Schools Prepare For Oversight Changes

The Kansas State Board of Education is set to take the first official step toward enacting sweeping changes in the way the state’s public schools are accredited and held accountable.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the 10-member board is expected to receive a set of new regulations Tuesday that represent the first overhaul of an accreditation system that has been in place since 1992.

The system known as Quality Performance and Accreditation grew out of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s known as outcomes-based education, in which individual schools were held accountable for the results they produced. The new Kansas Education System Accreditation represents a massive change, in part by accrediting whole districts instead of individual schools.