More than 150,000 Kansas K-12 students will have a difficult time reading this story. Not because of the subject matter, but because they may be “functionally illiterate,” defined by dictionary.com as “a person with some basic education who still falls short of a minimum standard of literacy or whose reading and writing skills are inadequate to everyday needs.”
That’s the alarming outcome of state assessments conducted in 2024.
The map below shows the number of students per county who have a limited ability to read. The counties are shaded to reflect their percentage of students who do not meet the minimum standard of literacy. The darker the shade, the higher percentage of students in that category.
The raw numbers are stunning: 32,000 in Sedgwick, 19,000 in Johnson, 14,000 in Wyandotte, 9,000 in Shawnee, and 4,000 each in Douglas, Leavenworth, and Ford counties.
In a column for the Kansas Policy Institute, owners of The Sentinel, CEO Dave Trabert notes functional illiteracy in Kansas has increased 50% in a decade, and charges state officials and legislators with covering up the decline:
- KSDE (Kansas State Department of Education) initially defined Level 1 as being below grade level (by virtue of defining Levels 2-4 as being “at or above grade level.” They later scrubbed “grade level” from definitions and now contend that it is improper to say any students are below grade level because “the assessment only measures grade level performance.” Commissioner Randy Watson refuses to say, however, if that means all students are at grade level.
- Two state audits found that school districts are not spending At-Risk funding on “above-and-beyond” services for students who are academically at-risk of failing as required by state law, yet neither the Kansas State Board of Education (SBOE) nor the Legislature will compel compliance with the law.
- Districts must comply with all “applicable” state laws to be accredited, but KSDE says the At-Risk spending law isn’t ‘applicable’ because it isn’t “connected to school improvement.” The law isn’t intended to improve “schools;” it is designed to improve student outcomes, but that’s how KSDE tries to parse words to avoid accountability.
- State law requires the SBOE to have an accreditation system based on academic improvement, but it does not require schools to improve outcomes to maintain accreditation.
- Some legislators petition their leaders to protect them from voting on education proposals because they don’t want to endanger their re-election chances by angering the education establishment.
Trabert concludes:
“The Kansas State Department of Education and others in the education establishment may object to the use of the term “functionally illiterate,” arguing that it’s not part of their official vocabulary. But while the term is subjective, so too is KSDE’s use of the vague and undefined label “limited.” What matters most is not the terminology, but the reality it reflects: more than 150,000 Kansas students lack the basic reading skills needed for success in school, work, and life.”
David Hicks – The Sentinel
David Hicks grew up in southern Missouri and graduated from Mizzou with a degree in political science. He has worked as a congressional staffer, broadcaster, government bureaucrat, columnist, campaign worker, and small business owner. He and his wife live in Bonner Springs.
