NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Mark Tallman with the Kansas Association of School Boards told Hutch Post that the State Board of Education has narrowed its focus for school districts in the next round of accreditation.
"The state board in its latest revisions to accreditation is focusing, I think, more clearly on three measurable state outlines as sort of the basics the state wants to see you deal with," Tallman said. "That's state test scores as a measure of academic readiness, graduation requirements, how many students graduate on time, and then finally, how many students earn or enrolled in some sort of post-secondary education within two years. Those have been a part of the system for a long time, but the new accreditation system really drives those three measurable things into focus as what the board is going to look at as far as outcomes, even though other things are important."
One of the ways that districts can practically move on this is by strengthening its multi-tiered system of supports.
"It really means you are regularly monitoring how well your students are doing throughout the school year, not just on like the basis of a single test or something like that, and you have ways or what you might call interventions, personalized way of saying, if we're seeing that this child, for example, is having trouble, let's just go to a simple one. They're having trouble with fractions, and they're not doing as well as others in the class. You make time to get that student some extra help to solve that."
Also a key point is decreasing absenteeism, so that the interventions done in school have time to work.
"In a lot of cases it's not kind of deliberately flouting policy," Tallman said. "It's just not being sure why it's important. The second thing is, related to that, is really working hard at trying to have strong, positive relationships with your students and parents so that you can communicate that message and then, quite frankly, so students want to be in school. In other words, a lot of it comes down to if learning is seen as relevant, if it's engaging, if you feel cared about, if the environment seems safe, you will want to be in that kind of environment."
You can find the Tallman Education Report at https://kasb.org/news.