By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Kansas Education Commissioner was back in Hays on Tuesday asking if the state's Kansans Can school redesign, which focuses on applied skills, is still preparing students for life after K-12.
The answer was yes, but Kansas schools still have a way to go.
Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson first toured the state, including Hays in 2015 and 2016. After years of schools measuring student success on the basis of state assessments, employers said students were graduating without the skills needed to be effective workers.
Kansans need to help students connect why in geometry it is important to know slope, Brad Neuenswander, deputy education commissioner, told the Hays audience.
"If it's a 6/12, you're not walking on it," he said. "If it's a 4/12, maybe," Neuenswander said.
Business leaders said while being academically prepared is important, non-academic skills far outweigh academic skills, Neuenswander said.
"Predominantly what Kansans said was that they have to be able to use it in real-world, on-the-job applications, not just memorizing it to get the questions at the end of the chapter and pass the test," Neuenswander said.
Eighty-one percent of business focus group members cited non-academic skills as the most needed attribute in new hires.
Skills that businesses said high school graduates were lacking included:
• Professionalism/work ethic
• Teamwork/collaboration
• Verbal communication
• Ethics/social responsibility
• Critical thinking/problem solving
• Information technology applications
• Written communication
• Diversity
• Lifelong learning/self-direction
• Creativity/innovation
"Business and industry says, 'I don't care what their ACT score is,' " Neuenswander said. "They did really well on the test, but they don't use it in real-world applications."
Businesses said even college graduates are missing many of the non-academic skills they need to be leaders.
"I with the CEO of Cerner. ... They hire tons of engineers and IT and computer scientists," Watson said. "They said they know their craft really well, but they can't project manage. They can't work in a team. They're not creative. They are just ... ugh.
"Why don't you quit sending us 4.0 students? They make great middle managers. They do exactly what they're told. I need people who reinvent our organization," he said.
These non-academic skills had traditionally been learned at home, on the farm and at church, Watson said.
"We don't know the reason, but it's shifted," he said. "A lot kids are good kids, but they just don't have these skills."
Today, kids are learning these skills in FFA, drama, sports or other extracurricular activities, but Watson argued students should be learnings these skills in core subjects, such as math, as well.
As the state has worked through redesign it aimed to individualize instruction, incorporate real-life problems into learning and focus on teaching students how to apply what they've learned, Watson said.
The plan included shifting school counselors' focus from scheduling to helping students with career planning and working with business to create opportunities for job shadows and internships.
A focus was also placed on pre-kindergarten education. Watson said the largest learning gap is in kindergarten. Some children come into kindergarten and are reading on a third-grade level, while others can't distinguish between a number and a letter and don't know their colors.
"Over the years, we catch it up, but we never get it entirely caught," he said.
He said schools need to do better jobs of designing education around students who will go on to two-year post-secondary and certification programs instead of just four-year colleges.
Schools need to create more individualized plans for students instead of conveyor belts that revolve around time, age and content, Watson said.
Focus groups also reported they wanted students to complete community service before graduation, something that some schools in the state have made a graduation requirement.
After the first state tour, the state set a "moon shot" goal of redesigning the state's schools during the next 10 years to address the issues the focus groups had raised. School districts volunteered to look at issues, including social and emotion engagement, and parent and community and engagement and incorporate improvements into their curriculums.
Lincoln Elementary School will be launching its redesign this school year. Its progress was slowed by the pandemic last year.
Each school has come up with different strategies to meet their students' needs and the goals of the redesign. Watson said not all of them have been successful. The state is re-evaluating the successes of the school redesigns to see what strategies have worked.
Statewide numbers indicate some have, Watson said.
In the last five years, graduation rates among all students are up 2.6 percent to 88.3 percent.
Graduation rates among subgroups are as follows:
• English as a second language students 83.7 percent — up 6.5 percent
• Students receiving free and reduced-price lunches 81.2 percent — up 3.7 percent
• Students with disabilities 80.3 percent — up 3.1 percent.
The state's goal is a graduation rate for all students of 95 percent. Watson said the state has made progress, but still has a ways to go.