How should Kansas schools help vulnerable students? Audit ignites debate on spending

After the Kansas Supreme Court found the state failed many of its most vulnerable students, lawmakers approved hundreds of millions for schools. But school districts are not targeting dollars meant for at-risk students as required by law, state auditors have found.

An audit of 20 districts released in December has prompted fierce pushback from educators and advocates, who say it misunderstands how children most at risk of academic failure are educated. Some say the audit’s approach, if strictly followed, would lead to the separation of struggling pupils from the general student body.

Republican lawmakers have seized upon the findings as proof of what they long suspected, saying they are not surprised the spending does not always align with the law. Lawmakers are promising to hold hearings after they return to Topeka on Jan. 13.

The audit has reignited debates over school funding that died down after the Supreme Court signed off on spending levels this spring. The justices had previously faulted Kansas for not doing enough to help the lowest-performing quarter of students as lawmakers struggled for years to satisfy demands to provide adequate funding.

The audit has brought into sharp relief a profound disagreement over whether students most likely to be in academic peril can – or should – at times be taught separately from other students. At stake, ultimately, is how Kansas helps the students it says are most likely to fall through the cracks.

“It was not a surprise to me to see this result. It is a frustration because the Supreme Court clearly said in their opinion that we are failing 25 percent of our students,” said Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican who chairs the House K-12 Education Budget Committee.

The Legislature’s auditing arm investigated 20 districts, from the massive (Blue Valley and Wichita) to the small (Inman and Elkhart). It found that most at-risk spending was used on teachers and programs serving all students “that did not appear to specifically address at-risk students as required by state law.”

At-risk funding is calculated for each district based on the number of students eligible for a free lunch. Last school year, the state provided $413 million in at-risk funding to districts.

The audited districts collectively reported spending $162 million on at-risk services, with 96 percent going toward staff salaries and benefits. More than 90 percent of the staff employed using at-risk funds were classroom teachers and paraprofessionals.

The dedicated dollars are meant to provide students on the edge with additional educational opportunities and services, auditors said. But they noted that most at-risk funds were used for regular classroom teacher salaries.

The Kansas State Department of Education, which oversees the more than 300 school districts in the state, doesn’t require teachers to track the time they spend serving at-risk students, the audit said. The districts are instead allowed to use at-risk dollars to pay the percentage of a teacher’s salary that matches the percentage of at-risk students in their classroom.

Auditors also specifically questioned $191,000 in at-risk spending that included $87,000 for laptops, $25,435 to pay an athletic trainer and $500 for an after-prom party.

“Some of those things are probably not approvable. They’ll be audited, they’ll be checked and they’ll have to correct it,” Dale Dennis, a deputy commissioner of education who oversees school finance, told lawmakers at a hearing in December.

Auditors said the state board of education, which controls the agency, hasn’t approved strong practices for at-risk programs or provided districts with good guidance on how to spend their at-risk dollars. Most of the practices and programs approved by the board aren’t related to at-risk programs or students as required by law, the audit found.

For example, the approved practices include ways to encourage civic engagement, and teach science standards. But auditors said many of the items, including those, are good resources for teaching generally and aren’t directly targeted to at-risk students.

Additionally, auditors said the education department couldn’t produce research to show that the programs approved by the board were grounded in evidence.

“I have heard from school districts, I have heard from parents … On the State Department of Education (website) it’s very difficult to find what are highly-regarded programs and what are really those outcome-based initiatives school districts should adopt,” said Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Educators and advocates criticized the audit’s focus on the fact that at-risk dollars are being spent in the general classroom. They expressed fears that auditors were suggesting an approach that would cleave vulnerable students away from others.

“We abandoned segregation in our schools for African American students in the ‘50s. We abandoned segregation for kids with special needs in the ‘70s with the passage of special ed law,” Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the Kansas National Education Association, said.

“It is completely inappropriate for us to be talking now about ‘oh, we need to segregate these at-risk kids so that other kids don’t get a benefit of the at-risk money.’”

The 20 districts reviewed by auditors received $125 million last school year in at-risk funding from the state, but reported spending $162 million to provide at-risk services. Desetti called the gap the “scandal” in the audit.

“So in my mind the schools are doing everything right and the audit has missed the point,” he said.

The department of education in response to the audit said that it had “absolutely complied with the letter and intent of the law.” The agency said districts must describe the evidence that supports the practices they use and that it financially audits district spending.

Board of Education chairwoman Kathy Busch said in a letter to auditors that the law requires approved practices to be backed by evidence showing a statistically significant effect for at-risk students.

“The State Board has done just that by identifying those practices which work for all students, including those deemed to be at-risk,” Busch wrote.

But auditors indicated that’s the point. In their report, they wrote that “at-risk students need services that are above and beyond what are available to all students.”

Dennis, who has been working for the state for more than 50 years, told lawmakers that hiring teachers to work only with at-risk students would be impossible for many districts.

“You start doing a pull-out program during the school year, it starts becoming extremely expensive,” he said.

This story was originally published January 5, 2020 at 7:00 AM with the headline "How should Kansas schools help vulnerable students? Audit ignites debate on spending."