Given the state of K-12 public education in Kansas, one would be hard pressed to believe that Kansas parents, students and taxpayers are being adequately served. Achievement is low, spending is high with no signs of slowing, and a dearth of leadership appears to be fine in maintaining the status quo by not allowing families choice in how their children – future leaders of the Sunflower State – get educated.
Consider these:
Achievement and spending
Let’s start with education spending and student achievement. The Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) reports that in the 2023-24 school year, total expenditures were nearly $8.5 billion and per-pupil expenditures were $18,324, both new records. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is.
To put that spending into context, Kansas spends more per pupil than 36 states, adjusting for cost of living. That includes the four border states: Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Kansas is a high dollar education state. If you believe the educrats, those who have never seen a dollar they didn’t think traditional public schools should harness, money is inexorably tied to student achievement. KPI has debunked that idea time and time again. Here’s how Kansas has done most recently on the three major comprehensive assessments that provide student achievement results: state assessments, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the ACT. Those results are followed by how they translate into high school graduation.
State assessments
These tests of math and reading – identified as English language arts (ELA) – are given annually statewide to students in grades 3 through 8 and grade 10. The results of the test which has been administered since 2015 are remarkably close from year-to-year. They can be summarized most generously as: low. Less generously described as: unacceptably low.
From year-to-year, among all students tested, about one-third are below grade level and about 30% are considered ‘proficient.’ That is true for both math and ELA.
Income based achievement gaps are persistently high. Only about 20% of low-income students are ‘proficient.’ More than twice that many not-low-income students are ‘proficient’ in math and ELA. The inverse is true for those scoring below grade level.
These numbers are stubbornly similar each year, despite the nearly half-billion dollars funded by the state specifically to increase the achievement of at-risk students.
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
NAEP is the one assessment in which state performance comparisons are valid. The test is given every two years to a sampling of 4th and 8th graders by the feds. The results are considered the Nation’s Report Card. Similar to state assessment results, NAEP scores don’t change much from test to test. And just like state assessments, Kansas students perform poorly.
States have been required to participate in NAEP for about a quarter-century. The major change regarding Kansas NAEP results is that in the early years of NAEP testing, Kansas students scored low in absolute terms, but higher than the national average. Kansas NAEP scores are no longer above the national average. In relative terms, Kansas ranks 37th in the nation, considering overall scores and per-pupil spending.
American College Testing (ACT)
Each year, thousands of Kansas high school juniors take the ACT, a test of their academic skills as they prepare to continue a collegiate education after high school graduation. ACT scores show that Kansas graduates are much less prepared for college than they were a decade ago. The following table indicates the slow and steady decline of Kansas high school students in ACT performance.
High School Graduation Rates
One of the most deceptive statistic used to prop up public education is graduation rates. The following table shows the dramatic differences between state assessment achievement and graduation rates. The percentage of those who graduated in four years looks quite impressive: the rate for all students in 2024 was nearly 90%. Even for the low-income students (those who qualified for free lunch) was over 80%. But two years earlier, when that cohort was in 10th grade (the one high school grade that takes the state assessments) their collective achievement on the state assessments was shockingly low. What is the explanation for this incongruity?
According to Education Commissioner Randy Watson, 10th grade students do poorly on the state assessment because they are thinking about other things. Watson has even gone as far as to suggest that high school students be given an alternative test to the state assessments, presumably to make their performance look better.
No matter how you look at it, the numbers in that table are simply incompatible.
The stark reality is that graduating from high school is more like a participation ribbon than an accomplishment based on actual achievement.
Let’s face it, each year the Kansas public school system awards diplomas to thousands of students who are not functionally literate in reading and math.
After even the most cursory analysis of this information, any reasonable person would come to this conclusion: (1) the current system of education our children is woefully inadequate and (2) something has to change.
Change? When it comes to change, Kansas leadership is loath to change. Especially if change in this instance refers to school choice.
Let’s start with the education commissioner. While Watson’s counterparts in neighboring states Oklahoma and Arkansas are leading the charge for parental choice in their children’s educations, the Kansas commissioner is circling the wagons around an antiquated model of primary and secondary education. And as it turns out, those would-be change agents – the governor, Legislature and state board of education – are more than happy to remain at bay.
Why, the state would sooner outlaw corn and cattle in Kansas than open school choice opportunities. Just how bad is Kansas in comparison to what other states have done?
Again, consider these:
School Choice
Public charter schools
Kansas has had a charter school law since 1994. That’s more than three decades.
Each year the Center for Education Reform publishes its CER charter law ranking. It is a ranking of the laws governing public charter schools in all of the 47 states that allow charter schools. In the most recent CER ranking, Kansas is 47th ; the rock bottom. Why? Because Kansas law only allows school districts to authorize charter schools. And the one thing Kansas school districts will not abide is competition.
The National Center for education statistics (NCES) lists the number of charter schools in Kansas at 9. That is out of a total of 1,355 public schools statewide. The percentage of students in charter schools is one-half of one percent.
And it is disingenuous to consider those nine schools as real charter schools. They are nothing more than alternative schools with the school district in which they reside.
And let it not be lost on these dismal figures that charter schools are PUBLIC schools, funded by states like traditional public schools.
ESA’s (educational spending/savings accounts)
The most popular expansion of school choice in recent years is the relative explosion in the creation of ESAs. Over a dozen states have passed ESA laws that direct cash payments to parents to use in a variety of (legal) ways to pay for their children’s education, including sending their children to private schools. Specifics vary by state, but the concept is essentially the same in all. Texas is about to become the newest state to join the others in providing this invaluable education choice programs to families.
Given the way education establishments around the country wield political power, ESAs have been confined mostly to Republican-controlled legislatures and governor’s offices.
The Texas ESA situation is interesting because despite having a Republican-controlled legislature and Republican governor, the state was not able to pass an ESA last year because of some recalcitrant Republican members who harbor a fear of the political power of public education.
Sound familiar, Kansas legislature?
ALEC Education Freedom Index
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) calculates a freedom index that rates/grades each state “to provide a detailed and comprehensive 50-state analysis of what learning options are available and accessible to families.” In the latest edition, Kansas was generously awarded an overall grade of C-, good for 27th place among all the states. ALEC grades five school choice options in the analysis (Kansas grade in parentheses): education freedom programs (D), charter schools (F), homeschooling (B), virtual schooling (C), and open enrollment (C).
EdChoice Friedman Index
Compiled by school choice expert and KPI scholar Ben Scafidi, the Friedman Index is “a comprehensive and easy-to-understand measure of the availability of private K–12 educational choice across the United States.” Scafidi created an index based on private school choice by state.
The index is based on three categories
- All students: What percentage of students are eligible to participate in a private school choice?
- All options: Does the state have an ESA-type program that allows dollars to flow directly to families to pay for educational expenses?
- All dollars: Do the choice options get the same average dollar amount as the public schools?
On a 0 to 100 scale, Kansas scores a 1. In contrast, Florida has the highest ranking (77 out of 100).
Kansas Tax Credit Scholarship Program
In 2014, Kansas passes a tax credit scholarship program. The program is similar to others across the nation by allowing individuals and business to donate money toward these scholarships and claim a state income tax credit of 75%.
Over a decade later, scarcely a thousand students are receiving a scholarship to attend a private school. The program has expanded slightly despite perpetual legislative attempts to quash the program. In terms of overall student participation, this program is barely a blip on the screen.
Open Enrollment
Open enrollment laws allow students to transfer to a different school within a school district and/or allow students to transfer to a different school in another school district.
In 2023 the Kansas legislature passed a law that requires school districts to accept out-of-district students – with a catch. The districts (the fox) are allowed to decide how many seats they have available for these interlopers (the hen house).
Open enrollment has become a popular form of ‘school choice’ in recent years, mainly because is best described as school choice for states that don’t want school choice.
It is hard to categorize open enrollment laws as school choice for two reasons:
- It only allows students to seek a different traditional public school – no private school options.
- It allows the school districts to determine how many open seats they have available. (In Kansas the districts must post by May 1 how many open seats they will have come August. See the problem there?)
A recent Kennesaw State University study, again headed by Ben Scafidi, reports that in a sample of five school districts in Kansas, the number of “available seats” available for out-of-district students is vastly underreported. Imagine that.
The inescapable truth is that in Kansas parents have virtually no choice and no say in how and where their children are ‘educated.’ Most students are unescapably stuck in the school they are required to attend based on nothing more than where they live. Of course, there are a relative handful who are able to escape the bounds of mandatory attendance. Some are homeschooled; some can afford private school, a few have taken advantage of the the tax credit scholarship program, There are also some who have escaped the confines of artificial lines by participating in the new open enrollment policy.
But by and large – and by large, I mean LARGE – the overwhelming majority of students are educated based solely on their residence.
Kansas has stubbornly clung to an outdated approach to public education. Why? The answer is simple: a clear lack of leadership and political will.
Summarizing the state of public education in Kansas, student achievement is embarrassingly bad and not getting any better, cost to the taxpayers is excessively high and rising, and parental choice for students and families is virtually non-existent.
Up next: Prescription for change.
