Shawnee Mission assessment staff told the Board of Education on Oct. 27 that the Kansas Assessment Program was revised for 2025, establishing a new baseline that aligns better with local diagnostic tests and reduces previously irregular grade‑to‑grade score patterns.

Dr. Dan Grama summarized statewide changes and Shawnee Mission results. He said the redesigned Kansas assessments use four performance levels — level 1 (limited), level 2 (basic), level 3 (proficient) and level 4 (advanced) — and that the new cut scores and vertical alignment reduce anomalous spikes between grades seen in the prior assessment system. “Kansas assessment results are a new baseline,” Grama said.

District results and crosswalks: on the 2025 Kansas assessments Shawnee Mission students scored at or above proficient (level 3) at the following approximate rates: ELA overall 57 percent across grade levels and math overall 52.6 percent. Grama compared district and statewide figures and showed SMSD outperformed the state by roughly 12–14 percentage points in both ELA and math. He also presented crosswalks between the state results and local measures — NWEA MAP, i‑Ready and Acadience — and said roughly the 50th–60th percentiles on those nationally normed diagnostics correspond to the new ‘proficient’ cut points on the state test.

Other fall diagnostics: district cohort comparisons on i‑Ready (math) and NWEA MAP (reading) showed modest year‑to‑year gains in percentile distributions for several grades. Acadience early literacy and numeracy probes showed incremental increases in students at or above benchmark and declines in the share “well below benchmark.” Grama said these multiple measures point to incremental improvements and that the district will continue to monitor correlations as new assessment footprints are established.

Next steps: the district will continue implementing i‑Ready across K–8, use the i‑Ready MyPath feature for individualized learning, employ Kansas mini tests as common formative tools and expand structured instructional walkthroughs; staff reported 1,463 walkthroughs districtwide already. Grama said the state changes make the Kansas test more useful for communicating with parents and aligning local interventions.