The Kansas State Department of Education’s (KSDE) Accreditation and Design (AD) team shared these updates and reminders:

This year, 179 systems are going before the Accreditation Review Council (ARC) and the Kansas State Board of Education to receive an accreditation rating. 

So far, the ARC has been able to review and vote on 150 systems. During the ARC’s May 11 meeting, the group voted on 46 systems. For June, the ARC will need to act on the remaining 29 systems. This has, and will continue to be, a huge undertaking by ARC members.

In order to ensure clarity, please take time to review the process below regarding the amount of time it takes from when a district completes its system report to when it receives a final status from the State Board of Education. 

The ARC uses three primary documents when completing their review: the System’s Year 5 Report, the OVT’s Year 5 Report, and the system’s most recent Performance Accountability Report (in this case, 2022). 

As a reminder, a system year 5 report is due in the authenticated application and to the OVT 30 days prior to the onsite visit. Similarly, the OVT’s report is due in the authenticated application and to the system no later than 30 days after the onsite visit.  

Once documentation is submitted in the authenticated application, a system's three reports (outlined above) will be sent to the ARC review team. The ARC will then utilize the ARC Criteria as it reviews materials and crafts a summary and recommendation

KSDE’s AD team ensures that ARC reviewers have, at a minimum, two weeks to review each system and craft an Executive Summary before coming before the full ARC for a vote. Note, the closer a report is submitted to the ARC meeting for the next month, the greater the likelihood is that a system will not be acted upon until the following month. Only two months remain, so it is critical that districts submit reports as promptly as possible.

Once the ARC has made its recommendation and submitted its report, the Accreditation and Design team will need to edit and finalize the Executive Summary before sending it to systems. Thus, there will be approximately a one-week turnaround between when the ARC votes and when a system is notified of the recommendation. 

Given the number of systems being reviewed, this could take up to two weeks.

Please make sure that your System Contact Information in the authenticated application is up to date to streamline the communication process. For more information or questions, email accreditation@ksde.org. 

Additional updates include:

• All members of the AD team will be out of the office on Tuesday, May 30. While members of the team will be available the week prior and the days following, on May 30, please route all needs through KSDE’s Pat Bone (pbone@ksde.org, 785-296-2303).