BARRY COUNTY — One person died in an accident just after 2:30a.m. Sunday in Barry County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee driven by Jason M. Cendroski, 38, Monett, was southbound on Farm Road 1090 just south of Monett.

The vehicle traveled off the road, struck a mailbox and an embankment.
Cendroski was pronounced dead at the scene.

He was not wearing a seat belt, according to the MSHP.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

Most Kansas students graduate high school nowadays. Yet many still struggle with the skills of reading and writing.

Now a task force of educators, parents and lawmakers hopes to help close that gap.

Over the past half year, the Dyslexia Task Force put together recommendations and this month handed them off to the Kansas State Board of Education.

The group’s work is well worth paying attention to. It could change reading instruction for every public school student in the state.

The goal? Catching a wide range of struggling readers and spellers earlier on.

Signs of dyslexia according to research at Yale University
It extends far beyond dyslexia — though even that, some researchers say, is far more common than parents and teachers realized in the past.

Ugh, English is hard.

Though, bough, cough, tough.

You’ve probably reflected on the woes of English spelling before. Usually we just throw up our hands. Or shrug. Or jokingly congratulate ourselves on having the strangest writing system in the world, then move on.

That’s not acceptable to teachers who specialize in instruction for children with dyslexia.

Unbeknownst to many of us, much of the “weirdness” does follow patterns. (English professor Anne Curzan has this enjoyable column to that point.)

Angie Schreiber began learning these nitty-gritty guidelines after finding out her son had dyslexia. Now she runs an Emporia private school that teaches students like him.

“English is 80 to 85 percent regular,” she argues. “If we teach to the regularity and not use the irregularities as an excuse, we can teach our kids to read, write and spell.”

A couple examples:

Check out the “ie” words in the photo below. Shield, tie, brief, die, and so on.

This is a photo of a teacher’s laptop while her eighth-grade student with dyslexia practiced reading them aloud. It helped him to recall that “ie” often sounds like an “i” at the end of a word, but like an “e” if it’s in the middle.

And what about spelling “back”? What’s that “c” doing before the “k”? Schreiber explains that English usually uses “ck” at the end of a one-syllable word after a short vowel. Hence “back” and “truck” get a “ck” that “bank” and “think” don’t.

Solution to the big ole reading gap?

Teaching such guidelines are one part of “structured literacy,” an approach to reading instruction that may soon be required of every elementary school in Kansas.

Some people swear by it. Others roll their eyes.

The disagreement is part of “the reading wars” — a decades-long and nationwide rift in the sphere of literacy education.

How can there be so much to debate about teaching kids to read? Well, because so many people worry we still haven’t figured it out.

Even the optimism around No Child Left Behind waxed and waned. Nearly two decades later, Americans continue to enter adulthood without mastering this vital skill.

Though almost 90 percent of Kansas students graduate high school, a third of the state’s high-schoolers score below grade level on English tests. More than two-thirds test below the higher proficiency bar that Kansas uses for federal accountability.

Structured literacy teachers argue they know how to resolve a big chunk of that reading gap.

They’re not saying all those children have dyslexia — they’re saying research shows structured literacy improves reading and spelling across the board.

Did you miss the Kansas News Service’s feature on dyslexia?
Plenty of literacy specialists disagree (hence the “reading wars”). Sometimes, experts on either side even cite the same research as showing totally different things.

Rethinking classrooms and college

So, back to the dyslexia task force’s decision this month.

Pending approval from the Kansas State Board of Education, the group wants to make structured literacy part of the college coursework required to teach in this state. To get their licenses, many teachers would need to pass a test that shows they understand and can teach in depth things like “phonemic awareness” — which involves recognizing and breaking down individual sounds in words.

Schools would need to offer training for teachers already in the field and incorporate structured literacy into general reading instruction for all students.

Read a draft of the task force’s recommendations.
Reports from state-appointed panels don’t always lead anywhere. Some end up looking more like political theater than anything else. Don’t expect that fate for this one.

“This, obviously, is not going to be one of those reports that sits on a shelf someplace,” said retired superintendent Jim Porter. “It’s going to get the attention it deserves.”

Porter chaired the task force and, until recently, the state board.

Adopting structured literacy would add Kansas to a national wave of states passing laws and policies meant to better serve children with dyslexia.

Even among those states, though, a radio documentary by APM Reports suggests implementation has proven tricky.

The state board of education may vote on the task force’s recommendations in the coming weeks or months. Rolling out new standards in thousands of schools and training a critical mass of teachers will take longer.

“I’m worried that it’s going to be a 10-year process,” says Christina Middleton, a Lenexa mother whose son wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia till the summer before fifth grade.

That’s when she took him to Children’s Mercy Hospital for tests, got a diagnosis and signed him up for private instruction in structured literacy.

Half a dozen reading programs had failed him before that point, she says. Now in high school, he reads at grade level.

Teaching schools wanted a seat at the table

Colleges of education may well ask the state board to rein in some of the recommendations. They worry Kansas is on the brink of sweeping changes that bypassed them.

The sole professor on the dyslexia task force was psychologist David Hurford, who founded a center focused on researching dyslexia and teaching children who struggle with reading.

The dyslexia task force membership
“There is a voice missing,” Ken Weaver, dean of the Emporia State Teachers College, wrote in an email this week. “That is the literacy faculty from all the Regents universities.”

Those professors likely would have expressed concern that task force members were misunderstanding the thrust of decades of research on reading education. Or underestimating the extent of phonics and related instruction already taking place in Kansas schools.

But from the point of view of parents who say schools failed their children year after year, the status quo just hasn’t been working.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.

JOHNSON COUNTY — One person died in an accident just after 4:30p.m. Saturday in Johnson County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 1997 Chrysler driven by Amanda R. Sanders, 26, Kansas City, Mo., was eastbound at a high rate of speed on Missouri 58 one mile west of County Road SW 200.

The Chrysler traveled off the road, rolled and the driver was ejected.

Sanders was pronounced dead at the scene. A passenger Danial E. Vanartsdalen, 36, Kansas City, Mo., was flown to Research Medical Center. They were not wearing seat belts, according to the MSHP.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman who was raped in front of her 2-year-old daughter several months before prosecutors say her two assailants abducted and sexually assaulted a Kansas sheriff’s deputy says police seemed to doubt her when she sought their help.

During a hearing Thursday in which one of the men, 41-year-old William Luth, pleaded guilty to raping her, the Independence, Missouri, woman told the court that the officers who investigated the February 2016 attack in her home “made it abundantly clear that they were pretty sure I was just being dramatic,” The Kansas City Star reported.

No suspects were identified in that attack until Luth and Brady Newman-Caddell were arrested for the October 2016 sexual assault of the Johnson County, Kansas, sheriff’s deputy and authorities say DNA evidence linked them to the earlier attack.

The Missouri woman said from the outset, the Independence police seemed to doubt her story that she was raped in the same bed as her toddler. She said they asked her about her past sexual partners and pored over her social media history and phone contacts.

“They made me feel insane,” she told the court.

She also said it made her sick when she found out that Luth had raped another woman. “I owed this woman so much gratitude for being strong enough to endure what they had done, and to have the courage to seek justice,” she said. “Without her, I wouldn’t be here facing William Luth today.”

She said her case was solved because she underwent a rape examination and “forensic scientists did their job,” and that she hasn’t received an apology or acknowledgement from the police department even though her account was proven true. She said at least with Luth, she gets an admission of guilt, which she described as proof that “I was telling the truth.”

Officer John Syme, an Independence police spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press phone message Friday seeking comment.

Both Luth and Newman-Caddell pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping the deputy, with Luth getting sentenced to 41 years in prison in that case and 30 years for the Missouri attack, to be served at the same time.

Newman-Caddell was scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in attack on the deputy, but the hearing was called off when he told the judge he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea. The charges against him in the Missouri attack are still pending.

The Star and the AP don’t generally identify victims of sex crimes.

TOPEKA – The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) held the 2019 Harmful Algal Bloom Meeting this week at Washburn University in Topeka. The meeting, which included all Kansas agencies which work on harmful algal blooms, discussed health, monitoring and responses due to harmful algal blooms in area water sources.

“At this year’s meeting we have expanded from our recreational stakeholders to include the public water supply operators and other agencies to find the best ways to address issues as they arise,” said Megan Maksimowicz, an environmental specialist at KDHE’s Bureau of Water.

“We want to make sure that we stay on top of all public health and safety issues connected to HABs. We have not had any toxins above the EPA’s health advisory level from HABs in a public water supply system, but we continue to come up with the best ways to prevent this and to monitor these situations.”

Presentation topics included recreation and reservoir research, animal health, testing and monitoring, nutrient reduction and practices, in-lake mitigation strategies, public water supply monitoring, and planning and response, among other discussions. The meeting, hosted by KDHE’s Bureau of Water, has been held annually every winter to engage stakeholders on this challenging issue affecting lakes in Kansas.

Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) Meeting 2019 from KDHE on Vimeo.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A businesswoman from rural Missouri has been chosen as the new chairwoman of the state Republican Party.

Republicans said Saturday that they had elected Kay Hoflander to lead the party heading into the 2020 elections. She succeeds former U.S. attorney Todd Graves of Kansas City, who led the party the past two years.

Votes are in: Kay Hoflander has been elected leader of @MissouriGOP. Kay has long volunteered her time and resources on behalf of the party, and has a deep knowledge of our state and our people. Congratulations, Kay. pic.twitter.com/E3MrExbqZA

— Todd Graves (@MOGOP_Chairman) January 26, 2019

Hoflander had served as vice chairwoman of the state Republican Party and is also vice president of Hoflander Ford in Higginsville. She also has been a local party chairwoman in Lafayette County.

Republicans currently hold all but one of Missouri’s statewide offices and large majorities in the state Legislature.

The Republican State Committee elected Nick Myers of Joplin as vice chairman, Derrick Good of Cedar Hill as secretary and Pat Thomas of Jefferson City as treasurer.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A male police officer was charged Friday with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a female officer during what was described as a deadly game with a revolver.

Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced the charge against Nathaniel Hendren, 29, in the death of 24-year-old Katlyn Alix, as they allegedly played a game in which a revolver’s cylinder was emptied, one bullet put back and the two colleagues took turns pointing at each other and pulling the trigger.

Alix was with two male officers at an apartment when she was killed just before 1 a.m. Thursday . A probable cause statement from police, provided by Gardner’s office, offered a chilling account of the dangerous game that led to her death.

The probable cause statement said Alix and Hendren were playing with guns when Hendren produced a revolver.

“The defendant emptied the cylinder of the revolver and then put one cartridge back into the cylinder,” the statement said. He allegedly spun the cylinder, pointed the gun away and pulled the trigger.

The gun did not fire. The statement said Alix took the gun, pointed it at Hendren and pulled the trigger. Again, it didn’t fire.

Hendren “took the gun back and pointed it at the victim (and) pulled the trigger causing the gun to discharge,” the statement said. “The victim was struck in the chest.”

The other male officer told investigators he warned Hendren and Alix not to play with guns and reminded them they were police officers. He was about to leave when he heard the fatal shot, the statement said.

The male officers drove Alix to a hospital where she died. Hendren also is charged with armed criminal action.

The two men were on-duty at the time of the shooting. Police Chief John Hayden has declined to answer questions about why the officers had gathered at the apartment, which was home to one of the men.

St. Louis police said the charges were the result of a promise Hayden made to Alix’s family to conduct a “thorough and competent investigation.”

Alix, a military veteran who was married, was not working but met the men at the apartment.

Police immediately launched an internal investigation and placed both officers on paid leave. Gardner also began her own investigation on Thursday and enlisted the Missouri State Highway Patrol to conduct it.

Alix was a patrol officer who had graduated from the St. Louis Police Academy in January 2017.

By NOMIN UJIYEDIIN

Let’s say you’re arrested. You’re booked into your local jail and the district attorney decides to press charges.

The next day, you make your first court appearance in front of a judge, who then has to make a decision. Let you go home before trial — or keep you in jail?  And under what conditions?

A pretrial stint in jail could last for weeks and keep you from your children, your car payments and your job. You could lose access to resources you need to win your case. You could spend sleepless nights in a crowded, dangerous, poorly maintained detention center — all without being convicted of a crime.

Unless, of course, the judge lets you bail out: pay a certain amount of cash, get released from jail, and get the money back if you show up for court.

But the amount might be too high for you to afford. So you might pay a bond company a nonrefundable percentage of your total bail. In return, that company bails you out — and hunts you down for the full amount if you skip your court date. Can’t rustle up the money for a bond company? Sit things out in jail.

Cash bail is supposed to ensure that you come back for trial. But the traditional bail system draws fire for discriminating against the poor and disproportionately affecting the livelihoods of racial minorities, who are already more likely to be arrested and charged with crimes.

Now Kansas courts want to rethink the concept. The Kansas Supreme Court has convened a task force of judges, attorneys and corrections officials to study pretrial reforms and submit recommendations in mid-2020. The state could eventually join California, New Jersey and others by overhauling its conditions for awarding bail in state courts.

“We need to find out what works best in our state,” said Judge Karen Arnold-Burger, chair of the Pretrial Justice Task Force and chief judge of the Kansas Court of Appeals. “Before we do something that’s going to completely disrupt someone’s life, and before they’ve been convicted of any crime, we want to make sure we know how we’re making the most educated decision.”

An ancient system

Bail originated in England centuries ago.

Both the U.S. and the Kansas Constitutions guarantee the right to bail in non-capital offenses — crimes not punishable by the death penalty.

Proponents of cash bail argue that it’s essential for keeping people out of jail and ensuring they still show up to their trial because bondsmen are inherently motivated to get their money back.

But tides have shifted in recent decades. Advocates who oppose bail say it discriminates against poor people by basing release decisions on a person’s ability to pay. Some say any form of pretrial detention violates the U.S. Constitution by imprisoning a person before they’re convicted.

The justice system and law enforcement also recognize that jail time can wreak havoc on the lives of people whose unproven charges are often low-level offenses that cause little or no harm to others. The effects are harder on the poor.

“There are lots of collateral consequences to periods of detention, even short periods of detention, from loss of jobs to loss of schooling, to loss of benefits, public assistance, veteran’s benefits,” said Arnold-Burger. “The list is long.”

A new way of assigning bail

One possible alternative is a statistics-based system already used by some of the most populous counties in Kansas. Data-based pretrial risk assessment takes information gathered from years of arrests and trials. It pinpoints which characteristics are related to two outcomes the corrections system wants to avoid: a defendant skipping their court date or committing another crime once they’re released on bail.

Depending on which factors they meet, defendants are assigned a risk level with a corresponding recommendation for a bail amount. In Johnson County, which has used a form of risk assessment since 2009 for minor crimes, that amount ranges from $0 to more than $50,000.

The county has had a custom risk assessment based on its own arrest data since 2014 and has revised it multiple times. County corrections director Robert Sullivan said the system is currently being used to assess people who have been charged with crimes that are likely to carry a sentence of probation, rather than prison.  The county plans to expand the assessment to all detainees in February.

“What we’re trying to do is move away from basing release from jail on (a defendant’s) ability to make bond,” said Sullivan, “and base it more on a detainee’s risk of failing to appear for court.”

The county hired University of Missouri-Kansas City professor Alex Holsinger to develop the system. Holsinger analyzed data from 2011 and 2012 to find which characteristics were most related to a failure to appear in court or committing another crime.

Holsinger found that people who live outside of the state are more likely to skip court than people who live in Kansas. Prior arrests, substance abuse and being unemployed are other risk factors.

The nature of the charge also has an effect.

“If your charge is DUI related, that’s considered a risk factor. If it’s drug related, that’s considered to be even more of a risk factor,” Holsinger said. “Somebody who doesn’t have any (previous) jail time is considered less risky than somebody who does.”

The factors are tallied into a numerical score. That’s handed to judges, who decide whether to set cash bail or other conditions of release based on a defendant’s risk level and other factors.

The result is a system that recommends the highest cash bonds — of $50,000 or more — for people who are deemed to be “extreme” risk. That category includes those who are charged with felony crimes that are likely to carry a prison sentence if the defendant is found guilty.

Much lower amounts — between $0 and $2,500 — are recommended for people deemed “low,” “moderate” or “significant” risk. Those defendants are generally charged with misdemeanors, or felonies that carry a presumptive sentence of probation, rather than prison.

For example, a person who is charged with a misdemeanor DUI, who lives outside of Kansas but doesn’t have any other risk factors, would receive a score of 3. That means the person is considered “low risk,” and could be released, not on cash bail, but on a personal recognizance bond — a signature promising to come back.

But another person charged with the same crime might receive a higher score if they are unemployed, have been in jail before, have a history of substance abuse, live outside of Kansas, and were first charged with a crime below the age of 21 — all risk factors.  That person would receive a risk score of 8 and would be considered “serious risk,” which carries a recommended bond amount of up to $2,500.

Holsinger said the scoring system helps judges make more objective decisions while still allowing them discretion.

“The risk assessment does not make the decision for anybody,” he said. “You still have professionals and human beings that are ultimately making and implementing the decisions.”

One of those professionals is Daniel Vokins, who has been a judge in Johnson County for more than 13 years. The score and the information provided by the risk assessment, he said, are a far cry from years past when defendants had to rely on defense attorneys to pass on information — that is, if they could even afford to hire one before their first court appearance.

“We didn’t have any information that zeroed in on what was going on in the defendant’s lives as far as work and home life,”  Vokins said. “This tool gives us a lot more information, not only when they are in court for the first time, but even when I review cases to decide whether to issue arrest warrants or not.”

The results of the risk assessment help Vokins choose whether to assign a cash amount for bail or to let a defendant go on a personal recognizance bond — a signed promise to come back for trial. The facts provided also inform whether he’ll impose other pretrial conditions on a defendant, such as drug counseling, alcohol monitoring or house arrest.

Vokins said pretrial detention and high bail amounts are more appropriate for people who are charged with crimes like murder, sexual assault or repeated DUIs. People charged with low-level crimes pose a much smaller public safety risk if released.

“Let people out that need to be out,” he said. “Help them with any services that might be available to turn their lives around.”

‘Garbage in …’

But some critics of data-based pretrial risk assessments say the formulas don’t do enough to mitigate the negative effects of pretrial detention.

“We shouldn’t be judging people and making decisions about their freedom based on what other people have done in the past,” said John Raphling, a senior criminal justice researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Those critics say risk assessments can perpetuate racist and class-based biases built into the data. Because people of color and poor people are already more likely to be stopped by the police and arrested, Raphling argued, the data will reflect that they are more likely to re-offend or skip court if they’re let out on bail.

“The arrest history that’s used to estimate whether you’re going to commit a future crime or not is already biased out the gate,” Raphling said. “The theory is: ‘garbage in, garbage out.’”

He argues in favor of more individualized attention for each person who is arrested.

“There should be real due process,” Raphilng said, “not some hokey machine that the estimates the likelihood of them coming back to court.”

Holsinger, on the other hand, argues that degree of individual attention is impossible in a crowded court system.

“It’s not a therapy session,” he said. “Justice systems are typically very busy systems.”

He said he controlled for demographics in his statistical analysis, isolating variables affecting defendants’ likelihood of skipping court or committing another crime, regardless of characteristics such as race or sex.

Data provided by Johnson County show that between March 2016 and May 2017, 15 percent of white defendants were assigned a “low” risk level, 28 percent were assigned a “moderate” risk level and 57 percent were assigned a “high” risk level. Those proportions were almost exactly the same for black defendants, the only other racial group for which data was provided.

Next steps

Racial bias, public safety and reducing jail and prison populations will be on the minds of the members of Kansas’ Pretrial Justice Task Force as they develop their recommendations over the next year and a half. Data-based pretrial risk assessment is likely to be on the list of recommended reforms.

“There’s a wide range of approaches,” said Arnold-Burger, chair of the task force. “And we need to find out what works best in our state.”

Meanwhile, Holsinger has plans for another revision of Johnson County’s pretrial assessment.

After a few years, the data showed that a history of mental and behavioral health issues wasn’t as good a predictor of negative outcomes as Holsinger thought it would be. He plans to remove the mental health flag from the list of risk factors associated with skipping court and committing another crime.

“That’s a part of the ongoing evolutionary nature,” he said, “of this entire endeavor.”

Nomin Ujiyediin is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @NominUJ.

SEDALIA, Mo. (AP) — A teen who was staying at a Missouri ranch for homeless boys has been convicted of killing a woman whose body was found in a trailer home with her baby on a couch beside her and her toddler in a bedroom.

Nineteen-year-old Noah Kelliker was found guilty Thursday of second-degree murder, unlawful use of a weapon and armed criminal action in the January 2018 killing 21-year-old Cassandra White near Sedalia.

Although the front glass door of the trailer was shattered, apparently by gunfire, neither of her sons was harmed. Marijuana was found inside, and her boyfriend was charged with drug possession.

Kelliker had dried blood on his shirt when was arrested. He had been staying at the Masters Ranch in Oregon County.

Sentencing is set for March 26.