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Numerous people sent me links to this story involving public
schools in Kansas City.
Please consider Kansas City
Closing 26 Public Schools
Facing
potential bankruptcy, the board that governs the once flush-with-cash Kansas City school district is taking the unusual and contentious step of shuttering
almost half its schools.
Administrators say the closures are necessary to keep the district from
plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of
a groundbreaking desegregation case.
The Kansas City school board narrowly approved the plan to close 29 out of 61
schools Wednesday night at a meeting packed with angry parents. The schools
will close before the fall.
Emotional board member Duane Kelly told the crowd of more than 200 people
Wednesday night, "This is the most painful vote I have ever cast"
in 10 years on the board. Some chanted for the removal of the superintendent,
while one woman asked the crowd, "Is anyone else ready to homeschool
their children?"
Under the approved plan, teachers at six other low-performing schools will be
required to reapply for their jobs, and the district will try to sell its
downtown central office. It also is expected to cut about 700 of the
district's 3,000 jobs, including about 285 teachers.
District officials face dozens of issues as they begin the massive job of
downsizing the district — reworking school bus routes, figuring out
what to do with vacant buildings and slashing its payroll.
Superintendent John Covington has stressed that the district's buildings are
only half-full as its population has plummeted amid political squabbling and
chronically abysmal test scores. The district's enrollment of fewer than
18,000 students is about half of what the schools had a decade ago and just a
quarter of its peak in the late 1960s.
Simple Question
This problem did not happen overnight. School enrollment is half what it was
10 years ago. So why did it take 10 years for the district to do something?
Please note that Covington took the job in July 2009 according to Wikipedia.
On that basis he can be commended for doing a job long neglected for 10
years.
Flashback March 16, 1998
Inquiring minds are reading Money And School Performance: Lessons from
the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment.
Executive
Summary
For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't
solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education
establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever
tried." In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black
students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City , Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational
plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.
Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a
cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in
the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and
such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing
room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife
sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation
capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio
was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.
The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did
not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.
The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can't
be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our
current educational system are far more important than a lack of material
resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the
real problem, low achievement.
The Kansas City Story
In 1985 a federal district judge took partial control over the troubled Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) on the grounds that it was an
unconstitutionally segregated district with dilapidated facilities and
students who performed poorly. In an effort to bring the district into
compliance with his liberal interpretation of federal law, the judge ordered
the state and district to spend nearly $2 billion over the next 12 years to
build new schools, integrate classrooms, and bring student test scores up to
national norms.
It didn't work. When the judge, in March 1997, finally agreed to let the
state stop making desegregation payments to the district after 1999, there
was little to show for all the money spent. Although the students enjoyed
perhaps the best school facilities in the country, the percentage of black
students in the largely black district had continued to increase, black
students' achievement hadn't improved at all, and the black-white achievement
gap was unchanged.(1) .....
Every Child Left Behind For
Decades
Throwing money at the problem wasted $2 billion. Now the district faces
bankruptcy, and is forced to abandon now decaying schools bought with wasted
taxpayer money.
In Kansas City, as in Detroit, every child was left behind ... for decades.
Closing schools is the correct decision. Moreover, Superintendent Covington
needs to fire every hopeless school administrator as well, which may in fact
be almost all of them.
Mish
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