A K-12 education commission will meet next month with the goal of finalizing a series of recommendations for Kansas lawmakers. The K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission met today (MON) in Topeka.
This was supposed to be the group's last meeting. Chairman Sam Williams, former head of the Wichita Chamber of Commerce, says they'll meet again in January.
“After reviewing the bills, and the feedback that I’ve received the last week and a half since it’s been out, it became obvious to me that there was more work to make sure we had the right stuff to go forward,” says Williams.
The commission has been studying ways to improve education while spending money more efficiently.
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The Kansas K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission will continue meeting next month with the goal of wrapping up a series of recommendations for improving student outcomes while using tax dollars more efficiently. As KPR’s Stephen Koranda reports, the group considered several bills they could recommend to lawmakers during a meeting yesterday (MON), but most of them were either rejected or sent back for more work.
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Part of the concern is that several of the proposed bills created new study groups and didn’t actually recommend policy changes in Kansas.
The group's chair, Sam Williams, says they should send a strong message to lawmakers saying more studies are not the answer.
“And that’s the challenge, ladies and gentlemen, things cannot stay the way they are. Because it’s not working,” says Williams.
Former state Senator Janis Lee drew a different conclusion after hearing from school administrators.
“They were doing the very best they could with the limited resources they had. Our students still do well,” says Lee.
The commission will recommend a bill creating a new group to study education standards in Kansas.