A Kansas Senate committee is considering a new plan for funding public schools. At a hearing this week, education officials weighed in on a proposal to offer additional aid to districts based partially on student success.
It would start as a pilot program in a half-dozen districts. Concordia Public Schools Superintendent Bev Mortimer says she has questions about the bill, but the focus on student outcomes is what drove her to support it.
“We found that the goals of the success indicators in this bill align very well with what we had in our district. And we appreciate and welcome the opportunity to have conversations about what is student success,” says Mortimer.
But Dave Trabert (TRAW-bert), with the conservative Kansas Policy Institute, takes issue with how success is measured. The bill would look at the accomplishments of graduates two years after leaving high school. Trabert says that’s too long to wait to measure student success.