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Auditors: districts spend most at‑risk dollars on salaries; approved program list lacked peer‑reviewed evidence
Summary
Legislative Post Audit reported in 2019 and 2023 that districts primarily pay staff with at‑risk dollars, many approved programs lacked peer‑reviewed evidence of effectiveness, and statewide student outcomes did not improve in the audited period.
Legislative Post Audit presented two recent reports to the Special Education and Related Services Funding Task Force on July 1, reviewing how Kansas school districts generate, spend and account for at‑risk funds and whether the expenditures are linked to improved student outcomes.
Heidi Zimmerman, principal auditor with Legislative Post Audit, summarized the agency's 2019 and 2023 findings. LPA examined a nonrandom sample of districts and detailed that the majority of at‑risk expenditures — roughly 96–97% in the sample — were for staff salaries and benefits; about 90% of those staff paid from at‑risk funds were classroom teachers or paraprofessionals. LPA found substantial variation across districts in how much at‑risk funding covered reported at‑risk spending: in the sample, some districts spent far more than the state weighting generated and others spent less. The sample reported roughly $162 million spent on at‑risk services in the 2019 review sample compared with $125 million in at‑risk funding for those districts; auditors cautioned the sample was not projectable statewide.
Zimmerman said the audits reviewed the research base for programs on the State Board of Education's approved list. "None of the 40 programs met all 3 criteria" of statute as written at the time (peer‑reviewed evidence across a five‑year window and focus on at‑risk students), she told the task force. In the 2023 follow‑up, auditors found the quality of evidence cited for commonly used programs was uneven: for 22 of 40 reviewed programs auditors could not find peer‑reviewed research; 18 had some research evidence and only seven had moderate to strong evidence of effectiveness.
On student outcomes, LPA reviewed cohort and statewide assessment and graduation data and reported that students eligible for free lunch performed worse on state assessments than other students across the period analyzed and that a large share of cohorts either stagnated or declined in performance over time. Zimmerman told the group that very few students in the cohorts moved to higher performance bands over the years studied.
Auditors recommended stronger departmental oversight and clearer guidance about allowable at‑risk expenditures, and the task force noted amendments to statutes since 2019 and work the State Board has begun to strengthen standards and training for approved programs.
Ending: Members asked for follow‑up analyses that use new student‑level flags (where available) that distinguish which students actually receive services, and auditors agreed that more targeted data analysis could help show whether at‑risk spending is leading to the intended additional services for students.
