How districts can raise their student postsecondary success (Part 3 of 3)

The new school year always begins with great excitement for students, parents, teachers and school leaders. The goal is always the same: prepare students to be successful. Success, at least in terms of employment and income to support a family, increasingly requires more than kindergarten plus twelve years of school.

This has been a massive shift from when schools only needed to prepare the top third or half for more education. It means the economic future of students and families, communities, Kansas and the nation depend on how schools respond. There is a clear correlation between college attainment and earnings, not just for individuals but states as well.

Previous blogs have discussed how Kansas compares to other states in postsecondary success, and a new state measure of postsecondary success showing some progress. Here are some ways school leaders can prepare more students for life beyond high school.

Understand and be able to explain why more students will need more than high school. 

Three words: jobs, income, poverty. Studies show that jobs requiring only a high school diploma or less are disappearing and most jobs in the future will require more high school. Moreover, wages of unskilled jobs have fallen and workers without additional skills beyond a high school diploma now have much higher poverty rates and dependency on public assistance.

Acknowledge that Kansas can do better. 

Kansans are generally proud of their public schools, which have delivered good results for most students. Going back decades, Kansas educational outcomes have steadily improved: more students are graduating, entering and completing technical education and college degrees than ever before. But the reality is, other states are doing better or improving faster.

Resources are a big factor in improvement (see these posts on the 2018 Kansas education cost study and how Kansas courts have used these studies), and Kansas school funding has fallen behind other states in the nation and region (see this post on funding trends). But schools have received the largest boost in funding in almost decade over the past two years, and four more years of base state aid increases have been enacted by the Legislature. School leaders have a unique opportunity to redesign their programs and policies for student success.

Make postsecondary success the center of your school board and community discussion. 

Your school district is unlikely to make improving postsecondary success a long-term priority unless the school board does the same. Is raising student readiness for postsecondary education and the workplace part of your district’s long-term strategic plan? Have you reviewed your district’s data (postsecondary progress report, ACT scores, state and local assessments)? Is there time on every board agenda to discuss what your district is doing?

In addition, the school board and district will struggle to lead if the community isn’t prepared to follow. In fact, boards sometimes have ambitious plans that run aground when people push back against change that wasn’t expected, explained and justified. It is vital to keep teachers, parents, community members and opinion leaders involved in the process.

Build partnerships.

One of the most common themes about efforts to redesign schools for improved success is that schools cannot do it alone.

The first partnership is with the family. Virtually every school redesign and improvement effort begins with the need to build a more meaningful relationships with students and parents, even though this will take more time and effort. Often students most at-risk of dropping out of school or failing to focus on postsecondary plans have parents who were not particularly successful in school themselves. Working to better prepare students for college will be far more difficult if parents are uninvolved or unsupportive because they don’t see the value or feel they will be losing their students.

Other partnerships are with the community. Here are some examples Kansas districts are implementing: coordinating communitywide preschool, early childhood and child care services; developing joint programs with health care providers, including mental health services; planning for safety issues with law enforcement; working with local business to give students hands-on job experience through internships and job-shadowing; increasing concurrent enrollment/dual credit opportunities and college transition programs with higher education.

Look for ways to make your district more responsive to individual student needs. 

Our current public -school system is heavily influenced by two concepts. One is standardization, because a century ago that was the only practical way to bring education to the mass public and to prepare students for a standardized, factory-based world. The other is a commitment to equity, traditionally based on treating everyone the same.

But the world is far less standardized today. There is a growing sense that “the same” is not always equal. The traditional school system worked well when one-third of the population needed higher education; one third needed only a high school diploma and one-third could drop out of high school and still find jobs. Today, schools are trying to prepare students for a very different world.

The idea of individual, career-focused plans of study is that students shouldn’t have to fit into standardized boxes. That suggests districts may need to review such policies as granting credit for learning, graduation requirements and attendance by asking if they help or hurt student opportunities for success. For example, why do we insist that every student goes to school from August to May for 6.5 hours a day, and then expect the results to be suited to their potentially very different choices after high school?

Why only count learning that takes place within the school building and day? Of course, these questions raise further issues about everything from rules for activities to college requirements to funding based on “seat time” – but those issues invite a search for solutions, not stop the discussion.

Take advantage of new state support – and make sure people know it is being used. 

Give credit where credit is due. Over the past two sessions, the Kansas Legislature expanded funding for early childhood education, increased funding for teacher professional development and mentoring, set up matching funds for school safety improvements, created pilot programs for school and community mental health services, paid for free ACT and WorkKeys testing for all students; and increased base funding to allow the largest salary increases in a decade. Schools have also begun to restore 2,000 positions cut as state aid fell behind inflation.

This funding did not come easy. It took a controversial vote to restore state income tax revenue and it will require continuing support to maintain the plan adopted by the 2018 Legislature and comply with the Kansas Supreme Court. Your district must keep patrons informed on how those dollars are being used. (KASB has prepared a survey to collect and share that information. Please use this link.)

If your school boards need help to address any of these issues, please contact KASB. The Kansas State Department of Education has abundant resources available on many of these topics, as well.

Updated Postsecondary Progress Report shows improvement (Part 2 of 3)

A unique Kansas measure designed to track  how each Kansas “graduating class” is successfully pursuing higher education shows an increase over the past four years. Although that is good news, the report also shows the state must do more to prepare it citizens for success after high school.

The Postsecondary Progress Report (PPR) is designed to measure progress of two of the Kansas State Board of Education’s Kansans Can goals: improving high school graduation and postsecondary attendance and completion. Data show that more and more Kansas jobs in the future will require postsecondary education, and that those jobs are more likely to pay wages providing economic security. In fact, projections indicate over 90 percent of jobs will require a high school diploma and over 75 percent will require some credential beyond a diploma.

The PPR is somewhat complicated. This article explains how the report works, what information it provides and how it compares to other sources of information about education attainment in Kansas.

It is important to note that the 2016 data does not include the impact of additional school funding provided by the Kansas Legislature for the 2017-18 school year (last year) and beyond.

What does the Postsecondary Progress Report measure?

The progress report has four components.

First, it reports the high school graduation rate using the “adjusted cohort” method – essentially, the percent of high school freshmen who graduate four years later, adjusted for transfers in and out. Statewide, this rate rose from 85.2 to 86.1 percent from 2012 to 2016.

Second, the “success rate” is based on the percent of high school graduates who, within two years of school graduation, either complete an industry-recognized certificate, complete a postsecondary academic degree, or have been enrolled in a postsecondary institution for both the first and second year after graduation. Statewide, this number increased from 52.2 to 56.7 percent.

The data is collected by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), which allows each student in a postsecondary program to be tied back to the specific high school he or she graduated from.

According to KSDE, the NSC data comes from more than 3,300 collegiate institutions that enroll more than 93 percent of all U.S. higher education students – but that means some students in postsecondary programs are not counted. Kansas has been working to get all public and private universities, community and technical colleges to share the data, so some of the increase may be more institutions reporting.

Third, the “effective rate” is the graduation rate multiplied by the success rate. The result is the percentage of the freshman class that has either completed a credential or has been enrolled in a postsecondary program for two years after graduating high school. Statewide, the number rose from 44.5 to 48.9 percent over the four years from 2012 to 2016.

Those numbers are moving up, but remain far short of the “targets” of a 95 percent graduation rate and a 70-75 percent effective rate.

The KSDE report provides these three rates, plus a four-year average, for the state and each school district or accredited private school system.

Fourth, each district or system is given a “predicted effective rate.” This is a range where the district’s effective rate is expected to be based on a several “risk factors” that have a strong correlation with lower student performance and are largely outside the control of the district. Comparing the district’s actual effective rate with the predicted effective shows whether the district is performing higher, lower or about the same as districts whose students face similar risks. This number, of course varies from district to district.

The significant risk factors are students in poverty, measured by free or reduced lunch eligibility; mobility, measured by number of moves among schools; and chronic absentees, defined as missing more than 10 percent of the school year. The higher these numbers, the lower the district’s effective rate is expected to be.

Here is a link to the KSDE website for the Postsecondary Progress Report, which includes a drop-down menu for reports on all public school districts and accredited private schools, and links to additional information on the report.

What is not counted in the “effective rate?”

The effective rate does not count students who did not graduate high school within four years, even if they complete high school later. Students who complete a GED are also not counted.

Some students who are actually in postsecondary education programs will not be counted. These include students who “opt out” of sharing records under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy ACT (FERPA), as well as those who cannot be matched due to data discrepancies. In addition, KSDE reports approximately 3 percent of students nationally are enrolled in a postsecondary institution that does not report to NSC.<

Students who earn certificates or dual college credit in high school are excluded because NSC data represents only student postsecondary enrollment after high school graduation. As a result, a student who completes a technical certificate while still in high school doesn’t count, but a student who completes the same certificate the first year after high school will be counted.

Students who enlist in the military are not counted because the services do not share this information.

The effective rate does not count students who enter the workforce after high school graduation, including those who receive a credential not offered by a postsecondary institution, such as on-the-job training. It also does not include nondegree seeking college students, because those students are not pursuing a postsecondary credential.

Finally, the effective rate does not count students who do not immediately enroll in a postsecondary program or stop their enrollment during the first two years after high school, even if they return to school and complete a program later.

How does this data differ from other sources?

The Postsecondary Progress Report is unique in that it tracks specific graduates of each school district through the first two years after graduation, regardless of whether they attend college in Kansas or out of state (as long as the postsecondary institution reports data to the NSC.) It reports data for each year’s graduating class.

A different measure of postsecondary progress is provided by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey of educational attainment. This measure estimates for percent of the state population aged 18 to 24 who have completed high school; have “some college,” which means less than a four-year degree, including technical certificates and two-year degrees, even if then student who not completed the degree; or have completed a four-year bachelor’s degree or higher.

The key differences are that the census data reports high school graduates, college participation and bachelor’s degree completion for all state residents in that age group, even if they took more than four years to graduate or were not enrolled in the first two years after their senior year. Because it surveys each state’s resident population, it does not indicate whether they graduated from high school in the state or not. (In other words, Kansas high school graduate attending college in other states would be counted as a high school graduate attending college in that state, not Kansas.) The census data is based on estimates, not actual – if partially incomplete – counts of individual students.

By comparison, the PPR for 2016 shows an 86.1 percent four year-graduate rate that year, but the Census report shows that 87.5 percent of Kansas aged 18-24 had completed high school or earned a GED. The PPR shows that 48.9 percent of the class of 2016 had completed a technical certificate or academic degree or were enrolled in both 2017 or 2018, but Census report shows that 58.8 percent of Kansans aged 18-24 in 2016 had completed a technical certificate associates degree or earned any postsecondary credit, whether they had completed a program; and 10.3 percent had completed a bachelor’s degree.

Why are the Census numbers higher? They include students who take longer to graduate high school and those who earn a GED; they include students who earn certificates in high school; they include students with any postsecondary participation, even a single semester, whether or not they have completed a program by age 24; and it possible that more out-of-state students come to can to attend college than Kansas students who go to other states.

Finally, the Postsecondary Progress report is limited to Kansas. KSDE is not aware of any other state using NSC data to prepare a statewide report. The census data allows comparisons among states.

New school year brings hopeful signs, but big challenges remain for Kansas students (Part 1 of 3)

As another school year begins, there are reasons for real concerns about how Kansas students are being prepared for the future, but also important reasons for optimism.

Start with the good news: more resources and school redesign.

For the second year in a row, Kansas school districts received an increase in per pupil funding greater than inflation. Last year, that led to the largest increase in teacher salaries since 2009 and allowed districts to begin replacing positions cut during nearly a decade of stagnant funding. Districts should be in a position to do the same this year in budgets adopted this month.

The Legislature has adopted a plan to continue raising base aid per pupil for four more years, and the Kansas Supreme Court has tentatively signed off on that plan, contingent on inflationary adjustments over that period.

The Kansas State Board of Education has implemented a new accreditation system based on preparing students for successful adulthood in postsecondary education, employment, and citizenship.

Districts across the state are signing up for the Board’s “Mercury” and “Gemini” school redesign program, named after the U.S. space program’s successful race for the moon. Many more districts across the state are adopting their own efforts to individualize and personalize education, narrow achievement gaps to provide more equity in educational outcomes, improve student mental and physical health and safety, and prepare more students for postsecondary success.

This year, Kansas will offer students the opportunity to take the ACT college preparation test and WorkKeys workplace readiness test at no charge.

Finally, a new State Department of Education measure of school district success, the Postsecondary Progress report, indicates Kansas made some gains between 2012 and 2016. That measure reflects studies showing that 70-75 percent of Kansas jobs in the future are likely to require some type of postsecondary credential. About half of those jobs are expected to require technical certificates or two-year associate degrees, and about half will require four-year academic degrees or graduate and professional degrees. Ninety percent of jobs will require a high school diploma.

Kansas – like all states – is currently far short of that benchmark. That means employers will struggle to find higher skill employees needed to operate and expand, and many high school graduates or drop-outs will struggle to find employment at all, or jobs that pay a wage to support a family.

The updated Postsecondary Progress report released this summer shows that from 2012 to 2016, the state high school graduation rate increased from 85.2 to 86.1 percent. The percent of those graduates completing a degree or certificate or enrolled in a postsecondary institution within two years of graduation, called the “success rate,” rose from 52.2 to 56.7 percent. Multiplying those two numbers gives the “effective rate” – the percent each “grade cohort” completing or enrolled for two years in a postsecondary program. That number increased from 44.5 to 48.9 percent.

Despite progress, concerns Kansas is falling behind

Despite these positives, there are reasons for school leaders to be remain deeply concerned about Kansas education trends and be committed to the hard work that lies ahead. Although improvements have been made, there is evidence Kansas is falling behind other states in preparing students for success in their adult lives.

The Postsecondary Progress Report is not the only data that shows Kansas has made progress in getting more students successfully into postsecondary programs. The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey tracks the percentage of young adults (aged 18-24) who have completed high school; who have “some college,” which means participation in postsecondary academic or technical programs, whether they have earned a degree or certificate; and who have completed a four-year degree or higher.

The good news is that since 2005, Kansas has improved in each of these categories. High school completion increased from 84.3 percent to 87.5 percent; some college participation from 51.9 percent to 58.8 percent; and four-year degree completion or higher from 9.7 percent to 10.3 percent.

The bad news is that most other states have improved even more, even though Kansas continues to lead the nation in two of the three areas. The U.S. average for high school completion rose from 81.1 percent to 87.0 percent, just one-half percent below Kansas. U.S. “some college” participation rose from 46.6 percent to 55.2 percent, cutting Kansas’s lead from 5.5 percent to 3.4 percent. The national average for four-year college completion rose from 9.0 percent to 10.3 percent, the same level as Kansas.

Overall, Kansas dropped from 8th in high school completion in 2005 to 24th in 2016; in postsecondary participation from 6th to 13th and in four-year degree completion or higher from 18th to 19th.

Why have other states been improving faster than Kansas?

One critical difference is funding. As previously reported, Kansas ranked 40th out of the 50 states in the change in per pupil funding between 2008 and 2016. Kansas total revenue per pupil actually declined 4.9 percent after adjusting for inflation, while the U.S. average increase 2.5 percent.

Among the Plains states (Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, North and South Dakota and Minnesota) and other adjoining states (Colorado and Oklahoma), there are similar patterns. Every state except Oklahoma had a larger increase in per pupil funding than Kansas, and every state except Oklahoma improved more than Kansas in 18-24-year-old educational in at least two of the three categories.
Oklahoma was the only state to fall farther behind Kansas in funding and had less improvement than Kansas in two of the three areas.

In addition, the four states in the region that still spend less per pupil than Kansas (Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota) still perform below Kansas on at least two of the three measures, while the states that spend more (Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota) each top Kansas on all three measures.

What do these facts mean?

First, money matters in student achievement, because it allows schools to add the resources for more personalized education, to help students struggling because of poverty, mental and physical health issues and disabilities, and to provide richer, more relevant programs and course offerings to prepare students for postsecondary success.

Second, with adequate resources, some states are getting better results than Kansas. Higher achievement IS possible, and it is critical to both meeting the employment needs of the state’s economy and allowing students to lift or keep themselves out of poverty by having the skills for higher paying jobs.

Third, thanks to a boost in funding, Kansas school leaders for the first time in years have the resources to make these improvements. But it won’t happen automatically. School boards and administrative leadership must make the right strategic changes and investments to get better results. Spending more money to do exactly the same thing is unlikely to produce different results.

The path to success will be different from district to district to district, and it is crucial to involve the whole community in the on-going process. But there are likely to be common components, based on the State Board’s five outcomes and discussions KASB held across the state this summer.

• Continue to expand and improve early childhood programs, from Parents As Teachers to preschool. There is growing evidence these programs improve success later in life.

• Strengthen community partnerships and programs to help students with social, emotional and mental health issues.

• Commit to meaningful individual plans of study for all students. Take advantage of the state-funded ACT and WorkKeys testing programs to help prepare and assess students’ readiness for college and employment.

• Expand the opportunity for students to get real world experience in their areas of interest, in the workplace and in higher education. Be flexible in how students can gain credit for learning.

• Review programs and policies to address student attendance, including quicker response to students with chronic absences.

One of the “Rose standards” for constitutionally adequate funding is to prepare students to successfully compete with students from surrounding states in academics and employment. A decade ago, Kansas was a leader the region and nation. The decision is whether Kansas is content to be average.

Kansas school funding trailed nation and region since Great Recession

Total per pupil funding for Kansas public schools trailed the U.S. average, every state in the Plains region and bordering states except Oklahoma between 2008 and 2016.

When adjusted for inflation to 2016 dollars, the U.S. average per pupil funding from all sources increased $343, or 2.5 percent from 2008 to 2016 (the most recent available data). Kansas per pupil funding declined $638, or 4.9 percent, over that period, meaning Kansas fell almost $1,000 behind the U.S. average.

This data does not include Kansas funding in 2017, the second year of school funding under the block grant system which essentially froze state aid, or the increased funding provided by the Legislature last year and for the current year, 2018 and 2019.

Among the Plains States region (Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, the Dakotas and Minnesota) and other Kansas neighbors Colorado and Oklahoma, five states increased funding more than the national average. Four, including Kansas, trailed the national average.

Only Kansas, South Dakota and Oklahoma had a decline in per pupil funding when adjusted for inflation, and only Oklahoma had a larger decline than Kansas.

Total revenue per pupil includes all sources of revenue: state, federal and local, including student fees for textbooks, meals and activities. It includes expenses on capital improvement bonds and Kansas Public Employee Retirement System contributions.

With an enrollment of approximately 490,000 students, Kansas schools should have received an additional $326.6 million in 2016? to have compensate for inflation alone since 2008. To have kept up with the national average, Kansas schools would have required nearly $500 million in 2016.

The 2018 Kansas Legislature approved a plan to increase state funding by over $500 million over five years. This summer, the Kansas Supreme Court basically accepted that approach to determine constitutionally suitable funding, but conditioned approval on adjusting the amount for future inflation over the next five years.

In 2008, Kansas per pupil funding was second in the region, behind only Minnesota. By 2016, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota had also moved ahead of Kansas, and Missouri had moved from $1,357 below Kansas in 2016 dollars to just $124 below Kansas.

There are three critical issues raised by these funding trends.

First, lagging per pupil support explains why Kansas has also lost ground to other states and the national average in teacher salaries, as noted this blog post.

Second, Kansas school funding falling behind inflation and other states puts in context  the Kansas Supreme Court’s Gannon ruling that school finance is not constitutionally adequate. One of the Rose standards adopted by the court as a benchmark for adequate funding is allow Kansas students to complete in academics and employment with students in surrounding states. The Kansas Legislature has also adopted that standard as an educational goal.

Third, it shows that surrounding states with similar economic and population issues have been able to provide either higher funding per pupil or a greater rate of increase, or both, than Kansas.

This data is from U.S. Census Bureau’s Public Education Finances for 2008 and 2016. 2008 per pupil funding has been increased by 12 percent for inflation, based on change in the consumer price index.

Kansas teacher salaries fell behind nation, region since 2010

Kansas teacher salaries had the third largest decline in the region between 2010 and 2017, also falling behind the U.S. average for teachers and all workers with comparable educational requirements, according to national data that adjusts for inflation.

This status may change when reports for all states for 2018 are available. According to data from the Kansas State Department of Education teacher salary report and KASB, districts planned to give the largest increases since 2009 last year, following the largest increase in state funding since 2009 approved by the 2017 Legislature. A similar increase was approved for the current school year, 2018-19.

Average Kansas teacher salaries declined by over $4,000 when adjusted for inflation between 2010 and 2017 Details on state teacher salaries are available in the U.S. Digest of Education Statistics.

Among bordering states and other “Plains states,” including Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas, only Colorado and Oklahoma had larger declines in teacher salaries. This year, the Oklahoma Legislature approved a special increase in teacher salaries following a state teacher strike.

The U.S. average teacher salary fell by $2,854 from 2010 to 2017. South Dakota, Minnesota and Missouri also had significant but smaller declines. Average teacher salaries increased in Nebraska and, fueled by an energy boom for most of the decade, North Dakota boosted average salaries by over $3,500.

Salaries for all U.S. workers ages 25-34, with a bachelor’s degree or higher, increased $900 over that period when adjusted for inflation. (Data only available through 2016.)

Declining compensation is often cited as a factor in discouraging people from entering or remaining in the teaching profession, resulting in a fewer candidates, unfilled positions and concerns about quality of personnel.

What WalletHub rankings say about Kansas school quality and funding

Among the most asked questions about Kansas public schools are: How good are they? How much does money matter in school quality? How efficiently are Kansas schools using the money they have?

The latest report from the personal finance website WalletHub provides an independent assessment of Kansas education. It confirms much of what has already been documented by KASB's research and other independent studies: Kansas ranks in the upper tier of states for K-12 education; higher achieving states are better funded, and Kansas schools are efficient, getting high returns for the money spent.

Kansas ranks high in educational quality In the 2018 WalletHub report just released, Kansas was ranked 15th in “overall quality of school system.” That compares to a rank of ninth in the latest KASB Comparing Kansas report, which will be released in full later this summer. There are important similarities and differences between methodologies used by KASB and WalletHub. KASB uses 15 measures of educational attainment, including graduation rates, national test scores and young adult educational attainment. WalletHub uses more subjective measures, some "inputs" like pupil-teacher ratio and teacher licensure, and several school safety measures. Details are provided below. Despite these differences, WalletHub's method ends up quite similar to KASB's results. There is a statistically very strong correlation of 0.816 between KASB's Comparing Kansas ranking and WalletHub. (1.0 is a perfect, one-to-one positive correlation; 0.0 is no correlation.) 

However, both reports indicate Kansas has been slipping. In 2014, WalletHub ranked Kansas fifth in the nation, although it is not clear if the same measures were applied. Likewise, KASB’s report has found that most states have been improving faster than Kansas on the 15 indicators used in the Comparing Kansas report. 

Top-ranked states provide more funding per pupil than low ranked states 

On average, the top achieving states in both KASB and WalletHub’s rankings spend more per pupil than low-achieving states. In fact, there is a generally consistent pattern that state educational rankings decline as per pupil funding declines, when looking at average spending by each group of ten states ranked from 1 to 50.

This information supports the conclusion of both Kansas educational costs studies and new national research that additional funding supports improved school outcomes. Kansas uses education resources efficiently. 

If education efficiency is characterized by good results for the money spent, Kansas is an “overachiever,” ranking relatively high while spending relatively low. The chart below from the WalletHub report shows Kansas grouped with seven other states as “Low in spending and strong school system.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Public Education Finances report for 2016, the most recent year available, Kansas ranked 30^th in total revenue per pupil than Kansas. Of the 14 states ranked ahead of Kansas by WalletHub, only one, Colorado, provided less total funding. Of the eight states ranked ahead of Kansas on KASB’s report, none provided less total funding. 

This information is consistent with the most recent Kansas educational cost study, conducted this Spring by Dr. Lori Taylor and others, which found Kansas to have one of most efficient school systems the researchers had reviewed. Here are links to a summary of recent Kansas education cost studies and a report on the impact of funding on state student outcomes. 

How WalletHub and KASB use data to rank state school systems 

WalletHub uses the number of schools in the U.S. News and World Report designation of the top 700 schools in the U.S., adjusted for state population, and the number of U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon schools per capita. KASB does not use this data. 

WalletHub looks at High School Graduation Rate Among Low-Income Students, Projected High School Graduation Rate Increase Between 2017-2018 and 2031-2032 School Years, and Dropout Rate. KASB uses graduation rates for all students, low income students, students with disabilities and English Language Learners. WalletHub use National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores in reading and math for all students. KASB used NAEP scores at both the basic and proficient benchmarks for all students, low income students and non-low income students. (NAEP tests a small sample of students in grades four and eight.) 

WalletHub uses the share of 2017 High School Class Scoring “3” or Higher on Advanced Placement Exam. KASB does not use AP tests. WalletHub considers the state's median SAT Score and ACT Score, share of High School Graduates Who Completed ACT and/or SAT, and the Division of SAT and ACT Results by Percentile. KASB includes the percent of students testing scoring college ready on all four ACT benchmarks, the median SAT score, the percent of students tests by ACT and SAT, and the state's ranking in ACT and SAT scores compared the expected rank based on percent of students tested. 

WalletHub uses Pupil-Teacher Ratio and Share of Licensed/Certified Public K–12 Teachers by state. KASB uses only educational outcomes in its ranking.

Finally, 20 percent of WalletHub's ranking comes from 10 school safety factors, KASB does not include non-academic measures. 

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