How Community Networks Improve Student Proficiency in Kansas City’s Public Education System

Ask almost any parent what they want from a school, and the answer is simple. They want their child to feel known, safe, challenged, and supported. They want learning that opens doors and adults who pay attention when something is off.

That is why education reform can feel so frustrating. Too often, change arrives as a directive written far from the classroom, the kitchen table, or the neighborhood where students actually live. SchoolSmartKC uses the word “Reimagining” intentionally. Reform implies something is broken and needs to be fixed, usually by someone from the outside. Reimagining starts from what a community already has and builds forward. That distinction shapes everything about how we approach our work.

At SchoolSmartKC, Reimagining is one of our strategic pillars. Our work centers on community networks, builds partnerships across schools and families, engages civic and business leaders, and advocates for public policy and investment that make lasting change possible across the Kansas City Public Education System (KCPES), which includes both charter and KCPS district schools.

Why Top-Down Reform Falls Short

Top-down change is built for speed and scale. In practice, schools are human systems, and human systems do not change through memos alone. The Dual Capacity-Building Framework identifies the pattern: well-intentioned engagement efforts default to one-way communication and “random acts of engagement” rather than building the capacity of families and educators to work together. Brookings research confirms that the day-to-day roles and practices of local educators are often resistant to purely top-down change. Reform fails for many reasons, but one of the most common is that the people expected to carry it out were rarely brought in early enough to make it real.

There is another version of this problem, and it plays out in cities across the country. A funder asks a school what it needs, the school selects a program, the grant is awarded, and for one or two years the work moves forward. Then the funding cycle ends and the gains go with it. Michael Fullan’s research on large-scale reform has tracked this pattern for decades: in one longitudinal study, only 4 of 13 schools were still using their chosen reforms after six years. Education Week has reported similar findings across a range of academic interventions, where short-term gains fade because nothing underneath the program changed. The problem is structural. When each building selects its own intervention in isolation, the result is a patchwork of disconnected efforts that never add up to system-level improvement. In any city where students move between schools frequently, that fragmentation means a child who changes buildings lands in a completely different instructional reality. Isolated investments, no matter how well-funded, do not build the infrastructure for sustained change. Systems do.

The Evidence Is Measurable

The Institute of Education Sciences reports that when families are meaningfully involved in their children’s education, students have better attendance, higher grades, stronger test scores, and stronger connection to school. Education Week reporting on chronic absenteeism found that schools with stronger family engagement saw a 39% smaller increase in chronic absenteeism between 2019 and 2022, and attendance rates 25% better than schools with weaker engagement.

The California community schools data is especially compelling. After the first full year of implementation, community school approaches were linked to a 30% greater reduction in chronic absence than matched comparison schools, a 15% reduction in suspension rates, and test score gains equal to roughly 43 additional days of learning in math and 36 additional days in English language arts. The gains were strongest for historically underserved students, and schools with the biggest attendance improvements also saw the strongest academic gains.

What Reimagining Education Looks Like In Kansas City

When communities help shape what education looks like, people move from being subjects of change to owners of it. Families can point to barriers schools miss. Teachers can flag what is workable in real classrooms. Community organizations can connect students to services and supports that schools cannot provide alone. Shared understanding, local trust, and a realistic view of what students need are the starting point for everything we do at SchoolSmartKC.

Our Literacy for All Students initiative did not start with a mandate. It started with data summits and listening sessions with school leaders, families, businesses, and community partners. The model works across both district and charter schools in KCPES. It ensures literacy coaches are on-site in partner schools, supporting teachers through job-embedded coaching tied to daily practice. Student data on reading proficiency and growth drives instruction and tracks progress over time. Curriculum, assessment, and professional learning are aligned so that quality is consistent regardless of where a child attends school or how often they move.

Today, 12 partner schools have on-site literacy coaches. Our goal is to reach all 39 elementary schools in KCPES. The Bellwether case studies highlight the implementation strategies underpinning this work.

Here is what the data actually show: according to DESE, just 21% of third graders across KCPES were reading at proficiency in 2025. That means nearly 8 in 10 students are performing at basic or below basic. In that context, proficiency is not the first number that moves. Growth is. Students move through performance bands before they reach proficiency, and research on sustained school improvement is consistent: coherent, multi-year implementation across aligned supports is what produces measurable gains, and implementation science tells us teachers may need as long as three years to fully internalize a new instructional approach. Increased rates of student growth and movement out of the lowest bands are the leading indicators that a model is working. Proficiency gains follow. That is exactly what we are seeing in our partner schools.

Our formative data tell the story. In the first year of implementation, LFAS partner schools show 6% more students performing above the national median and 7% fewer students in the bottom quartile. In a system where nearly 8 in 10 students started at basic or below basic, that movement in a single year is precisely what the research predicts during early-stage implementation, and it is the foundation on which proficiency gains are built.

This is also why alignment across buildings is so important. When each school works in isolation, you get a patchwork. When schools, families, and community partners work from the same instructional foundation, you build a system where a child who moves from one school to another lands in the same quality of instruction. That alignment only holds when the people closest to the work, teachers, families, and the partners surrounding each school, are shaping it alongside us. The community engagement and the academic strategy are not two separate efforts. They are the critical and necessary work, and the people doing it every day are the reason it holds together.

Why This Approach Lasts

Lasting change only happens when people believe it belongs to them. Families know when they are being treated as an afterthought. Educators know when a strategy was built without understanding their classrooms. Communities know when they are being asked to endorse a plan they had no role in shaping. When families are listened to, when educators are supported, and when community partners are brought in as co-builders, change stops feeling like an intervention and starts functioning as a shared commitment.

That is the difference between reform and Reimagining. Reform assumes something is broken and sends in a fix. Reimagining honors what a community already brings and builds the system to match. It builds trust before accountability, relevance before rollout, and the kind of shared responsibility that holds when leadership changes, funding shifts, or the next challenge arrives.

FAQs

What is the difference between education reform and Reimagining education?

Reform typically implies a top-down fix for something broken. Reimagining starts from what communities already bring, involves families, educators, and local leaders in shaping priorities and solutions, and builds systems designed to last. Research links this kind of partnership to better attendance, achievement, and school climate.

Why does top-down reform often fall short?

It tends to rely on one-way communication, ignore local context, and skip the people expected to implement the change. Research also shows that isolated, grant-funded programs rarely sustain gains once funding ends.

How does family engagement improve student outcomes?

When families are meaningfully involved, students have better attendance, stronger grades and test scores, and stronger connection to school. Schools with strong family engagement also see lower chronic absenteeism.

How does SchoolSmartKC reimagine education in Kansas City?

Much of this work builds on what educators were already doing in their buildings. Schools across KCPES had strong teachers, committed leaders, and real momentum before LFAS arrived. What was missing was the connective tissue: aligned curriculum, shared data practices, and on-site coaching that connects one school’s progress to another’s. LFAS adds that structure so the good work already happening in classrooms can compound across the system instead of staying isolated inside individual buildings.

What does the data show about student performance in Kansas City schools?

According to DESE, just 21% of third graders across KCPES were reading at proficiency in 2025. SchoolSmartKC’s Literacy for All Students initiative is producing early gains: in the first year of implementation, partner schools show 6% more students above the national median and 7% fewer in the bottom quartile.