Wichita ? Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson outlined what he’s calling a new “vision” for Kansas schools that puts more emphasis on individualized learning, career planning and development of both academic and nonacademic personal skills.

“We’re going to design a system for your kids,” Watson told more than 1,000 educators at the Kansas State Department of Education’s annual conference in Wichita.

Watson, who took over as education commissioner in July, has said he wants to transform public schools in Kansas to make them more responsive to the expectations of their communities and to the needs of Kansas employers.

Before he was hired as the state education commissioner, he served as superintendent in McPherson, one of the first two school districts to receive a waiver from most state laws and regulations governing schools under the state’s new “innovative school districts” program.

“Long after October 2015 and the annual conference is over, it’s probably correct that few of us will remember who individually was seated in this audience,” he said. “But maybe, if we talk about the things we want for Kansas, collectively we can change the next generation.”

The agency’s new vision comes at a time when the State Board of Education is trying to develop a new system for accrediting school districts and holding them accountable for improving student outcomes, and as the Kansas Legislature is about to craft a new funding formula for financing public schools.

It also comes at a time when, at the national level, Congress is about to rewrite the No Child Left Behind law that has dominated the public schools throughout the United States since 2001 with its focus on standardized reading and math tests.

Watson pointed out that from 2007 to 2011 Kansas went from having only 40 percent to 90 percent of its students scoring proficient or better in reading and math.

But during that period, there was almost no change in the percentage of high school graduates enrolling in post-secondary education or the percentage of students needing to take remedial courses to succeed in college.

“Under No Child Left Behind, we did what we were told to do, and we did it really, really well in that era,” he said. “It didn’t lead to more kids being successful after they left us.”

The new vision — which he summed up with the statement “Kansas leads the world in the success of every student” — will serve as the starting point in crafting a new accreditation and accountability system for Kansas schools.

The new vision was an outgrowth of a months-long listening tour that Watson and other department officials conducted throughout the state earlier this year in which community members and business leaders were asked what they expect from their public schools.

Among the things they heard, Watson said, was that students coming out of high school should have both academic and nonacademic personal skills, such as work ethic, conscientiousness, communication skills and the ability to work in teams.

Although details of how the new vision will translate into actual, day-to-day management of schools remain to be seen, Watson said they will involve adopting new strategies for improving student success. That will involve such things as engaging more with students’ families, getting more community and business involvement in their programs, developing individualized education plans for more students based on their career goals and utilizing more project-based learning strategies.

Watson said schools also need to focus on moving more students into some kind of post-secondary education, whether that involves working toward a four-year bachelor’s degree, a two-year associate degree or a technical certificate.

“Seventy-one percent of the jobs, when this year’s eighth-grade class graduates, will need something beyond a high school education to obtain them,” he said. “That is so different than a generation ago. … And we’re nowhere close to providing that today.”

Lawrence school board president Vanessa Sanburn, however, said she thinks Lawrence schools are close to providing that today, and she doesn’t think the new vision represents a significant change from what local schools are already doing.

“A lot of things Lawrence is already doing meets these goals,” she said.

She pointed to the district’s new College and Career Center as an example of how the district is focusing more on individualized learning plans for students who won’t necessarily go on to a four-year college.

“A lot of the things they’re focusing on we’re doing here,” she said.