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State Board receives draft KISA graduation standards; department to evaluate outcomes for accreditation starting 2026-27
Summary
The State Board received a draft of proposed KISA graduation-outcome standards, which would be used in accreditation decisions beginning with the 2026-27 evaluation cycle. The department proposed a three-tier standard (Exceeds, Meets, Identified Need) based on a five-year cohort graduation calculation and a rate-of-change metric.
TOPEKA '1 The Kansas State Board of Education on July 8 received a first draft of proposed Kansas Instructional System for Accreditation (KISA) graduation-outcome standards that Kansas Department of Education staff plan to use in future accreditation evaluations.
Under the proposal presented to the board, KSDE would evaluate a system's graduation performance based on a five-year KISA graduation rate (the number of graduates across the five most recent classes divided by the sum of the corresponding four-year graduation cohorts). The department also proposed a rate-of-change metric comparing the most recent five-year rate to the previous five-year rate. The combination is intended to measure current outcomes and direction of change.
KSDE staff proposed three performance categories: Exceeds (KISA graduation rate >= 95%), Meets (KISA rate >= 88% and not declining by more than 2%, or below 88% but demonstrating positive improvement), and Identified Need (KISA rate < 88% with flat or declining trend, or KISA rate between 88% and 94.9% with a decline greater than 2%). Department staff said the state average KISA rate (for classes 2020''2024) is about 88.7%, and that a 2% decline was selected because analysis of districts with negative year-to-year change showed an average decline near 1.6%.
KSDE staff described how the accreditation process would treat outcomes that "do not meet" a standard. If a district fails to meet the standard in a single evaluation year, it would remain accredited and be required to document corrective steps in its QIESA action plan; if a district falls short in two consecutive evaluations ("persistently not meeting"), the Accreditation Review Council (ARC) would conduct a focused on-site review and could place conditions on the district's accreditation if the council concluded the district had not demonstrated sufficient corrective measures.
KSDE staff emphasized the proposed graduation standards are a first draft and will be discussed at upcoming KISA information sessions this fall. The department said the board will not apply the standards to accreditation decisions until the 2026-27 evaluation cycle; district reports under KISA will continue to be collected annually and those data will be used to inform the first accreditation reviews under the new standard.
Why it matters: Accreditation outcomes can trigger required corrective actions and public reporting and are used by districts and state officials to measure system performance. The proposed standards aim to be both outcome-oriented and to account for improving trends so that districts showing rising graduation rates are not penalized even if they remain below the statewide average.
What's next: KSDE will hold KISA information sessions in the fall, continue technical work on the rate-of-change rule and bring related materials back to the board for review. The board will consider accreditation outcomes under these standards beginning with the 2026-27 evaluation cycle, after districts submit their 2026 KISA reports.
