Print edition: 
One Wichita school — Curtis Middle School — has been identified as one of the five lowest-performing high-poverty schools in the state.
Three others identified as part of an overhaul of federal education policy are in the Kansas City district, and one is in the Liberal school district.
Five Wichita high schools were included by state education officials in a list of 13 high schools that make up the bottom 5 percent of high-poverty high schools statewide.
Wichita has 11 high schools.
The Wichita district has already worked on improving the schools, especially Curtis, said Denise Seguine, Wichita's chief academic officer. Curtis was restructured with a new principal and staff this year after repeatedly not meeting state test targets on reading and math.
The designation of being in the bottom 5 percent gives the district a chance to apply for up to $2 million a year in competitive federal grants for each school. The grant money could continue for two or three years.
"It brings the opportunity and additional funding to enhance what we started," Seguine said.
But to receive the money, the district has to play by new federal regulations that require drastic changes, including firing the school's principal or keeping no more than half of the staff.
The school improvement grants are expected to be awarded in July. The timing is tricky, especially when the district is looking at making $25 million in budget cuts next school year, Seguine said.
"We're in a time we're looking at making cuts, but at the same time we have that potentially big funding (source)," she said.
The grants wouldn't help districtwide finances because the grant money can only be spent in the school it was awarded to.
The Kansas school rankings were determined under No Child Left Behind, the current federal law that requires a certain number of students in each school to pass the state tests on reading and writing.
This year's bottom 5 percent title has "devastated" principals at Wichita high schools, said Denise Wren, Wichita assistant superintendent of high schools.
She said the method to identify the schools carries the same inequities urban schools have seen under No Child Left Behind, which places corrective actions only on high-poverty schools that receive federal funding.
"It's based on one test score," she said. "That's what's so frustrating for us ... the punitive nature of this."
Only Kansas' 32 high-poverty schools that receive federal funding and haven't met test targets for several years were considered for the bottom five schools.
The high school ranking included all 270 high schools that are eligible to receive federal money for low-income students. All Wichita high schools met the 60 percent graduation rate required under No Child Left Behind.
"What was disheartening was to see a school on the list that may have made tremendous gains," said Diane DeBacker, Kansas interim commissioner of education.
No Child Left Behind measures whether schools meet state test score targets, which increase each year. Even if a school's passing rate increases from year to year, it could fail to meet the designated target scores.
Proposed federal law aims to avoid placing a "failing" label on schools whose students make progress, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said.
The blueprint for the new education law calls for a "growth model" to evaluate not only schoolwide performance, but also the change in individual students' performances on state assessments from year to year.
This would be a welcome change to educators statewide, who have called the passing-rate targets arbitrary, DeBacker said. Current law requires that all students pass state assessments in math and reading by 2014.
"No Child Left Behind definitely has benefited education overall," DeBacker said. "But as we get closer to the target, we know that it is impossible."
It's not clear how students would be evaluated by a new "college- and career-ready" standard outlined in the federal blueprint, but she said Kansas and 47 other states are working on a national curriculum that would define what students should know in math and reading to be ready for a college or a career.
The curriculum is open to public comment until April 2. To review and give feedback on the standards, visit www.corestandards.org.
DeBacker said the State Board of Education could decide whether to accept the national standards as early as this summer.
But DeBacker said Kansas schools will have to play by the rules of No Child Left Behind until a new law is passed by Congress, which would take months.
Wichita high school leaders will continue with current reform strategies, which have increased graduation rates and state test scores and lowered the dropout rate, said Wren, the assistant superintendent.
"We don't want to upset the cart just so we get a few federal dollars," she said.
"We'll wait and see."
