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Telling a more complete story of Pre-K-12 student achievement with data is the task Dr. Zach Conrad is embracing as the new deputy commissioner at the Kansas State Department of Education. 

“We can streamline that (the data) and make it very accessible and collaborative,” he said. “We need to be able to give data back to districts to make decisions. Districts are the ones who influence teachers. Teaching is where the magic actually happens, between a teacher and a student.” 

Conrad officially began his KSDE duties on July 1. He is overseeing the agency’s newly-created division of accountability and technology to make the gathering and analysis of student achievement data more coherent. He said bringing accountability processes and information technology “under one roof” will provide better oversight of student academic data. 

“As a state, we have a lot of big data,” he said. “We are redesigning it so that we are following the life cycle of data.”    

As the son of a nuclear scientist, Conrad attended schools in several states before returning to his native New England, where he graduated from high school in Griswold, Connecticut. From there, he earned his undergraduate degrees from Southeast Community College and the University of Nebraska, both in Lincoln; his master’s degree in international education policy and management at Vanderbilt University; and his doctorate in research, evaluation, methods and statistics from the University of Kansas. 

Conrad said his interest in international education policy grew out of experiences working with the immigrant community in Lincoln, Nebraska, as an AmeriCorps worker. He said he also spent time in London where he worked for Teach for All, a global network of organizations that expands education to children in areas of the world impacted by poverty, war and other difficulties. He was also a fifth-grade teacher in Denton, Texas, for a brief time.  

Familiar to many in the Kansas education data community, much of Conrad’s career has been spent helping districts use data to improve instruction and student outcomes. After pursuing his doctorate at KU, Conrad worked directly with districts on their assessments for Kansas MTSS and KSDE’s career, standards and assessment services. He then worked at the district level as the executive director of data and technology for Lawrence USD 497 and then most recently as Kansas City Kansas USD 500’s executive director of evaluation, research and assessment and technology information systems.  

Now as KSDE’s deputy commissioner of accountability and technology, Conrad said he wants to change the conversation that has traditionally started with telling educators to “just teach harder” to improve their students’ academic success. 

“We want to identify other meaningful things so that we’re supporting them on high-quality instruction in the classroom,” he said. “We’re going to collect the data that allows us to identify where that is breaking down and we’re going to give that back so we can support them more effectively.” 

KSDE’s division of accountability and technology was created by reorganizing several of the following programs, teams and processes: 

• Information Technology is moving from the Division of Fiscal and Administrative Services.  

• The assessments team is moving from Career, Standards and Assessment Services (CSAS).  

• Research and Evaluation is moving from CSAS and a new director of research and accountability will be hired.  

• Moving from Special Education and Title Services (SETS), a new State and Federal Reporting team is part of this division. 

Additional agency changes the Kansas State Board of Education approved during their May meeting include the following:  

• CSAS is now known as Teaching and Learning.  

• Special Education and Title Services (SETS) is now Special Education.  

• Accreditation and Design is now Implementation and Supports and includes some former SETS staff members.  

• Amanda Petersen will continue in her role as director of the KSDE early childhood team, but she is also planning and prioritizing the work of KSDE as Commissioner Jake Steel’s new chief of staff.