learning and collaboration. Um, I've mentioned the podcasts. We also utilize the video studio that we're lucky enough to have at Learning Lab where they're creating social media reels for awareness and things of that nature.
In our public education, we can innovate while maintaining accountability. And I think that's the most exciting thing about Creative Minds is that we took a really big risk to do things extremely different from the status quo. and it is paying off immensely.
Our work is rooted in the belief that Kansas can continue reimagining public education in ways that strengthen both innovation and outcomes. It is what drives everything that we do. Our families have made it very clear that this is something that they want and we are so excited to continue scaling creative minds and increasing as our demand increases. Our innovation of course will remain connected to results.
Our student engagement and rigor will continue to coexist and we will continue to evolve public education just as the redesign imagined before it was put on pause.
These are some images of students that were um showing their work. In our front corner we have our video studio. Down below was our innovation and invention unit where they were holding their showcase. This was a kindergartener that made a board game and this is one of our board members playing.
Our students love to create books whether paper or digital and we've got the podcast studio here and some interviews with the zoo and of course our website if you'd like to view more.
>> Thank you very much. So, one thing that part of this conversation and why I thought it was very interesting to dive a little bit into how they're measuring and monitoring was I said, "Well, are you seeing an improvement in your state assessment scores?" And they said, "Well, our kids are all in different school districts, so that's complicated to do." I said, "Well, so tell me what you're doing." So, you saw some of that in the f how they're using FastBridge to monitor growth within a year, but one of the things you told me about uh that wasn't in your presentation. I would love for you to explain how you use showcases to evaluate students.
Our showcases are typically public, so we open them up. Our students even go around downtown Witchah inviting uh different community members to join. and they are in charge of their learning.
There is no better way to determine if a student knows what they have been researching and studying and creating than putting a stranger in front of them and trusting that they know what to say, right? You just can't manufacture that.
You can't fabricate it. So, we have rubrics that we utilize for assessing students throughout our PBL units, but our showcases are truly showcases of learning. Our students become completely in charge of their creations, of their education, and they are in charge that day. My job is just to facilitate and make sure everything goes smoothly.
>> And to an extent, they're defending their thesis.
>> 100%.
>> I'd love to give an example. Um, last year we had a third grader that designed a shovel that would plant the plant and fertilize the plant and it went into the ground. And so we had them call cold call local companies to get a backing.
And so having a third grader cold call is something amazing because they, you know, they don't even know how to talk on the phone right today. And so even the functions of building social fitness for these kids was amazing.
>> We have at least one person in the queue for questions. Uh, director Rooker.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I this I mean bravo like beautiful presentation sounds like a creative wonderful environment for the children involved. It also sounds like it takes intensive involvement from the families. So I'm curious to choose the cohort given the waiting list you have. What is what goes into that? Is it it can't be first come first served or is it? And there's one slide that that provoked a question. I'll just go ahead and ask it so that then I can let you talk. Yeah.
On the families choosing to stay in this setting, it says 94% retention among eligible returning students. If you could unpack what that eligibility speaks to, I would very much appreciate it.
>> Definitely. So, first, our students are chosen by lottery just like any magnet school would be. So, there is no first come first serve. It is very much we have this many open seats available in this grade level so let's run the lottery and Rob has a beautiful system for that if you want to talk about it more.
>> Yeah. So I would say the one difference between our magnet program and how we run this lottery is we do it by grade level to equal out the number of students by grade level.
>> And as far as the eligible families, our sixth graders have to age out. So, all we had three sixth graders this year and they all are moving on to middle school programs. However, we had 10 fifth graders. All uh eight of them are staying with us into sixth grade. Two have decided to go to their neighborhood middle school so that they can be with their peers through middle and high school.
>> Yes, you may.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Just as a followup, what to ensure that the parents on the home front are supporting the work and the the things they need to be doing.
How do you engage them in this process?
>> A lot of our families are working families and even dual- inome families.
So, I I may have misspoke. Uh it is not a requirement for families to join us, but we do have a high level of engagement and that sometimes looks like grandparents or older siblings joining us. It's not necessarily the parents. We do hold our showcases in the evening so that they can join us whenever possible.
Um but as far as how we make sure families understand what they're getting into, most of our families have toured with us before they've decided to sign up for our weight list. Um however, we also have some families that come in blind. So when we run that lottery, we call and let them know, hey, you've been accepted. Let's talk about what it looks like. Let's make sure this is right for you and your student. We don't decline that, but we do then let the parents determine if this is for them.
The other thing they did that I thought was very interesting, Seesaw is an app that as children are making things, and this may I I see Dr. Gibson shaking his head. Yeah. It's just maybe that I'm the last person to know about it since it's been a while since I've been in the classroom. But you're taking pictures as you go to send to families. So here's here's what you worked on. So it's not your child coming home and how was school today. It's you have something specific in front of you to talk about.
And I I that just cell phones weren't uh photocapable when I was a beginner teacher years ago.
>> Indeed. And I would say in the history of education, if we go back to the one room school houses that we had in on Kansas Plains, you would have at the end of the school year, the families would come in and the students would do their recitation of their poems. They would do their times tables, but it was a showcase at the end. We do that in the fall every Friday night lights. Students come out and they perform on the football field. We see that on the band and the marching band. We see that at the choir concerts. Those are all exhibitions of learning. What we prioritize at Creative Minds is to make learning as visual as possible. Not just the shiny penny at the end of the project, not the final diarama. Where is learning happening from the beginning of ideiation to the messy middle to the iteration to the final piece? When our families see that learning is being seped visually, then there's not this confu confusion of what's going on in your classroom. We are trying to be as transparent as possible.
I'll add to that. While the product is amazing and the things that our kids can come up with, the sky is the truly the limit. It's the process that's the beautiful part. It's the messy middle, that chaos where the students are cold calling our community members. They are sending me emails that they have written for me to send out for them for safety purposes, of course, to request interviews or to try to get more information from the community. It's that's where the power is. That's where the learning is and that is what Seesaw allows us to showcase. So even if we're talking about the journal that we wrote on our novel study that day, the students take a picture of their journal writing, they record their thoughts about it and that gets sent to the parents. So even just those little moments that in a traditional building might get lost, they're able to view.
We have re we have replicated the showcase uh at Spate Elementary too which is one of our innovation schools that has an immersive coding uh model that we teach coding to elementary students and they have two showcases as well now after we've uh replicated that out of creative minds.
>> Thank you uh Representative Steel.
>> Thank you Madam Chair. This is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing.
Uh this sounds expensive and so you're you're with Witchaw public schools and so is the funding the same like you have your base rate and then so do you take any IEP students are they bus to your school free reduced lunch like >> so so we don't provide busing uh for those students but we do uh we do serve breakfast in the mornings uh and that's free to our families and then uh free introduced lunch in the afternoon. So, uh, everything except for transportation is provided.
>> I think >> funding per student is the around $8,000 per student the same.
>> And our um enrollment fees are the same as any public school.
>> We our IEP and 504 rate is 26% of our students.
>> We're the only uh public micro school in the learning lab. So we don't charge anything to those families to operate there at their learning lab.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Did you have any followup?
>> No, I I I wanted the the cost number and you got it. So thank you.
>> Very very good. And I and I will tell you I asked the same question and what that triggered for me in my mind is that as we move through this formula process, I think we have a lot of wonderful districts who are interested in innovation and how do we make sure that our formula that we come up with leaves room for unusual situations and and innovation. So that's a challenge question for a future meeting, but be thinking about it. Dr. Dr. Ninwander, did you want to share anything about your your uh role in this and what you what your thoughts are?
>> Well, thank you. So, I'm just going to come up with what's on the top of my head. Um, of course, Diane Smokeowski has been a leader that I've got to be involved with for quite a few years.
And yes, you know, co put a pause on things, but the whole idea of redesign was to look differently. And I I think with all the districts we were up to 60ome um that were trying to rethink um the modern-day experience of we move kids based off of age um a set of content for a period of time that conveyor belt that was set up years ago and they were doing a great job. I think what we found mostly um with the issues was more policy um that they wanted to do something outside of the box, but it was well, how do you count recess time? Is it part of the school day? Is it not part of the school day? You know, because policies were written around a traditional schooling model and they were trying to kind of break that model. So we were having to look at, you know, career teched hour times, you know, just that experience of the kid being out in the field on a work study. Well, is that counted towards average day? I mean, it was that kind of stuff that were the challenges. Um, but it's great to see this and and then how do we share this uh in a way where more schools can learn? Well, all right. It it shouldn't matter whether you're urban or rural.
It's how do we do something that's a different experience for our kids, especially, you know, agebanded because, you know, you it's just the the modeling that kids can do for other kids. Um, so anyway, I hats off and um, you know, wherever Diane is, there's something creative going to be happening.
>> When uh, we were visiting before the meeting, Dr. Ninwander shared with me that he was involved in the very early setup process. So, I I put you on the spot and thank you for jumping in. On my list, I have Representative uh, McDonald, then Chair Getats, and then I do have a question. Go ahead, Representative.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had a couple Excuse me. A couple clarifying questions. Trying to wrap my head around how you do this. Do you have like how many kids per grade? How many kids per teacher? And then on these charts, um I was looking particularly at the first grade chart. How many students does that represent? Is it just your one last year's first grade cohort or is it all of your first grade cohorts combined over the last whatever many years?
>> The data on the slides are just from this last school year. As far as how student seats are chosen, we try to keep it as even as possible while understanding our littles take more and need more one-on-one time than our bigs.
And so when while our grade band normally looks like K2 or K3 depending on need and then we have 36 or 46 again depending on need. So this last year I had kindergarten through third grade on one half of the space and then Miss Smoke had fourth through sixth grade on the other half of the room. And um we integrated often again we share students based on ability and need and where they currently are. We meet them where they are, not what their age or grade says that they need to be. Um but the seats themselves, they're as even as they can be aside from sixth grade. We never take a new sixth grader on. Our fifth graders are able to move up into sixth grade or choose to go to another middle school, but we don't take a new sixth grader because it's very difficult when they've had six years of very traditional education to jump in at that middle school level and feel a part of the community and be able to do the things that we are doing right without unlearning a whole lot. So, as far as seats numbers, I don't know what the specifics would be. Yeah, I'd have to look that up, but it you would just average out the number of grades to 40 basic. So, we take a dual classroom model. Last year, we started with just one classroom and this year we're in a dual classroom. And I think as we replicate throughout Witchah, we'll replicate the two classroom model. It seems to work really well with a STEM space. So, we're taking the we're we're about to expand to Benton Elementary and modify the north side of Benton Elementary and we're adding a STEM space, a podcast room, and then you have a dual classroom model that has a partition similar to what you visited at the learning lab.
>> And in that two-teer model, never more than 40 students.
>> Okay, that was really my question I was trying to get to. Thank you, >> uh, Chairman Gats.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll read off my questions that have already been answered. Um, staff to student ratio, cost difference from traditional model, same funding model, and then the last one maybe that that hasn't you you've kind of touched on it a little bit, but like footprint. you you've talked about being able to expand and and maybe take a third and fourth grade classroom and put them together and be able to have this modeling and interaction, but at your main location because I haven't visited it. I would love to. Is it an kind of an entire school? Is it a wing of an existing school? And what would kind of >> without getting into too many details, I would say that uh today uh some of what Benton allows us to do by putting it in a school within a school is uh helping with those needs, whether it be special ed needs or other needs that we have that just aren't there. But um as we expand to other locations, you'll probably find have where we find an anchor school that we can do that at geographically.
But then the other spaces probably won't look like school spaces.
So, um, but it will stay that dual classroom model. We may put four classrooms in in a space, but it will stay a dual classroom model with two teachers, team teaching 40 kids. Talk >> about state.
>> Oh, yeah. We're we are also partnering with Witchaw State University. And uh uh so one of the things that Olivia talked about was talent. And so, uh, this next year we've, uh, we're putting some of those paras are actually pre-ervice teachers. And so, we'll have those, uh, part-time parases pre-ervice teachers so that they can understand the environment and understand what's different. And then hopefully the likelihood is hiring them as teachers as we expand the program. And just one quick follow as far as the PAR support that you just talked about. Is there always one or does that go with uh the special education or special needs that a parah is attached and so they're participating and that's how they're learning and you're trying to re-recruit them.
>> So knowing that the learning lab is not a school, right? So I don't have parah support. Um, we have two part-time pairs that overlap and that gives me coverage for the day to make sure I'm giving the teachers the plan time, lunch, all those pieces for coverage. So, it's very much like we operate it like a startup and very much.
>> Excellent. Thank you. And thank you, Madam Chair.
>> Sorry to follow up on your question about learning labs specifically because it does it is a shared school model. We do have our private space, which is our classroom, and then the maker space, the podcast, the video studio. All of those things are shared. So, we just reserve those through an app. But we do have, you asked if we had like a little wing.
We do have our own classroom space with there, too.
>> Yeah. Come visit.
>> Very good. Representative McDonald.
>> His question made me think about another question. When it comes to kids who come with to you with an IEP, whether it's just like speech for articulation or more intensive needs, are the parents having to, I guess, opt out of part of what would be recommended to attend your school like because you probably don't have a speech pathologist on staff, for instance, or >> we do not have one on site, but we do partner. Thank you. We do not have one on site, but we do partner I'm too short, Miss Smoke. Um, with other elementary schools. So right now our anchor school is Franklin Elementary. So their CST will serve our students. Their hours may look different, but they are still receiving those requirements. They do not have to wave services.
>> I just was thinking about a bill that we passed last year to allow speech I'm not going to say it right. Speech therapist assistance. Yes. Thank you. So that might be an option you might look into in the future.
>> Thank you.
>> All right. And I'm going to get the last question in and then we're going to move on because the hour grows late. Um, you said you were on the fifth grade page slide and you said 94% of students increased comprehension. Was that just your fifth graders or was that schoolwide?
>> That was schoolwide. The 91% that improved on fluency uh and the 94 for comprehension were both schoolwide.
>> Okay. And the followup to that is um an increase is good. It's it's it's definitely growth is so critically important. Um but how how many of them get from the red zone on a fast bridge to the to a high yellow or or a green zone? What can you can you describe how the movement is going? Quantify the movement for me in some way.
>> Yeah. Uh, I would say a majority of our stu I can't give you an exact percentage off the top of my head, but a majority of our students who are sitting in um tier 2 make it to tier one by the end of the year. Our friends who are in tier three, I've seen them make it all the way to tier one or even college pathway in that one-year process, but they're a majority of them, over 90% are making it at least up into that tier two from tier three. Okay, >> thank you very much. appreciate y'all um being here and I appreciated the way you guys were really closely monitoring growth and and what that looks like and um I do have uh to wish you a great drive back to Witchaw. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay, so now we're going to get back on to schedule. So it's it's Dr. Nan's turn and um I had kind of put her on the agenda uh to ask to kind of where are we going with uh state assessments because I think here you we frequently say um a state assessment is is is one one element and um measuring growth is important and I so I wanted to get an update of where y'all are going and what innov motivations you might have that you're able to share with us. So, Dr. Nan, thank you for substituting for Dr. Harwood today and let me visit with Jennifer just a second.
>> Thank you. Um, Dr. Na, do you have any documents that you want to show us what they look like as we start?
>> I sure will. Thank you, Chair Estus.
I'll I'll kind of refer I'm going to be referring to this document a lot. Um it is the document that um Commissioner Watson shares with the um legislature every year, usually at the start of the session. And then there were about four or five handouts, one state and national ACT scores, um correlation data for 10 2017 to 2110th graders, five-year postsecary effectiveness rate, and um the Kansas State Board of Education, um a a little bit about our reorganization and what that will look like. There should also be a handout uh called the canons can star recognnition program. So several loose ones and I'll just kind of hold them up as I'm referring to them so you can see them and I am the substitute for Dr. Harwood today and it's at the end of the day. I recognize that but I do appreciate being here. I am going to probably repeat some information you've already heard at the beginning and then I'd like to kind of get through my stuff and then be open to any questions that you may have as I get through. And I would also just note that we are in transition with commissioners and so I'm going to give you kind of our current state and then a little bit of our future state as much as we know at this time. So I do uh appreciate the opportunity to be here and I am going to talk about state assessments but I'm also going to point out that all of the measures that I talk about whether it's state assessment graduation rate those are all single measurements and we you would find as we look at this as statewide data that sometimes a district is really good in one point of data and not so good in another. And sometimes districts struggle all the way through and sometimes districts are are um very high all the way through. But I want to talk about um student outcomes including but also beyond a single test score. So, I'm going to start with graduation rates and it would be in this book on page 17.
And I'm just going to give you've seen the data. So, I'm going to give a more of a quick overview. When we look at graduation rates in Kansas, we do continue to see improving outcomes compared to many states nationally, which has been talked about today. One of the reasons this does matter is because it remains a clear indicator that a student is staying connected to school. And staying connected to school means progressing towards some postsecondary opportunities.
But I want to point out that Kansas has really worked to move beyond simply asking whether students graduate. We're also asking are they graduating prepared? Are they leaving with meaningful experiences and opportunities? Are they prepared for college, careers, military or workforce?
So sometimes we just look at the graduation numbers and we think uh but I want to point out that those numbers do lead to opportunities.
And we do know with graduation rate that without a high school diploma, your chance of living in poverty is 21% versus with aos a high school diploma 14%.
And then some college or associates degree that already breaks down to nine.
So, if we can get them to stay in school and get that diploma, we're giving them some opportunities potentially beyond high school.
Next, I want to talk a little bit about page 14 of the report of this report, which is academic preparation.
Here you can see that Kansas students are continuing to participate in college coursework while still in high school.
Advanced placement opportunities are increasing. We've talked about ACT and I'm going to dig into that a little bit more. And then career and technical education pathways.
All of these indicators matter because they reflect students are engaging in rigorous learning experiences. If you look at the total number of AP exams taken and the number of scores that are three, four or five from 21 through 25 in in 2021, a little over 8,000 students scored levels 3, four, or five on the AP exams.
In 2025, that number increased to 15,930 students.
Students earning college credits while in high school are already building momentum towards postsecary success. AP participation and performance indicates access to advanced coursework.
ACT data helps provide a nationally recognized benchmark of readiness and career and technical education participation demonstrates students are developing workforce aligned skills and credentials. So I do want to refer to the handout. I think when it came through on the email it was 4.1 but the state and national ACT score handout.
And I just wanted to give a little more context into some of the conversation we had earlier. Um, and some has been answered. Uh, shortly after COVID, some universities quit requiring the ACT as an entrance exam. And so whereas students used to take the ACT multiple times to get into co uh to get either uh a better scholarship or to even just get into the college of their choice. Now we're finding students often just take the free one and they don't take a second or a third time. And and historically the more times you take the ACT the more your score improves. I've just I like to travel around the state and get into classrooms and really see what is happening in a classroom, how kids are learning, what curriculum is being used, is there really too much technology. And just to give an example, a couple of weeks a or in March, I was in an AP classroom at a central Kansas community and I said, "How many of you have taken the ACT with the free opportunity?" All the hands were raised.
And I said, "How many of you plan to take the ACT more than once?" Four hands went up.
This is a a pretty um a higher poverty district, so they weren't going to pay to take it more than once. I went to a more affluent district um towards the end of the year. Same thing. Walked into an AP class. How many of you take have taken the ACT? All the hands in the AP class went up. How many of you plan to take it more than once? 74% of the hands were raised. So, I do think that um I I really appreciate um the state's willingness to pay for the ACT. I I do think it provides some opportunity. It is my understanding that more colleges are bringing that back as a requirement for entrance. And so with that, I would anticipate some increased access uh or increased um participation.
I also would like you to look at this page which is the correlation data 2017 to 2001 2110th graders.
When you look at the high two, this was the 21 um data, it it shows ELA graduation rate, math graduation, ELA postsecary, math postsecary, ELA ACT, and math ACT. How that relates to low ones, low twos, low threes, low fours, and then the high versions of that. If you look at that high two, low three um segment and you look at the ACT scores, 19.7% um I think that's right. Yeah, in ELA ACT and 20.2 in math and then the jump to 22.7.
That uh low three percentage rate is actually the 75th percentile of ACT. So, it's it's a pretty good uh correlation of that proficiency rate and ACT.
Next, if you could turn in this booklet to page 28.
Career and technical education is another important piece of the Kansas outcome story. Kansas has long emphasized the importance of multiple pathways for student success. For some, that does mean going to college, but for others that might involve technical training, industry credentials, apprenticeship, even military service or direct workforce entry. Kansas CTE pathways help students connect learning to real world application and workforce needs.
And importantly, CTE participation often increases student engagement and relevance in school. A lot of times your CTE courses are the courses that prevent that chronic absenteeism that we talked about earlier.
On that same page, if you would go to page or same booklet, page 19, we'll talk a little bit about post-secary success.
And I would also point this um handout out to go along with that post-secondary effectiveness.
Some of the most important data we do look at is post-secary success and that cohort data on page 19.
Ultimately we want to find out not did students just pass a test or do well but what happens after high school. The cohort data does allow us to examine whether students successfully transition into post-secary education, credential attainment, workforce participation, or other next steps. It does connect K12 outcomes to real life outcomes. But I do want to point out some deficiencies in this one. We do have a lot of students who enter the military after school, which is definitely post-secary success.
We are finally getting into a pilot with the military who will allow us now to track that data. So, it's not on here, but moving forward in the next couple of years, we expect that to happen. Also, there has been uh there have been some talks about partnering with the Department of Labor and determining what real wage um would look like in in also um determining post-secondary effectiveness outcomes. So, what would a living wage need to be for a student who entered the workforce? Does that include access to health care um or health insurance and benefits and so forth? So, we're really working on that to to have this be a more accurate reflection. Some schools are doing that independently um to the best of their ability by reaching out to students, what are you doing? What are your jobs after high school? But we need a true um systemic way to track that data.
I also want to talk a little bit about improvement initiatives, but that will also be highlighted at the end when I talk about our reorganization a little bit. If you turn to page eight on this report, I want to talk about literacy.
Kansas and thanks to many of you in this room have made significant investments in literacy initiatives because it does remain foundational to future learning.
We know that if students cannot read proficiently, it impacts every other content area and long-term opportunities.
The state's emphasis on structured literacy reflects what research continues to show. students benefit from systemic, explicit, evidence-based reading instruction. It's not simply an initiative. It's foundational infrastructure.
As you know, we now require a seal of literacy uh beginning in the year 2028.
I think I have that right. I could be wrong. We are nearing 50% of current licensed teachers who would have to have that seal of literacy. Um have already put that on their lensure. Um I talked to Mr. Carter, our lensure person today and he said that number should jump as they get new lensures and people are finishing this cohort of letters training. Um, we also, as you know, with the blueprint for literacy, will be working on getting those licensed reading specialists in classrooms uh over the next several years, as well as looking at um high risk for K3 specifically to implement an individualized literacy plan beginning in the 27 school year.
On page 10, I just want to briefly talk about school improvement.
Accountability does nothing as was referenced by um the the person earlier online who was sharing about we have to really do something with our data. And I think that's been my greatest task this last year that I've been here is really diving into do we have the right data and what are we going to do with it. So on page 10, we talk a little bit about school improvement in 2025.
I will also preface what that might look like moving forward. But our focus is really looking at do we have highquality instruction happening in classrooms.
That's why I've been going out into classrooms. Um do we have a good assessment system? What are our interventions? Is our professional learning aligned to the outcomes we wish to achieve? And then do we have continuous improvement processes in place? My goal moving forward is to really create systems that work together to improve outcomes. I mean, I want that to happen and I know it needs to happen with urgency.
I also want to talk about some quantitative and qualitative measures we look at and that is a handout that says the canons can star recognition program.
We do recognize that not a single metric fully captures school success.
Conversations around accountability and improvement increasingly include both quantitative and qualitative measures.
We look specifically quantitatively at ACT data, graduation rates, ACT participation, college credit attainment, career and teched participation, postsecary outcomes, but our qualitative indicators also matter.
Kindergarten readiness, individual plans of study, family partnerships, civic engagement. The commissioner also gives some specific commissioner awards.
This framework rewards accountability.
It creates accountability discussions and it reflects an effort to provide a more balanced understanding of school performance and student success. I'm really looking forward to a lot of tomorrow's conversations about what other states are doing. A lot of the states that I've followed that you might be speaking on tomorrow really follow this balanced approach at quantitative and qualitative measures.
And then last but not least, I do want to talk about Kansas State assessments.
Many of the handouts that were provided today are really good and so you might want to look at those, but if you want to look at the one specific to 2025, that would be on page 15 and 16 in the book.
And here's where I'm going to be candid.
We are not satisfied where we are academically with these results. And I think it's important that I say that clearly and directly.
While Kansas has many encouraging indicators, we know that we have to improve literacy and math, and those results matter.
Literacy and math proficiency remains foundational to virtually every long-term student outcome. And if students struggle academically early, it can impact eventually post-secary success, workforce readiness, long-term opportunities. And so I do take these results seriously.
At the same time, we're also trying to respond thoughtfully and strategically to what the data is telling us.
The answer can't simply be identifying low performance.
The answer has to be how do we provide the supports? How do we build the systems? And how do we change the outcomes?
As you review that assessment data, you're going to notice there are significant percentages of students who are not meeting proficiency levels. And again, I don't want to minimize that.
I also have to point out though that these assessments represent that this is a statewide summitive assessment one snapshot.
It is aligned to our standards which go very wide and not as deep as I think they need to be.
They do help us to identify some strengths, gaps, trends and areas requiring additional support.
I don't want to hide from the data. I want to organize the data around improvement and that has to be the focus moving forward. I think uh representative ES Estus was um or chair Estus was asking me maybe to talk a little bit about assessments moving forward and I think balanced assessment system is critical. So um the the earlier presenters talked about their fastbridge scores. That's one data point. State assessments are a data point. But we have to be able to use all data to drive instruction and see where we are regularly throughout the year so we can really build that improvement. And then we can look better at not only year-to-year growth but every nine weeks growth. And that growth can be the snapshot that they referenced. high risk, medium risk, low risk, but it also has to be endofthe-ear outcomes.
I think that we can't do that without looking at all of the supports that we have provided across the state. I did a kind of an audit of what all supports are we providing in the agency and that audit went so wide that we weren't really focused on a set number of things that we really believe can change that trajectory.
Structured literacy everything we do has got to be around structured literacy quality instruction. And when I say quality instruction, I mean at grade level rigorous instruction, standards alignment. Is what we're teaching aligned to the standards? And does it reflect a balanced assessment system? Because if curriculum isn't aligned, instruction suffers. If assessment isn't balanced, meaning meaningful information uh interventions miss the mark. If literacy is weak, every content area is impacted. And if struct if instructional quality varies greatly, student outcomes will vary greatly as well. So that leads us to the last handout I want to talk about today before I take questions and that is that reorganization and support structures handout.
for as long as the um KSD that I've known it and I've been in Kansas going on teaching in Kansas and for a long time um we've had a commissioner of education we've had Dr. Harwood's role which uh Dr. New and Swander served in all aspects at the agency, but a division of fiscal services and a division of learning services.
Through a a budgetneutral move, we are adding a deputy commissioner of accountability and technology to our department. And what that will look like is do we have the right data that we need to drive improvement?
So, Dr. Zach Conrad will be leading that um division and then he and I will be working very closely together as he gets the data we need to drive accountability.
I will be tasked with how do we support accountability? You can't have the expectations without the proper supports in place to move the needle.
This purpose is to better connect supports across literacy, assessment, accreditation, federal programs, and all school improvement efforts.
That this goal will be clearer support structures for districts, really identifying districts who are struggling to make any gains.
Ultimately, coherence matters. Schools improve more effectively when systems, expectations, and supports are aligned.
At KSDE, we want the focus to not simply be reporting the data to you, but I want the next time to come and start showing improved outcomes.
We have to continue, and I'm going to say this over and over, to emphasize structured literacy, quality instruction, standards alignment, balanced assessment, and coherent systems of support.
And I'm going to close with this. Kansas has to expect high expectations for their students, but we also have to ensure that when we evaluate those outcomes, we look through a balanced and honest lens. One assessment score alone can't tell the the entire story of every student or any student, a teacher, a school or a system. The goal is not simply to measure performance. The goal is to create lifelong learners who contribute effectively to our society.
I um I like to give this example. Last week I was in Southwest Kansas. I happen to have a little grandchild out there, so I have a lot of um wants to go out that way. And I was speaking with um a person who said, you know, wait till you see our ACT scores. We have improved five years in a row. Well, that doesn't show up on that thing I held up about ACT scores declining. But that was a specific indicator that this district who has a very high ELLL population um a pretty high at risk population is seeing their ACT scores improve over 5 years. We have to look at trends as a state but we also have to look at trends in individual districts. We have to get into classrooms to really get a pulse and a measure as to what is happening and then provide supports accordingly.
And I'd be happy to stand for questions.
All righty. I'm going to kick us off with a question because last week some of us were at a uh a uh blueprint for literacy um meeting. So it's inspired the question and and as we're trying to measure success and we're also trying to find the right measurement tools. You can tell me how many teachers have a seal of literacy. Um it's very clearly articulated. Are you able to tell me how many actual classrooms are utilizing the seal of literacy principles?
I'm I'm really glad you asked that question, uh, Representative Estus, and I am so sorry I missed that meeting last week, the blueprint meeting. I was babysitting a grandchild, so I took that as priority. Um, we are developing tools to measure that at the at the um Kansas State Department of Ed. So, I couldn't tell you right now. I can tell you the number of schools who are implementing highquality instructional materials which align to the science of reading. I have that data not with me here today but we want to start seeing it in action. And so we want to start doing some audits across the state informal just um now you've been trained hopefully you have the materials now what's implementation look like and if it's not how do we support you not punish you. So the um there was good news and bad news at at blueprint um meeting. Uh the good news was if you um had high quality coaching, your students were making stat statistically significant gains across the board. Um but and we had some of the teachers speak to us who had gone through the coaching process and and and the difference that it made for them. Um but unfortunately the anidotal uh information for them was some of them had uh principles and assistant principles or fellow teachers who said, "Oh, I I did what I needed to do to get my seal and I'm not really using it."
And so that I I like I think the data can tell us by the rate of improvement that we're seeing whether or not it's being done faithfully. And so I hope that the department is able to help districts key in real quickly who might have the seal but isn't really implementing it and uh because I think the results kind of tell you the answer to that and but the millions of I think the department put in 24 million uh for for uh letters if I or at least close to that number.
Um, in the state we put in 10 million for the the initial blueprint and to see that investment get ignored.
We really are hoping uh to partner with the districts and with you guys to make sure that we are being faithful to what to know uh for what we know works.
>> Yeah. So that is a very good point. So really phase one I would say is getting the seal. But that if you just stop there, we're not going to see improvement. You have to implement. So we have currently um many um I want to say 300 uh who have completed the or are in the midst of coaching cadre with uh Lori Curt, Dr. Lori Curtis. She is walking them through structured coaching training and then the some of those who are now trained. So they they had to be letters trained and then they had to become trained letters facilitators to qualify for the coaching model. So they have to really understand that science. Um the issue is a lot of those uh trained coaches are also teachers. So then you're pulling them from a classroom to do coaching. So, we're really looking at a systemic way to to try to utilize those coaches the most the to the best of our ability, but you're right, we have to have um a structure to get that next level of support in place beyond the actual letters training.
>> Thank you, um, Representative Steel.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much for this presentation, the handouts, and most importantly recognizing that we have improvements that we need to do. I I really appreciate that honesty. Um you did mention about, you know, looking at assessments quicker together. Uh this is, you know, we we have a pilot program that several schools are doing. Uh I So a couple questions. One, where are we with the IADA process? Where where is that at? And how are we going to, you know, ensure that those schools are going to be able to use that data for that? And that specifically for for those pi those schools that are doing that pilot, they're able to measure true standards that have been set by KSD. So standards for each grade level. So we're really able to measure, are we meeting those standards or not? So looking forward, what are we doing to truly get the measurements of those standards? Because those standards are set to know that our students are going to be successful. But I'm not able. So if if there is data available, I would love it. But how do we know that we're meeting the standards that we currently have in place?
>> It's a it's a great question. So I'll answer several and then if I miss something you asked, I'll the IADA application has been submitted. Um and so the feds have 90 days to respond to that. We anticipate hearing something back. Could be earlier with more questions or clarifications.
Um I I don't I don't want to speak out, but I feel pretty confident that in the IADA process um we had a team today meet to talk about the standards um that will be selected and how that process will look for the IADA um moving forward as we onboard more districts um into that pilot. Um right now um your best bet to understand standards is if a school district chooses to utilize standardsbased grading and then they have their own um um balanced assessment system like I'll that school I was talking about in Southwest Kansas, they have adopted their own um um quarterly assessments that aren't part of the pilot, but that they're measuring standards and giving reports. Um, but that's the direction we're moving to is more of a um a standards align assessment that's a through assessment model where you could get that information throughout the school year.
>> Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
>> You're welcome. Um, Director Rooker, >> thank you, Madam Chair. This handout um piqu my interest. I just want to walk through how I am interpreting what this is telling us to get either corrected or confirmation. So when I look at this um we are looking at the the green and navy blue bars are the graduation rate. So 93 94% for high level two.
>> Correct.
>> The timeline is throwing me off. Is this because it says 2017 to 2021 is that because of the post-secary success indicator?
>> Um yes because of the postsecondary effectiveness and also it was 10th graders and we did this before um the state assessment scores changed.
>> Okay. So so we've got the percent that graduate in each level. We have are these these are all percentages the the 60 and 64 this percent that show the post-secondary effective rate.
>> Yes.
>> That's described in the the coherence handbook. Okay. Yes.
>> And then the um ACT columns are the statewide average.
>> Correct.
>> Okay. And so when I see the red square on this, that is telling us that within a the high level two and the low level three were zeroed in on this this effectiveness this the can you just go into this a little bit? So what we kept hearing from the field was we have students who are scoring level two that are very successful and we think you're wrong with your how you have um coded these scores. And so that is when we went back and did the recalibration.
Uh when the new assessment um was administered we had listened to the field. They wanted a shorter assessment. anytime you have a new assessment, you have to have new cut scores. And so we looked at this data to help determine better where those cut scores could be re-calibrated to better represent this uh high level two, lowlevel three as it relates to graduation rates, post-secary effectiveness, and ACT.
>> Thank you. I may I have a followup?
>> Yes, you may.
>> Thank you.
um trying to articulate the the a million questions but the so the the reccalibration as I understand it we vertically aligned our assessment the assessment itself like the standards and the assessments needed vertical alignment because we were not vertically aligned necessarily before was that also part of Are you talking about the the stand the the academic standards that are part of a curriculum or are you talking about the state assessment standards that we measure?
>> It gets confusing. So when you say the word standards, this is where it always gets confusing in front of the committee. I've watched so many committee meetings and when we start talking standards. So there are curriculum standards and those standards are measured on the assessment and we have levels 1, 2, 3 or four depending on the depth of the rigor that we ask the questions around those standards. And what we were finding were we had very rigorous um questions and depth of that and we needed to recalibrate um what was a two, a three and a four.
Uh, one is pretty much baseline at grade level question, but we were having a lot of kids score a level two that we were recognizing that the the standard in which we were asking that question was rigorous.
I I mean I there there is a handbook for um that that the NAPE testing service publish publishes mapping state proficiency standards onto the NAPE scales. Kansas standards actually are really high caliber like our eighth grade reading standards. This is the 2022 which is the most recent version of this. We are the most rigorous in the nation.
Correct. I do. Uh, Representative Williams asked a really good question saying, "I'm anxious for the NAPE scores to come out to see if they are reflective of the increases." I know NAPE also just did a new standard setting for their assessment. That's why we won't get those scores until February. Um, so I'm an and I think they were finding some of the same things on their assessment. So, I'm really anxious to see that those scores. The the issue we have with NAPE is we get no individual school scores. We get no data um in terms of how a student performed.
We have no say in who takes it when it's taken. This year I did put an emphasis on our districts. Like it is important that you rest that you go through all the same test taking strategies because when your teachers don't have any buyin which we know we we this is why we're doing the IADA application, right?
because we know that when the scores are relevant, we tend to try harder um and they're meaningful. NAPE doesn't provide that for us. Not an excuse. We need to be doing better on NAPE. Um but our teachers just don't have a good understanding, rightfully so, of what does this mean? They see no data.
>> Any other questions?
Uh, Senator Ericson, because I do have more questions, but I don't want to hog all the question time. Thank you and thank you for the presentation. Just real quick, I know you mentioned, you know, cautioning not using one assessment or if you're sitting in our shoes in the legislature. So, what should we be looking at? I'm I'm really old school. I remember Rick Defor and looking at the corlary questions. What is it we want students to know and learn? How will we know they've learned it? So, what is your recommendation if it's not and be careful, we can't use one measure? What would you say? Because I I know we hear a lot of criticism of the NAPE around this table, but many times I've heard Commissioner Watson say it's the gold standard >> for education assessment. What should we look at?
>> Thank you, Senator Ericson. I didn't mean to interrupt. I agree that um we can't discount the NAPE and that that isn't my intention at all. I think we have to look at a holistic sampling of both those quantitative and qualitative measures that I mentioned. We do need to look at you know do we have students who are leaving and being successful post-secary and are there better ways to measure that. I do think we have to take into consideration yes our state assessment um but also our um um if whether it's chronic absenteeism but I think we need a whole dashboard of of measures that we look at and then we start identifying where the gaps are and we address those gaps. Um, so I think when you think about accountability, I think if you just look at one piece, like a good example is the district that I said was increasing those ACT scores for five years in a row. They need to be commended for that. That's excellent, but their third grade scores were a little sketchy. Okay, let's dive into those third grade scores and see how we can support you in getting those outcomes up. So I my thing is I don't have a I would love to have um a dashboard that stays up todate with how people are performing compliance outcomes um and and just read readily available for districts to have the data they need to drive the change and improvement.
>> Yes.
>> Thank thank you Madam Chair. I've I've been around a while and I was actually an assessment and data leader in 259.
They actually created specific positions and I was at North High School for several years in that role. Fascinating because we talked about, you know, datadriven dialogue. That was the big thing and we had data walls and we So what I what I guess I would challenge is I don't think we're data poor. Me >> neither. I think a lot of times we look at data and if it doesn't tell us what we don't want to see, we discard it or we don't. So I truly am asking what is a measurement that we can agree or measurements because you know we have our research people pulling every single assess piece of assessment data or postsecondary. we you know we have it here today and yet we can't come to consensus on and and as we're looking at building a school finance formula I'm like if we can't agree on how we're going to measure success in where we're allocating our funds what are we doing so my question is can we come to okay here are the measurements we're going to use qualitative and quantitative if we can't agree on how we're going to measure success and where we need to focus on putting our resources. I think we're spinning our wheels and it seems like we just keep going round and round and round about can't look at that, don't look at that. Well, what can we look at?
>> I think all of the measures, Senator Ericson, that I shared would all be ones that I recommend. the quantitative and the qualitative, the state assessment scores, the NAPE data, the um NAPE, I I actually disagree because that's not every not every district, every school, every classroom takes that, but it definitely needs to be looked at. Um I think that we've got to look at our post-secary success, our individual plans of study, all of those measures that I mentioned in my presentation. I think the the difference is we also then have to do something with the data.
You're right. We are data rich.
But how do we take that data and then get in and implement the changes necessary to to change the outcomes?
I don't know why I just raised my hand.
>> Chair Estus.
>> Okay.
I'm gonna jump from extend the conversation that you're having here because my thoughts go along the same line and the piece of paper that I'm going to ask you questions from is is this one the correlation data. So we've talked about we've looked at a lot of things different ways and from from rose capacities we have kind of some broad things that we want to look at.
So I'm going to agree and disagree with you respectfully a little bit. I I do believe we have a lot of data but I don't agree that it always serves our purposes and is nimble. And I think that's part of the purposes of these conversations.
Um, and we we just have to do better on on that.
Um, I think we all want to do best by our kids, but our data is a key part of that. So, I agree with you on a whole dashboard.
Um, but then when I look at at our whole dashboard and in a way what you've put in front of us is a is a dashboard with this document and and I'm a big fan of this document because I think it tells us a lot of information and I memorialized it in law but um let let's look at the column that says um high one we have an 83 and an 82% high school graduation rate. That's my that's the correct interpretation.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. And then we have 32% of students are experiencing post-secary success.
And and then we see what the um ACT scores are. Okay.
Here's where I see a big gap on one of our measures because in in Rose capacities, we said we were going to look at graduation rate. We're excited to see graduation rate go up, but I see this huge disconnect between an 82% graduation rate and by the way, the reverse of the 32% are experiencing means 68% of those high school graduates aren't. So, do you think that our graduation standard may not be I can't understand how you how you get th those other sets of data and have an 82% graduation rate and that and that be valid. So, are our graduation standards serving us from a measurement?
>> I I can speak just for me. So I believe they are that 32 postsecondary success for math and ELA based on those standards.
That's again that measurement of students who are going on to a two-year four-year mil. We don't track military.
We aren't dra um maybe a student scored a high one, but they're going to work on the family farm. We don't get to count that as postsecary success. Um it is it is lower than I would like to see.
That's what we have to identify. Like we've got to take those high one, low one, high one students and say, "How do we get you an industry recognized certificate? How do we get you hooked up, connected with the right internships, the experiences you need to be successful after high school?" Um, to me, that's the data point we've got to look at and say, how do we ensure your post-secary success?
I I I I appreciate that answer, but I think it's it's a challenge, and I like to look at challenges as as opportunities. Um, do you guys ever measure the rigor of high school diplomas? Are we treating all high school diplomas the same?
because I know some students do a lot of advanced placement and honors classes and that's a harder to earn diploma when you choose to take those classes versus not that type of attract. Do you do you think there's value in measuring the rigor of the diplomas?
You know, I'm not familiar that we've done anything from the state department standpoint. All of that are local board decisions in terms of setting those standards. So I I don't have any data. I could look into that.
>> Okay.
Thank you. Um when we did the uh spreadsheet where we looked at cohorts and and it it gives us a non-scientific uh educated guess.
What are y'all looking at as ways that districts can measure um um growth within a year because I I want to give credit to the teacher who has students come in who are low and they've moved them up. They may not be where we want them to go, but they've made a lot of progress. and that progress and growth is really critical.
Have you guys been having conversations about that? What would you advise us to do?
>> Yes, thank you for that question. That is the most exciting answer that I have is we are working on a growth model at this moment. Um, we have one that we really like, but now that we have a new division of accountability, I want to bring that person in to give us feedback on that on that growth model. But I would anticipate we would have a growth model ready to share with our state board and then ultimately with you um in the very near future.
>> I'm very glad to hear that um Dr. Ninponder and then Representative McDonald.
You know, when you talk about a dashboard, you know, I've always thought, you know, that we we have 14 people around the table here.
And if we all went to the same physician for our checkup, we will all have different heart rates, different blood pressure, different I mean, we are and every school district is the same way. They have different risk factors. They have different makeups. They have different community supports. They have different So when we look at all of these different um you know looking at a dashboard, we will look totally different than a district with a lot of other risk factors. One challenge we have and and I think we all have that we're we're trying to get our arms around is the mental health. You know, we're partnering with our county guidance center. We've got two school-based clinicians.
We're looking for a another social worker. But, you know, we're we're just all looking at how do we address um whether it's chronic absenteeism, whether it's mental health. Uh we we are dealing with um 20% of our students live out of district. We have a lot of mobility. So every year our teachers are having to get to know someone and you know we have a lot. So just that turnover. So I think when we look at uh they're all important measures but we all um have our own unique district DNAs that we also have to look at because I know the neighbors to the west of or east of us have a lot more challenges than we do in certain areas. we have different ones and and it's so we're we're but I think it's just the collaboration of how we look at that and how we can learn from each other and the key is can we move from a point A to a point B I listen to a lot of this a lot of the things that our teachers look at and and our curriculum person will be presenting to the board here at the June meeting a reflection on our growth this year a lot of that you'll never see because it's local measures that that we don't submit.
You know, I don't know if that's a place where we'll ever get. I know with the uh every student can read act, you know, we're all going to have to have but I but those are just things that um you know, every time I leave my annual physical, I have some instructions that I that I for the first month, I really am dedicated and I follow it and and then three months later, I'm just taking the pills that are I have to get and and the okay, I'm not supposed to have as many of the but but I do think that um you know looking at the the health of a district from a lot of different lenses because every one of them is important >> and I don't I don't disagree with you. I I think that we need an around a round a round set of of measurements that help give us a composite and I think it's reasonable to want to take into factor um some of the circumstantial things socioeconomic attendance and those things. But if you guys are doing it at a district level that gives me hope that we can do it at a state level. But if you wanted to res you look like you want to respond. Go ahead. Well, and then how do we hold the ones accountable that are not? I mean how I have relatives that I'm like you are not listening to your physician and you know so how do we put a system in place that we ensure that the ones that aren't um are >> I I think that's a a huge question that we need to deal with um but at a future time. Representative McDonald.
>> Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pretty good leadin to what I wanted to say.
I've been invited a couple times over the last month to to Piper High School to help with their project-based learning. And they had like a a practice round where we had speed dating basically where I was able to look at their resumes and ask them questions as if we were in a job interview. But this is all part of their senior capstone project which culminated in a group of professionals from across all sectors to come to the high school. Watch them give their presentation which included a PowerPoint in their um resume but also an entire website many of which had plans like it articulated their plans for future jobs. Um and it it talked about leadership opportunities they'd been in. there was a rubric. Um, I love that this school did it and it was a heavy lift. So, I was really impressed.
Shout out to to Piper High School and Tori Denalt um is is a teacher that kind of leads that. But, but at the end of the day, that is something that their district has prioritized, their building has prioritized.
It was project- based learning just like our friends from Witchah that just came and presented at an elementary level.
How can we include successes like that?
Those are the rose capacities. So if we're going to try to measure and if we're going to be sure to include rose capacities as as you know we have also not just been court-ordered but these are good skills that we want to have for humans that we we live amongst, right? And so I would love for us to spend some time trying to figure out how to give districts that autonomy that they need but also communicate.
This wasn't a very clear rubric and it was hard for me to judge some of them.
We can do this if we try, but we don't all have to be uniform.
I I think there's some things that have to be in common though for for you know is there room for individuality?
Yeah. Uh is there room for some things that are so important they need to be in common? Probably.
Um did you want to respond to that? I guess I'm just trying to say that the I think many districts are prioritizing a good educator is prioritizing the road capacities and I want us to make sure that our funding does not overlook that.
You know to the um presenter on WebEx earlier edenomics she's not really talking about any of these rose capacities and if she is she's she's not necessarily talking about funding them. So, I just want to be careful that we don't overlook these soft skills that employers say they want that parents want for their children.
>> Thank Thank you. Um, but I I think she was talking about the things that underpin all of that with the math skills and the reading skills. It's harder to get to the others when we're not solid there. And um, Dr. Gibson, >> thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr. Nen, for your presentation. Um, there's a lot of information here I'm seeing for the first time which I appreciate seeing and and I I think the field probably appreciate a few of those items. You and Dr. Rosa said something in common today and I want to kind of dig in a little bit if you have time here, but both mentioned that the one way or one thing we might want to consider is looking at depth versus breath when it comes to curricular standards in order to make improvement.
Can you kind of expand what that looks like and then if there's anything that's standing in the way from that happening at the state level?
>> Can I give you just an example, Dr. Gibson? You know, if you think about when you look at our 10th grade math scores, right? Those scores really start declining in middle school and high school. All roads lead to algebra 1, right? That mean 10th grade math, algebra 1 geometry. How do we take those standards and build backwards build backwards map what has to happen to get those standards mastered prior to 10th grade because something happens in those middle grades and that's kind of what we're tasked or I feel like my team is tasked with is how do we start going deep into what matters instead of trying to do so much while still allowing autonomy, while still allowing creativity, very important. I mean, I don't want to take music and recess. I that that's critical, right? Um, but we also have to remain focused. And I I go back to kind of what I said at the beginning.
State assessments matter, but they're not the entirety of student success. But with that said, if we don't build the foundations and we don't hone in on what's going to lead to that success, um, we're going way too wide.
>> I appreciate that. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Any other questions?
All right, Dr. Nent, thank you. You can get back to the comfortable chair now.
And audience, I do recognize those are not the most comfortable seats, and y'all have hung in with us all day.
Thank you for doing that. Uh so now we have Matthew who's going to give us kind of a review of some of the things that we asked for previously.
All right, welcome again. Um so I will be dealing with the remainder of your packet which is just a few items. Um I will not necessarily go into a lot of depth um given the time. Uh a lot of the idea with this was to try and go over them. so you were aware of them so that then if you have time and are reviewing them tonight you had an opportunity for further questions tomorrow. Um so you know obviously please let us know. We just wanted to kind of go over them. So uh starting off with the first two um going in kind of order of how you should have them. Uh the first one would be a white packet that says Congressional Research Service. There had been some questions last um in April uh around how the title one formula worked um both um as part of how some schools received some federal money but also um I believe largely in part to the fact we had an at risk model that utilized that essentially piggybacked on that formula to um distribute at risk funding. So both the congressional research one explains more of how the formula works, how it is calculated. Uh and then the following that is the blue slides um provides just another way of kind of high level going over it through a slide deck that was presented at a conference.
Um so hopefully both or either of those will help uh dive in a little bit more with that. Um the last thing before I will pause for a moment then as well is we have the third thing which is just a few pages of the US Census Bureau's small area income. Similarly, we had with some of those models there were questions about where um and how the census kind of developed those poverty levels by school district that is through this small area income and poverty estimate. Um this details a bit of their methodology and how they do it.
Uh I also have a note on here that was given to me to note that um the discussion last meeting about the um Mr. Frank from LPA his testimony in 2017 about it that it is um largely similar at least to the first couple pages. So uh again just kind of noting how those were for some background on a few of those models. So, I'm happy to pause for any any questions um now or again, always happy to take them tomorrow after you've had a chance to digest a lot of this content.
>> Questions for Matthew?
Seeing none, let's move on.
>> Thank you. Um mentioned earlier, we have the concordance tables from KSD for the 24 to 25. Um, if you have not had a chance to look through these a lot before, some various times in session, I will just note that they are provided by grade and by test. Um, each grade and each test from what I have seen are slightly different. So, it is not just if you look at third grade ELA, you'll understand how ELA for each grade compares. Um, and so each one is slightly unique. Um, and then moving on, since we've talked a lot about assessments, the gray sheet following it is the special education headcount enrollment by exceptionality.
Um, and then below it is that done by percent of exceptionality.
Uh so again there were just um some questions and requests for kind of understanding when uh when talking about and looking at special education um what is this group of students um that's being talked about um and then that pairs into the tan one uh which is addressing a question of just kind of asking how does Kansas compare nationally. Um, so you will see the darker highlighted boxes are all going to be Kansas. So it basically alternates between Kansas and national. Um, but you can see for the school year, uh, kind of the numbers of students that have IEPs and, um, again, just kind of get an understanding of how, uh, we fit into that big picture.
Um, and with that, I will go ahead and pause since that's kind of the couple special education things before I dive into the next batch.
>> Any questions for Matthew?
Representative McDonald and then Steel.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just looking at the um the difference between Kansas and the national um under ages I guess 5 to 11 we have increased by 7.8% but national has increased 17.3%. Our 5 to 11% includes gifted correct and the national doesn't.
>> Um madam chair representative I can double check most of the time if um most of the time in just reporting the um the idea data to the feds we are going to exclude gifted because they do not include it. Um, so I would presume, uh, I didn't entirely pull this data set, so I'll double check. Um, but I would guess it doesn't include gifted, uh, if this was a federal source that it was pulled from. So, >> I'm seeing a nod from the expert here.
Thank you.
>> Uh, uh, Mr. Zites, I think, wanted to help answer that question.
>> Yeah, I there we go. Um yeah, if this is pulled from the uh the data that we pull for the the feds, which it appears to be based on what I see there, yeah, it wouldn't include the gifted. Also, um the what you say tan sheet, is that what we're calling it? Um since that appears to just be raw numbers of students um because the prevalence of disability really kind of tracks there's there's both the size of the population and the you know your overall population and then separately the prevalence you know percentage of students within that that population that might have a particular disability.
Um looking only at the raw numbers and the move there doesn't tell a complete story. I think in some ways the other sheet um that gives um yeah it it looks like you've got the uh the prevalence percentages here on on this sheet um and I think that provides important context to for any given number of students how many are being identified with a particular disability?
>> Thank you. Any followup? And I guess if we're looking at that other page too, nationally developmentally delayed um might like here we include a lot of things under that umbrella until they turn nine. Is that a national thing or is that just something we do?
>> That is a national thing.
>> Thank you, Representative Steel.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, Matthew, I just need a quick remembrance because on the concordance table, the percentage of students at or above this uh score point, was that percentage for the 2025 scale or the 2024 scale?
>> So, Madame Chair, Representative, so my understanding of how to read it is you would look and see on the left side is the 24 scale, the right is the 25. And so you would see that for someone who had a 251 on third grade ELA under the 24 scale would be um basically 98% of the students would be at or above that score. That would equate to a 463 on the new scale and they would both be in level one. So I think by and large most of the interest for I think a lot of members is going to be that space where each level switches and seeing the percentage of students at or above that that would have been in one level in 24 and have would have changed levels in 25 cuz that's the gap that you're going to see that would alter the scores not necessarily due to um I guess you would say performance in a sense but um where the numbers would have been different I guess if you would have m if they if these scores were maintained on the 24 level.
>> Okay.
>> All right. Thank you for that uh reminder. Thank you madam chair.
>> You're welcome. Any other questions for Matthew?
>> Matthew proceed please.
>> All right. Um so moving on. So the next one is has the colorful picture uh and is from the advance or um from the American Institutes of Research. Uh there had been a question about um working on getting some data um discussing any ties between uh a student's socioeconomic status or what their parents um outcome was and the impact of that on the student. Uh so the primary one is this first document. It is it was published in January uh and does denote and go through a variety of some different um surveys and just data that is out there um to discuss uh the fact that there is a connection between um an individual's what their parents final educational outcome is or was and what that individual's um outcome will be. there's at least an an impact even if um you know obviously not 100% defined. Uh it discusses a variety of some of those elements. Uh and then the three documents behind it are some of the research it sites in the back. Uh I just pulled a few of them as well to provide additional context in case um you're wanting to go uh kind of down this um rabbit hole. The over the overarching thesis of this is that there is an impact and that um it specifically calls out the US as having a bit more of a connection than some other state or other countries uh as far as the education attainment level of the parent having an impact on the student.
That's the next four. Again, happy for any questions if you need some but you have some light reading. Any questions for Matthew?
>> All right, Matthew. Uh, I think you still have more, right?
>> Yes. But I will keep kind of going. Um, the next three are all going to be on Revisor's letter head. Um, I will let Jason answer any questions you may have on this, but it is dealing with the history of the ROSE standards. Um, amendments that have occurred regarding the transfers of money from the supplemental general fund of a school district to specific funds. Uh and then the final was addressing questions of um defined terms uh that have changed regarding the special education for exceptional children act. Uh so just a few uh kind of statutory questions from last meeting. So those are the three revisers ones and again I will volunteer Jason to answer any of your questions.
>> Pop quiz for our our legal department.
Any questions for Jason? Represent uh vice chair Ericson.
>> Thank you, Madame Chair. I would just uh request that Jason give us a fiveminute rundown of the entire history of all of the documents in great detail.
Hey, if anyone can do it, I think Jason and Tam if you're joking or serious.
>> Oh, I'm joking. Oh, God. Thank God.
But I know they're up to it, but I won't put them on the spot.
>> They they sure can. All right. Um, if you would like to proceed, Matthew.
>> Yes. Thank Thank you, Madam Chair. So, the final four documents, all of which are relatively thick, um, all belong to LPA, which I believe um both uh, Director Clark um, as well as my brain is completely failing. Um, but there are post audit people in the audience. Um I do not believe either of them were around when these were produced, but they would be happy to um assist me in my um adult state at the moment. So the first one though is estimating costs of meeting student performance outcomes um adopted by the state board of education.
So this was a report prepared for um LPA um back in 2005 as part of some of the work they were doing.
Um similarly there is the one below it that's the shortest of them from 2006 is a cost study analysis on estimating the base level costs for regular education using an outcome based approach. And then you will have parts one and two um of some 2006 um audits regarding uh free lunch student counts as the basis for at risk funding. Uh again, all part of kind of some of that at risk and discussion from April and just requests for some of that historical research. Um so yeah, and that is that's all of our followup.
Again, wanted to just make sure you had it so that you had an opportunity tomorrow uh for additional questions, not that we thought you would consume all of this in five minutes. And >> thank thank you. I I just have to give a huge thank you to the entire uh research department for gathering so much data.
You guys you guys gave us feedback that you like to have information earlier and they did their best to get you more earlier. Um we didn't get you everything early and we didn't even get you everything today but sometimes um we have to work with when uh people give them to us as well but they have worked very very hard to provide you with everything uh that you looked for. So thank you research. We were supposed to have discussion and I see everybody packing up their bags. So I'm not going to be that person, but we will have more discussion tomorrow. And and basically both TAS were we're talking about the same things. So we will come back to that. Director Rooker, you're first in the queue on that one because you you had a good question to keep us going.
And want to thank everybody for you guys were all uh very very engaged and you asked a lot of great questions today. So thank you all very much. We are adjourned and have a great night.
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