Lawrence school board members said they’d like to see deeper data and hear more about the day-to-day actions and impacts of the district’s equity work following a fall update Monday.
The 2023-24 equity report, along with past equity reports, mostly overview data aimed at showing the district’s progress on closing racial and ethnic disparities.
But board President Kelly Jones said she’s interested in getting deeper into the details. She said, for example, she wants to know what steps are being taken to support English language learners — whose test scores in three subjects, primarily math, have declined since last year, according to the report — and how the middle school schedule change implemented in 2023 has potentially impacted equity work.
“For me, I can look at the state assessments and sort of the, you know, how many students are in (Levels) 1, 2, 3 or 4, but I would actually like to hear more about what’s happening in the classroom,” Jones said. “And I would like more evidence that those things are happening in the classroom, if that makes sense, because those are the things you’re telling me have the biggest impact on equity.”
Data included in the equity report is being compared side by side with 2022-23 and 2021-22 data. Test scores have been mostly stable over the past three years, but subgroup breakdowns identify areas for improvement.
Results from the spring 2024 Kansas Assessment Program show math assessment scores in the top levels, which are 3 and 4, have increased by 2.5% across the Lawrence school district. English Language Arts scores have been consistent, and science scores have slightly declined.
There continue to be disparities among racial and other identity groups within the district. Continuing to move more Native American students into Levels 3 and 4 in math and ELA assessments is one of several goals the district outlined in the report.
Jones during the previous board meeting on Oct. 15 called for more funding to be allocated to Native American Student Services as part of next year’s budget.
Board member Shannon Kimball requested more information on other measures of academic achievement. She said the focus should ideally be more on growth in learning as opposed to test scores.
“I think historically, and this is not necessarily wrong, but I think there’s been a lot of concern that state assessments are not a particularly great tool to evaluate whether our kids are prepared for college and careers,” Kimball said. “It’s a tool. We have to pay attention to it. So I’m kind of curious whether we are showing more success in one kind of tool versus the other, so I think that having that additional data would be helpful to understand that better.”
James Polk, director of data and assessment, took note of Kimball’s comments. In addition to KAP tests, schools administer academic screenings for reading and math once every fall, winter and spring through the FastBridge assessment system, which Polk said have been helpful in obtaining quick data.
“A lot of times the FastBridge assessments that we — since we take it multiple times throughout the year, that data we would deem more actionable,” Polk said. “It gives us more feedback in the classrooms to be able to alter our instruction.”
Board member Anne Costello said she’s concerned context is missing in the report to be able to analyze individual subgroups, a vital piece in equity work.
Although the report shows the total number of behavior events that occurred in each grade level, for example, the number of behavior events within each subgroup aren’t included. Those are solely percentages of totals.
“For instance, females versus males — it’s looking at total populations,” Costello said. “And that’s not really telling me anything, as far as I would want to know. And I think it’s important to maybe, you know, to have that information of what is the population of students that we’re looking at to understand and then we can calculate those percentages ourselves, potentially, but just to have that reference there.”
Interim Superintendent Jeanice Swift said pulling and including all that data would be “labor intensive,” but Costello said it’s important, and Swift agreed. Board members clarified they don’t expect staff to document every single incident, but they largely expressed interest in learning more about what’s being reported.
Jayci Roberson, director of elementary schools, said including breakdowns can be difficult because when working with small data sets, there’s a risk of identifying individual students. Swift said the district could find ways to work around that.
Jones said the district is working on hiring a new executive director of inclusion, engagement and belonging, which was previously Cynthia Johnson. Once that role is filled — Jones estimated sometime during this academic year — the district and board will revisit a work session to discuss best practices for equity reports.
The report says staff reported restorative practices were used in four out of five behavior incidents. Behavior incidents reported across the district have decreased by approximately 12% in 2023-24, according to the data. Costello expressed interest in identifying specific causes of that decrease.
All students being able to maintain or improve regular school attendance is another goal of the district’s moving forward. The report says chronic absenteeism has slightly decreased from this time last year, daily attendance rates are on a slow incline, and staff are optimistic improvements will continue.
Swift said the introduction of COVID-19 put more weight on school districts across the country, including Lawrence, and the impact persists.
“We don’t say that as an excuse, we just report that as a part of the context for the work that we do,” Swift said. “Teachers are working harder than they ever have, and yet the needs that we see and the inequities that we face, they are greater than we’ve ever seen.”
Board member Bob Byers also requested to see more information on family outreach as it relates to equity work.
Jones said because the report has prompted so many questions, both from the board and from the community, she suggested future reports could be broken up into multiple parts. The work is ongoing.
“There’s so many in-depth questions that I have that I just think we’re going to need to take this as a starting point, and then we’re going to have to build out every time we sit down together,” Jones said.
Here’s the full report given to the board as well as the staff presentation:
20241028-Equity-Report-2023-24-20241028-Equity-presentation-r
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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