Kansas Department of Education (KSDE) staff put on a master class of political spin and deception at yesterday’s meeting of the State Board of Education.
Board members were given the 2025 state assessment results based on a new test and cut scores to determine achievement levels, and were told to ignore conflicting historical results and accept the new numbers as gospel. For example, the percentage of 8th-grade reading proficiency more than doubled, jumping from 22% last year to 46%.
The only plausible explanation for the miraculous turnaround is that the new test is easier, standards are lower, or some combination of the two. We don’t know if the new test is easier (the public isn’t allowed to see the questions), but KSDE did say the test has fewer questions. KSDE insists that the new cut scores that determine performance are just as rigorous as before, but that is hardly believable. The magical improvements seem akin to changing the grading scale for an “A” from 90-100 to 70-100.
KSDE effectively told board members to be unburdened from what has been. The stark gains, they said, resulted from “fixing a misaligned system, not reducing rigor.” In prior years, they repeatedly said that proficiency levels were artificially low because some students who scored in Level 2 were really proficient and belonged in Level 3. In other words, cut scores on the last assessment were too rigorous. Now, results reflect what the standard-setters believe to be accurate, but don’t you dare say that KSDE reduced standards.
As some farmers are known to say, “Don’t try to tell me it’s raining when your dog is whizzing on my boots.”
This year’s outcomes also don’t track with past explanations for Kansas having lower state assessment results than surrounding states. KSDE (correctly) defended proficiency levels by virtue of Kansas having higher standards, according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) mapping study. The chart below shows that only Kansas, Illinois, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Wisconsin had state proficiency standards for 8th-grade reading that equate to proficient in the eyes of the U.S. Department of Education over many years. Most states’ proficiency standards equate to Basic (in the gray field below), with Iowa and Virginia equating to Below Basic.
Accordingly, state assessment results tracked pretty closely to the NAEP results in recent years; last year, NAEP said 25% of 8th-graders were proficient in reading and 22% were proficient on the state assessment. An improvement to the mid-20s would certainly be understandable if KSDE maintained a similarly high standard as in prior years, but jumping to 42% and claiming not to have reduced standards is simply not believable.
We see similar discrepancies in math, where the prior Kansas proficiency standard equates to proficient on NAEP; state assessment results closely track NAEP in prior years, but now are dramatically different.
Only in 4th-grade reading were prior state assessment outcomes considerably higher than NAEP, which makes sense given that NAEP says that Kansas standard only translates to Basic on NAEP – lower standards produce artificially higher outcomes.
And with proficiency suddenly jumping nine percentage points after years of trending downward, that standard may also be lower now.
This isn’t the first time KSDE denied reducing standards
Yesterday’s State School Board meeting was like a flashback to 2002, with the introduction of No Child Left Behind. The new federal program required states to have all students proficient by 2014. Everyone understood that to be impossible, so the feds allowed each state to set their own proficiency standard, and predictably, state standards plummeted. Even Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Education Secretary, said as much years later.
Overnight, proficiency on the Kansas state assessment soared. In reading, 5th Grade jumped from 39% to 62%; 8th Grade went from 34% to 65%, and 11th Grade went from 29% to 55%.
And as they now claim, KSDE had a dog-whizzing-on-boots explanation for the sudden change, characterizing the change as being “…made to better reflect mandates and expectations in NCLB.”[i]
No Child Left Behind did not require states to change their standards, but that’s what Kansas and most other states chose to do.
And that is certainly what KSDE seems to be doing today. Examine the stark differences between 2024 and 2025 for each grade level and decide for yourself whether performance standards are different.
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[i] Documents provided to Kansas Policy Institute on April 30, 2012. https://kansaspolicy.org/removing-barriers-to-better-public-education-june-2012-update/
