Education

KASB report is a misunderstanding of state assessment data 0
- Education
- May 29, 2022
An April 2022 report published by the Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) entitled Understanding State Assessment Data, goes to great lengths to rationalize low and declining state assessment scores. The fifteen-page document can be divided into five categories of rationalizations that the unacceptably dismal state assessment scores are just fine: standards public vs. private
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Open enrollment law hardly destroys “representative government”0
- Education
- May 22, 2022
Hyperbolic claims by elected officials are not new to the world of politics. We are all used to office holders making claims that leave us scratching our collective heads. But a recent statement made by Kansas Board of Education member Michelle Dombrosky takes hyperbole, as the saying goes, “to the next level.” Reacting to legislation
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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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