Kansas Schools Are a Success Story. Lawmakers Don’t Want to Acknowledge That.
By J.C. Moore
Some of our state legislators have been claiming that Kansas schools are failing our students. That is just not true.
In 2022, a Kansas Association of School Boards study found Kansas ranked 10th in the nation on a weighted average of 16 educational outcomes. The report examined performance in areas of preschool enrollment, math and reading scores, college readiness, graduation rates, tuition and fees, and debt at graduation. Using slightly different criteria, the Forbes ranking of states with the best public schools put Kansas at 15. It certainly doesn’t look like Kansas schools are failing students.
In 2022, the Network for Public Education ranked Kansas 10th among all U.S. schools. The criteria were the “state’s willingness to commit to democratically governed public schools open to all, and their willingness to put sufficient guardrails and limits on publicly funded alternatives to ensure that taxpayers, students, and families are protected from discrimination, corruption and fraud in the programs they offer.”
You can read J.C. Moore’s piece in the Kansas Reflector here