Congratulations to the four newly elected members of the Kansas State Board of Education: Betty Arnold, Beryl New, Connie O’Brien and Debby Potter. You were elected with a D or an R next to your name, but we hope you will retire those labels and adopt the only one that matters: student-focused.
Student-focused state school board members are constitutionally and statutorily charged with setting high standards and improving student outcomes. The standards (what students are expected to know and be able to do to qualify as proficient) are pretty good.
Unfortunately, achievement levels are nowhere near what students need and deserve.
Only 18% of the 2024 Kansas graduates who took the ACT exam were college-ready in English, reading, math and science. That’s a tragic decline from 32% in 2015, and the future likely holds more of the same, with nearly half of 10th-graders below grade level in math and one-third below grade level in English language arts.
We hope you and the other six board members agree that this is not a time to point fingers but to hold everyone responsible for implementing the changes needed to turn this around.