Education in Kansas

KU Edwards Campus in Overland Park, and Public Management Center (formerly the Capitol Complex) in Topeka.

Kansas State University (KSU) has the second largest enrollment, with 23,581 students at its Manhattan and Salina campuses and Veterinary Medical Center.[when?]

Kansas State became the second coeducational public institution of higher education when it opened in 1863; enrollment for the first session was 52 students: 26 men and 26 women.

[8] The landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional, was brought as a legal challenge to a Kansas law permitting racial segregation in primary and secondary schools in Kansas towns with a population over 15,000.

Notable among the Topeka NAACP leaders were the chairman McKinley Burnett; Charles Scott, one of three serving as legal counsel for the chapter; and Lucinda Todd.

The named plaintiff, Oliver L. Brown, was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad, an assistant pastor at his local church, and an African American.

[11][12] In 1999, the Kansas Board of Education ruled that instruction at the primary and secondary levels about evolution, the age of the Earth, and the origin of the universe was permitted, but not mandatory, and that those topics would not appear on state standardized tests.

However, two years later, following a change in its elected membership, the Board reversed this decision on February 14, 2001, ruling that instruction of all those topics was mandatory and that they would appear on standardized tests.

Following another change in membership, on August 9, 2005, the Board of Education approved a draft of science curriculum standards that mandated equal time for evolution and intelligent design.

The board, in order to accommodate the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology class, went so far as to redefine the meaning of science to 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.'

According to Christopher Lee, small town Kansas high schools used football as a way to entertain and unite their rural communities.

Football stimulated a collective spirit between school and community, with the games becoming a social outlet and a favorite topic of weeklong conversations and boosterism.