Education Archives - Kansas Policy Institute

Inflation-adjusted school funding +52%, teacher pay down 9%0
- Education
- May 12, 2022
Allegations of low teacher pay is used to urge legislators for more funding, but money is not the problem or the answer. (For the record, Kansas was #38 in 2019, but adjusted for the cost of living, Kansas was #15). Data from the National Center for Education Statistics, which come from local school districts, show
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Special Education costs are 100% reimbursed, counting all the money 0
- Education
- May 9, 2022
School districts are hammering legislators for underfunding special education, but the Kansas Department of Education formula doesn’t seem to count all of the money. Given credit for all funding, school districts are being reimbursed for 103.4% of total costs this year and 98.7% next year. There seem to be several issues with the formula in
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More evidence of structural segregation in Kansas public schools 0
- Education
- May 7, 2022
Structural segregation is alive and well in the Kansas public school system, a form of educational redlining manifested and protected by a rigid set of school district boundaries. In a previous blog, I presented local economic data and student performance to show how it exists within the City of Topeka where there are four public
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Schools claim special education is underfunded but have $200 million left over 0
- Education
- April 27, 2022
The Kansas Board of Education says the Legislature should increase funding for special education by $155 million for FY 2023 because it is not at a statutory level. But KBOE and school districts forget to mention that they have a little over $200 million of unspent funding left over from prior years. But that isn’t
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Governor’s Commission on Racial Equality – a missed opportunity to address real education issues 0
- Education
- April 15, 2022
Only three of 90 recommendations made by the Governor’s Commission on Racial Equality concerned education and none addressed the issue of improving student achievement for students of color. A presentation at the State Board of Education March meeting illustrates what a missed opportunity the commission’s efforts were to expose real systemic racism when it comes
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KPI presents the 2021 A-F Grading of Kansas public and private schools 0
- Education
- April 5, 2022
Kansas Policy Institute has just released the 2021 A-F Grading report card for 1,273 Kansas public and 122 Kansas private schools. KPI began this school report card system – based on state assessment scores – in 2017 and followed with report cards in 2018 and 2019. After a COVID related absence in 2020, the 2021
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