KASB involved in education summit

State education officials visited the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center in Greenbush Wednesday afternoon to talk with about 100 local educators and administrators about impending changes to the state’s testing and evaluation systems.

It’s the second round of education summits the Kansas Association of School Boards has organized with the Kansas Board of Regents and local school officials. Wednesday’s event was one of six such events the KASB is hosting around the state, said Mark Tallman, associate executive director for the KASB.

The focus of the summit was the Core Curriculum the state has adopted, and what changes will take place since the state was exempted from No Child Left Behind.

Administrators met in the morning, had overlapping meetings at noon, then more panel sessions and committee meetings in the afternoon. Tallman said there will be changes in standardized tests, how student progress is measured, and how teachers are evaluated — the NCLB waiver requires a change in teacher evaluations.

“What we’ve been trying to help people understand, is how we will proceed with No Child Left Behind,” Tallman said. “We’re talking about raising the standards. We need to expect our students to not just meet minimum proficiency. We’re talking about ‘How do you move to the next step, where students are prepared for some sort of post-secondary education of some sort, whether it’s a four-year degree, a two-year degree or job training.”

Tallman said NCLB tests were geared toward producing a higher percentage of students toward the equivalent of C-level test scores, a goal he said is unacceptable. For instance, in 2001, Tallman said, 65 percent of Kansas students were performing at about average or higher. In the most recent test, between 80 and 85 percent were performing at that level.

“We’re approaching 95 percent at C-level, but to get to college- or career-level, students need to be at B- and A-level,” Tallman said, adding that test scores will appear to go down because of the difficulty of the new tests. “It’s going to be harder test, also means students are going to be expected to be more proficient. There won’t be fewer students performing average, but there will be more performing well.”

Tallman said the new curriculum is geared to teach students at a higher level, and will be set to be measured at certain grade levels.

“It will teach what kids need to be able to go to college and not need remediation,” he said. “And it will test whether students can apply these skills. They can’t just know facts. They have to know how to use them.”

The groups also learned about the importance of local school boards knowing their role, Tallman said.

“They know what will work in their district specifically,” he said. “Getting kids ready in Pittsburg may look different from doing the same thing in Johnson County or in Wichita.”

Tallman said there were concerns over how districts are going to pay for the changes with state budget cuts looming, a conundrum the KASB is still trying to figure out.

“There is financial uncertainty hanging over everything,” he said. “Some think the tax bill could result in major funding cuts. We don’t know how big the hole will be, how the economy will respond or how the legislature will respond.”

Tallman said there also is a lot of concern about how teachers will test students, because the tests will change in two years but no one yet knows what they look like.

“There are several national companies developing tests on the new standards, so we don’t know how students should be developed,” Tallman said. “As always, there’s kind of a fear of uncertainty there.”