(District leadership team members from Pike Valley USD 426, Rock Hills USD 107 and Waconda USD 272 participated in a school improvement day in April at Smoky Hill Education Service Center, in Salina. Their group activity was an illustration of keeping their strengths in the air as distractions, changes in staff, and initiatives change. Photo from X; Noalee McDonald-Augu, Smoky Hill.)  

The second full year of the second iteration of the Kansas Education Accreditation System, known as KESA 2.0, will soon be underway as the 2025-26 school year begins in August. 

Dr. Jay Scott, director of KSDE Accreditation and Design, said KESA 2.0 “had a good start” during this past school year and “we’re hoping to build on that great start next year.” 

The three main areas of KESA 2.0 accreditation are the following: 

1) Compliance.  

2) School improvement (action plans). 

3) Outcomes on the state English language arts and math assessments, graduation rates and postsecondary success.  

Scott said systems have been following a rubric for creating their action plans and will soon have access to a rubric to help them implement those plans during the 2025-26 school year.    

District leadership teams (DLTs) attended one of 76 KESA 2.0 school improvement days across the state this past school year. The three main purposes of these days were:  

• To establish a consistent cadence of collaboration with similar systems.   
• To share best practices on school improvement.  
• To gain feedback from system peers on each other’s action plans.    

“Some of those days were some of the best I’ve had in education,” Dr. Ben Proctor, deputy director of KSDE’s division of learning services said about the 2024-25 school improvement days. “It’s been good to listen, especially to teachers. Having board members in the room has also been huge.”  

“We learned right away that people wanted to talk,” Scott added, describing the high level of collaboration and information sharing that took place among the attendees. This included going through the guided reflective questions designed to allow each district leadership team to prioritize their most important high-leverage actions through conversations around the responses to the questions.  

“People can share and hear what’s going on (with their peer districts),” Proctor added. “That is in high demand. They want to know what’s working.” 

The school improvement days this past school year served as an opportunity for systems to share data and begin building their action plans. Scott said most action plans are focused on structured literacy training and other professional development for classroom teachers and administrators. The action plans, shared with local school boards and the districts’ wider school communities, will transition to the implementation phase during the 2025-26 school year with student outcomes to be evaluated in 2026-27 as part of KESA 2.0’s school improvement model. 

“I think teachers see themselves in this model,” said Dr. Laurie Curtis, manager of KSDE’s early literacy and dyslexia program. “It’s also about raising expectations for what students can achieve.”   

The role of the Accreditation Review Council (ARC) with KESA 2.0 

The Accreditation Review Council (ARC) is the body of 18 education professionals who, up until now, have been reviewing systems once every five years and making recommendations to the Kansas State Board of Education regarding each system’s accreditation status. Scott said with KESA 2.0, the ARC will make accreditation recommendations every year to the State Board in July. A small team of the ARC will also go on-site to meet collaboratively with a system that is struggling with implementing their action plans and achieving outcomes two years in a row.  

“We think this has some validity to build this into the support model,” Scott said, adding only the ARC evaluates systems to make recommendations for accreditation to the State Board, not KSDE staff. “We’re not the evaluators. We’re the coaches,” he emphasized. Learn more here about the KSDE Accreditation and Design team.   

2025-26 informational sessions and School Improvement Days  

For district and school system staff members who weren’t able to attend the KESA 2.0 informational sessions during this past school year, the content will be repeated during sessions scheduled for August and early September where attendees will be able to ask questions, share feedback, and network with fellow educators.  

The informational sessions will be followed by the 2025-26 school improvement days beginning in September and ending in April 2026. During these days, the district leadership teams will report on how they implemented their first action plan and explain how they plan to build upon their action plan.