001Welcome USD264 staff, patrons, community, uh families, and anyone uh joining joining us on YouTube this month. Uh just ready to give you another uh superintendent update, another Clearwater clarity uh for volume 25, which is March of 2026. Uh kind of uh strange to think that we're already probably threequarters of the way through the 2526 school year. Um it's going fast, but as it also goes fast, we also have a lot of uh decisions to make and a lot of information to be able to share. So, we really want to just take the opportunity today um to share out um districtwide. We've been talking about the accreditation model uh with our board, with our faculties, with community members um how accreditation has changed over the past few years. And we really want to just give a
002much stronger update as to what that accreditation means and what are some of the actual uh details of some of the accreditation that is required now under uh the new KISSA. Um, so the why when we're looking at this is to understand the difference between KISSA 1.0 and KISSA 2.0. So again, KISSA is Kansas education systems of accreditation and 1.0 was a system that was been in place for uh quite a while since No Child Left Behind ended in around 2012. Um, KISSA had kind of been part of that process and and the first iteration of it was that you had the five Rs. um results, rigor, uh relevance, responsive culture um were the areas that you could select and you would write one goal, you would track it for five years and you were
003making sure that you were working on that goal. Um during that time, we also found out that maybe we were losing a little bit of ground academically. We were not uh providing all the needs we needed to be met to meet our academic needs at the same time. So they went back to the drawing board, so to speak, the state board did, and they came up with a kind of a newer model, what they call ka 2.0. So, instead of being on a five-year plan, it's a yearly plan. Uh, we have to have a goal and an action plan each year um focused on a fundamental. And we've talked about the fundamentals before. And those fundamentals are what we focus on for that year of improving. So, we're trying to make small changes in small
004incremental changes that have a large impact on our data later. So, part of KISSA 2.0 know is now that we're going to move away as we've been moving away from just the traditional model of just writing goals and working towards the success of those goals is now we're blending the opportunity of the action plan that you're putting in each year and your academic success uh through three different measures graduation rate state assessment scores and through what's called post-secary effectiveness. Those accountability measures combined with our action plan is how we're going to be evaluated as a school district for accreditation going forward. So for the past two years, all we've been accredited on is our action plan and making sure we're putting in place and we're meeting those goals. Starting next school year in the 2627
005school year, and we'll talk about the details in a few slides later, the accountability measures are going to start being a part of what we do. So in my second bullet there, I have No Child Left Behind versus uh KISSA 2.0. So, No Child Left Behind was the law enacted uh through Bush to uh president in the early 2000s. And that was to get 100% of students proficient on reading and math. And we know when we started in 2002 as a state uh we were somewhere in the neighborhood of about 57% of students that were proficient in reading. And by the time we paused No Child Left Behind in 2012 because they knew one 100% was basically impossible. We had about 86% of students um that were reading proficiently. And that was a reading test.
006It was the ability to just read and comprehend and answer some questions about the passage. When we changed during that 2012 with the inception of our new test that started in 2014 which was just rewritten uh last year, we moved to much more rigorous standards. And so the standards are not just can you read and comprehend the text that you are reading is can you read, comprehend, infer and site evidence all on the text. And that's starting in third grade all the way up through high school. So our state assessments got more difficult during that time because we felt like that the standards of what we were expecting our kids to do was too low through No Child Left Behind. So we changed some of those processes which in turn caused our scores to be
007a little bit of what they are. And so now as we're getting to this point where our scores are stagnant not only in Clear Water but across the state, the state is now starting to put some more accreditation or accountability measures in the accreditation process. So we are going to be judged andor credited not only by the action plan of the things that we're doing in professional development and working on increasing our ability to reach students at a higher level educationally but also those data pieces that are there. So how is this going to be measured? So there's four things that are measured. Graduation rates and that's is your graduation rate trending up or is at least meeting the threshold of what your expectation is. Is your post-secary effectiveness meeting uh your goals or the
008goals that we have? And that's a average over five years. Again, a little bit of the problem with post-secondary effectiveness, and we could talk more in detail uh later, is post-secary effectiveness is a two-year lag measure. So, we just got the data this year for the class of 23. So, we don't get to see the data for two years until after that class has graduated. So, it's a little harder to move the needle in that data because of the lag that we get in the U effectiveness score, but that is something that we can work on with our uh individual plans of study and making sure that we have good solid career teched programs available for our students. And then the third piece is state assessment scores. So, we went for a long time where
009state assessment scores was everything that accreditation was about. if you did not meet proficiency uh steps during No Child Left Behind, you were a school on improvement, your name was published in a newspaper, all of those negative uh things. And then when that went away, state assessment scores were still being given and they were required, but they did not have a weight uh in terms of accreditation. Well, starting next year, that weight will come back on. And so, we're going to have to really focus on how are we doing on our state assessment scores and how are we preparing our students for that. And then lastly, the fourth thing is our action plan on our goals. So last year um the district the district leadership team selected uh balanced assessments and we are focusing in
010on implementing the understanding of all types of assessments that we give and putting a calendar together so we know when assessments were given. Um we will be meeting again in March later this month and March 26th to set our next goal. Probably still going to be in the balanced assessment area where we're being able to use multiple sources of data to make sure that we're analyzing student achievement um to help with our strategic plan goal number one. Uh but those are some of the things that we work on daily. We put our professional development towards it. We work with our planning uh our implement implementation of curriculum towards those uh goals. And then hopefully that action that we're taking on those goals is going to impact those scores that you see above such as post-secary
011effectiveness, graduation, and state assessment scores. So when is this going to really get started? So our action plans are already being measured and that's how we're accredited. So each year we're going to submit an action plan. It's going to be evaluated by the state. If they feel like it needs to be changed, we get an opportunity to revise and then we have to put it in place. The following year, we have benchmarks of goals that we have to turn in and submit that we're meeting that and then write a new action plan. And that's a continuous cycle of improvement, which is good. That's a way for us to continue working on small increments to get better, to make um big things happen. It's kind of that snowball effect. If you start with a small snowball,
012rolling it down a hill, hopefully by the time it gets to the bottom of the hill, it's a large uh snowball in doing that. Then starting in 2627 school year, which is next school year, is we're going to start being measured on our data. And so uh a little bit later, we're going to look at what our current data is and talk about it. But I want to make sure that you know that we're going to start having a push specifically from the district and from each building is that our intensity around how we're going to be performing on state assessments, how we're performing in post-secondary effectiveness, and how we're performing in graduation is going to start being a little bit more of a focus because those are areas we're going to be measured on
013and accredited uh through the state of Kansas. So, here's our current data from a district perspective. Again, each grade level, each student is different. And we know that sometimes when we take state assessment data, it is a oneday, oneshot opportunity. It doesn't always measure um what maybe the students had done throughout the entire year, but that is the measurement that we're required by federal law and state law to use uh to determine our effectiveness on academic measures. So, in the upper uh left, you're going to see that there's the math uh for the entire district. So, you see the top two columns are the district in 23 and then the district in 24 and then the state in 23 and 24. So, you have a two-year comparison to look at what we've uh what we
014were able to do. So, we're able to reduce our level one, which is the orange, from 29 to 25% um and increase our level two. What we're looking for is increasing our numbers of students in level three and four. The ultimate goal for the state of Kansas is that 75% of students are in levels three and four. And as you can see, we're not quite there yet as a district in 24. Our 25 data is still kind of being worked through and we're getting some of that. And we did make some good strong increases in 25. We just don't have that available for evaluation yet. And you can see the same thing with our ELA. We're performing better than the state average, but we're not performing at what we think our expectation levels can be.
015So, we're going to start ensuring that some of our structured literacy work, some of our increased focus on writing, some of our reduction of screen time is all going to help with our building goals uh meeting some of the academic needs. And then, as you can see, our graduation rates uh for the past couple years have been trending up. So, we were at 91%, then we were at 93 almost 94%. Again, outperforming the state average, but those are areas we're looking for. The state is looking for 95%. That's the goal. So, we're really close to hitting the state's goal. And then on our post-secondary effectiveness or post-secondary progress there in the bottom right, you can see how we were kind of peaked close to 60% with the class of 21. And now we're down below
01650% with the class of 23. What post-secondary effectiveness is measuring is measuring the amount of students that have achieved some sort of certificate, uh, like a welding certificate, uh, HVAC certificate, some sort of trade certificate. they've either achieved an associates degree or they're enrolled in their third year of a college and or that they've produced some sort of um experience that would be considered effective and there's a list uh through the state of Kansas through economic data um we only need to have 75% of our students reach some sort of post-secary training that's certificate that's po um bachelor's degree associates degree master's degree the state of Kansas needs 75% of those students. So, our goal is 75%. It's not 100%. So, when we were at 60 or slightly above 60 in the class of 21
017and 22, we were really close to meeting um all of our goals. So, as we're seeing a little bit of a backslide, we're going to start working on how we can make sure that we're increasing our internship opportunities, our on the job shadowing, and making sure that students when they graduate can make the best decision for them about their future um so that they are having the opportunity to be effective in supporting the Kansas economy. Again, I want to take some time to thank you for listening and and helping us be in the arena. And at any time, you guys can uh reach out, email, call, um set up an appointment, and we're always happy to sit down and visit with you about things going on at Clearwater. Have a great day.