TOPEKA — The Kansas State Board of Education gave a blanket renewal of the accreditation status of every public school in Kansas, as well as every private school that participates in the program, regardless of how their students performed on statewide reading and math tests last year.

It was the fourth consecutive year the board has automatically renewed those accreditations. The first of those had to do with the state transitioning to new curriculum standards known as the Common Core, also known as the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards.

There were also issues with the new standardized tests that go along with those standards, the first year of which, in 2014, failed to produce reliable results because of technical issues in the web-based testing system.

But this year, the accreditations were renewed because the state is expecting to shift to a new accreditation model, one that puts less emphasis on yearly test scores and more emphasis on a wider range of factors such as how well students perform in college or whether they find jobs after graduation.

It’s a change the state board has been working toward since 2011, shortly after it adopted the Common Core standards, and one that could radically change the way public school districts, and even some private school systems, do business.

“We want schools focused on where we’re headed, and not on an old accreditation system that based everything on a test score,” said Deputy Education Commissioner Brad Neuenswander.

The current system, which is based largely on test scores, is commonly known as Quality Performance Accreditation, or QPA. It was put into state law in 1992 as part of the same bill that also shifted responsibility of funding schools to the state, through a uniform per-pupil funding formula.

QPA was part of a new movement in education at the time known as “outcomes-based education,” a system that graded schools and held them accountable for the results they produced, rather than the volume and quality of resources they put into educational programs.

The new model the state board is considering, and which they will officially vote on next month, continues the focus on educational outcomes, but it also makes some significant changes.

Perhaps the biggest change, if the final plan is approved next month, is that the state will no longer accredit individual school buildings. Instead, it will look at entire districts — or, in the case of some private schools, their “systems” — to determine whether, overall, they are making improvement across a wide range of measurements.

The second major change is that districts will no longer have their accreditation status reviewed each year. Instead, they will run on five-year cycles, at the end of which the state board will look to see whether they’ve made progress in achieving the goals they set out for themselves at the beginning of that cycle.

And the standards by which districts will be graded will include a combination of both outcomes and inputs, a system the Department of Education refers to as the Five R’s. Those include:

• Relationships, including those between the district and its staff, students, families and surrounding community, including the local business community.

• Relevance of the district’s curriculum, instruction and technology.

• A responsive culture that promotes leadership, early childhood education, a positive school climate, and nutrition and wellness.

• Rigor of the district’s curriculum, including career and technical education, professional learning, resources and use of data.

• And results, measured not only by test scores but also factors such as graduation rates and the success of its high school graduates.

At the beginning of each five-year cycle, Neuenswander said, districts will develop plans based on three of those sets of standards, one of which must be the results category. But districts will have flexibility in choosing the other two categories, based on where they believe they need the most improvement.

Those five-year plans also will have to be developed with input from stakeholders in the community, including parents, families and the business community, he said.

The state board is scheduled to take final action on the new accreditation model when it meets June 14-15. But some board members said Tuesday they still have concerns about the plan.

Steve Roberts, an Overland Park Republican, said he would be more inclined to vote for it if the “rigor” category was also mandated in each five-year plan.

And Ken Willard, a Hutchinson Republican, said he wants to see more clarity in the plan about what is really expected of schools.

“I think it’s important for everybody to know what it takes to not be accredited,” he said.

If the state board approves the new model next month, the Department of Education will begin the year-long process of drafting new regulations to put it into effect on July 1, 2017.