Kansas students have repeatedly outperformed the standards of the state assessment despite the level of funding that has been cut from the schools.

”Though the media has jumped on the chance to give a mostly negative view on Kansas schools because of budget issues, things are going well. We’re doing great,” principal Greg Hoyt said.

The state has to constantly change the standards according to the performance of students as a whole and due to the constant outperformance, new changes are made frequently. These changes are made because of the demands of the workforce and postsecondary education. This past year was the first time that students took the assessment made by the CETE (Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation). Students are graded based on four categories: category one below grade level performance, two performing at grade level but still not meeting college standards and three and four being on par with or exceeding the standards.

These results not only affect the next year of testing, but the classroom too.

“Generally teachers use state assessment scores to help judge what they are teaching in the classroom, and whether kids are learning what is given in the assessment. If the assessment is changing, it will influence what the teachers put in their curriculum,” school board member Leah Fliter said.

One issue that has been surfacing with test results seems to stem from the ethnicity of the student taking the test. It’s been shown in the statistics of the results that even though the number of African American and Hispanic students taking the test is increasing each year, the results stay relatively low on the category scale and tend to get worse.

“The question of raced-based and gender gaps has been pretty well established and has been talked about for decades,” Fliter said. “Many students who don’t perform well on the assessment tend to come from disadvantaged homes, they just don’t have the same environment that middle class or well-off families have. Unfortunately in our country that means many African American families, and in our district many Hispanic families.”