question4u 6 months ago

It sounds as though it would be nothing short of insane to make further cuts to education if Kansas has already had to resort to lowering its standards so much to hide the damage that has already been done.

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Dave Trabert 6 months ago

The standards were lowered in 2002 and 2006. The current low standards have been in place for six years and have nothing to do with funding.

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just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 6 months ago

"But it boils down to the fact that the state has written standards in each subject that spell out what a student needs to demonstrate in order to qualify as meeting standards, exceeding standards or "exemplary." The tests are written in direct alignment with those standards. And in the areas of reading and math, they are peer-reviewed by the U.S. Department of Education.

In short, they argue, the scores students achieve are accurate reflections of whether or not they have measured up to the standards."

So, are you saying that this is an inaccurate description? If so, can you be specific about why?

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PeterHancock 6 months ago

Actually, in October 2010, Kansas adopted the Common Core standards in reading and math, the same standards now in place in 45 states, plus DC. So it's probably not accurate to say our standards are lower than anyone else's.

In Mr. Trabert's first comment, he compares the proficiency standard on state assessments to the "basic" standard on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). These are two entirely different tests, aligned to different standards, with different scoring criteria. The NAEP test is not aligned to the Kansas standards and, therefore, does not reflect how well students are meeting the goals and objectives established by elected state policymakers. There is quite a bit of literature criticizing the NAEP test for exactly that - not being aligned to any specific set of standards. It is a useful tool for comparing results across states and districts, but is by no means a tool for assessing the performance of any one student against an objective standard.

Nonetheless, if you check the NAEP website, you'll see Kansas students routinely score higher than the national average on that test.

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PeterHancock 6 months ago

Further clarification: Although Kansas adopted the Common Core in 2010, the state is still in the process of implementing them. First assessments based on those standards will probably come in 2014.

State tests are administered to all students. NAEP tests are not. They're not even administered in all districts. They use a "stratified random sample," meaning they construct a sample of students that reflects the state population in terms of urban/rural; racial and ethnic diversity and income levels. It is solely for the purpose of comparing results across states, and in that regard, Kansas tends to measure up favorably.

To Mr. Trabert's larger point, however, I don't think anyone would argue against having rigorous standards based on high expectations.

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Kathy Getto 6 months ago

Add to your last sentence, funded according to the law.

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DocMatter 6 months ago

I would really like to see a link to the actual USDE documents where you got this information.

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Dave Trabert 6 months ago

Go to National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/statemapping/about.asp and click on key findings. This analysis was done in 2009 but Kansas has not changed standards since then.

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chootspa 6 months ago

Let's point out Trabert's constant two-pronged attack on education, just so we know where the Koch money is being used.

First he argues that Kansas public schools don't do a good job of educating students. Then he argues that they're overfunded. So they do bad, but let's take away more money, because in his worldview "money doesn't matter." Taking that argument ad absurdum, I think we'd all agree that a totally unfunded school is going to take a performance hit. So now we're just arguing price. Actually, he's been inconsistent about this, because sometimes he argues that money doesn't matter, and sometimes he argues for privatizing some services to put more money into academics. I suspect this one is coming from some of his donors who want to take on lucrative contracts for these services and suckle off of that sweet, sweet, government teat.

To further that agenda, he'll misleadingly frame data. Maybe he really believes what he's selling. I don't know. It's not like his experience as a TV station general manager really gave him any true insight into pedagogy or public education policy. He's got people under him that hand him numbers, and I think he really believes them. He's "unskewed" his polls, so to speak.

The ultimate objective is to argue that third parties like for-profit charters do better in educating students. They do not. Objective data shows that charters and private schools do no better than public schools when corrected for selection bias and socioeconomic status. In fact, sometimes charters often do much worse. I'm not just talking about the CREDO study. Looking at decades of Milwaukee voucher programs gives us the data. People don't pick schools based on academics. They pick them for social reasons. When confronted with this reality, charter boosters usually revert to ideological arguments. In fact, that's all he has. Ideology.

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