Six years ago, newly appointed Commissioner of Education Randy Watson held community meetings and talks with business leaders that led to the State Board of Education’s Kansans Can Vision: that Kansas leads the world in the success of each student.
Last week, my KASB Advocacy colleagues Scott Rothschild and Leah Fliter and I followed Commissioner Watson and Deputy Commissioner Brad Neuenswander to 14 communities in central and western Kansas, the first of 50 planned meetings that will continue until mid-September. The Kansans Can Success Tour pauses for two weeks before taking up again Aug. 16. Here are some thoughts from a week on the road with hundreds of Kansas educators, school leaders and community members.
First, there was sheer joy in simply traveling across the state after the constraints of the COVID pandemic, meeting people in person, seeing Kansas schools and communities, eating at local restaurants, and talking about how to improve educational success for Kansas students. It was wonderful to visit with school board members and educators, especially KASB officers. It will be deeply disappointing if the current COVID surge limits future tour participation.
The main purpose of the tour is to review what Kansans said in 2015 about what students need to be successful and what schools should do to support that success. Overwhelmingly, both community meetings and businesses did NOT focus on “academic subjects” - traditional “reading, writing and arithmetic” and other “core” areas that define how students are taught and tested. Instead, the skills or competencies most often discussed were how students learn to manage themselves, interact with others and apply what they know in their personal lives, on the job and in their communities.
Here are a few examples. While “reading and writing” are part of the traditional “three R’s,” surveys of employers have repeatedly said the most important communications skills on the job are speaking and listening – direct interpersonal skills that many students lack regardless of how they might score on a standardized test and typically receive much less attention in school. Students themselves say their biggest needs are learning qualities like self-regulation and perseverance. Many of the “non-academic” skills are “taught” in both school and non-school activities, from sports programs to scouting and 4-H, but not all students get these opportunities.
The 2015 process also found some consensus on how the educational system must change to help more students acquire broader competencies. These include services provided to students, such as wider access to early childhood programs, and more counseling and social work services to address both social-emotional needs and career planning to help students make better choices.
Other changes included new ways to define and measure success. This means equally valuing students who complete career tech programs with academic scholarships, putting more emphasis on demonstration of skills, such as project-based learning, and measuring performance of students after they leave high school.
Finally, other recommendations concerned how and where students are taught, including more experience with career options through work-based learning and real-world applications to see the relevance of what they are studying for their future lives, and a greater focus on community or civic engagement.
Since 2015, the State Board has responded with a number of steps to lead schools in those directions. These include the Kansans Can outcomes, which are three quantitative measures: Academically prepared for postsecondary, High school graduation, and Postsecondary success; and four qualitative outcomes: Social-emotional growth, Kindergarten readiness, Individual Plan of Study, and Civic engagement.
One way to think of those outcomes is that the first three concern academic preparation for the “credentials” required for most jobs, especially those that pay enough to support at least a middle-class lifestyle. The next four concern the conditions that support academic success and broaden it to include non-academic competencies.
These goals have been promoted in three ways. First is the school redesign project, which encouraged schools to voluntarily explore ways to change operations to support these outcomes. Nearly 200 schools in 71 districts are now participating. Second is the Star Recognition program for outstanding performance in each of the seven areas. Third is the state accreditation system, which will focus on school improvement based on these results.
Part of the Kansans Can Success Tour is reviewing “success” in these areas. High school graduation rates have improved to an all-time high, and lower-performing groups have made more improvement than the overall average. Postsecondary success – measured by the percentage students who both graduate from high school and either complete or are still enrolled in a postsecondary program (technical, two-year or four-year degree) two years after graduation has increased. For each level of education completed, average pay increases and both unemployment and poverty rates drop.
Legislatures and Governors have also helped over the past several years. With additional funding, local school boards have added counselors and social workers and expanded preschool programs, and the state fully funds all-day kindergarten. Districts have expanded career technical education courses and the state now provides free postsecondary CTE programs to high school students and free ACT testing.
Despite these signs of progress, challenges remain. State assessments and ACT scores – two measures of academic preparation – have fallen since 2015 and wide gaps remain among student groups, with low income, disabled and ELL students scoring well below their peers. More than one in ten students fail to graduate in four years, and postsecondary success rates, though rising, are well below levels needed to meet projected jobs needs. It is expected that some of these outcomes will have declined further as a result of the COVID pandemic, and cases are rising again.
Finally, school districts are finding efforts to “redesign” schools extremely difficult because the current design works for well for many students and families and it's hard to imagine a different system than the one we have used for decades.
The Kansans Can Success Tour offers a chance to continue - or begin again – discussions about what Kansans want for their students and how to achieve it. The remaining 36 events will allow school leaders, parents and community members to review the work of the past five years and give feedback to state education leaders. But that should be the first step, not the last. A team of school board members, administrators, teachers, parents and community members, site councils, business leaders and higher education can then take the conversation back to the local school district and building level where the real work will be done. Inviting local legislators would also be helpful.
We would encourage school leaders to assembly those teams and attend a convenient meeting in year area to give the broadest representation and input possible. Here is a list of future dates, time and locations. We hope to see you soon!
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