Looks like KC is doing the right thing...

[Okla-homey]

Deciding to close failed schools and fire their teachers.

My chapeau is off to KC Supt. John Covington who rightly realized upon his arrival from Pueblo, Co, that keeping craphole schools open and the teachers employed therein on the payroll, despite enrollment that has dropped by half over the last two decades and horrid student performance on standardized tests, is stupid, wasteful and not in kids' best interest.

We need some of that courage here in OUr state.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_re_us/us_closing_schools

[ouleaf]

I read about that too. $50MM budget shortfall? Yikes! Not much else you can do but close down some schools to slash costs. It's a tough thing to do, but it was the right call IMO.

[Leroy Lizard]

And I am all for this when the state or district thinks it is in their best interests to do so.

[StoopTroup]

My chapeau is off...

Go on....:pop: :hot: :D

http://thegreatestlove.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/limited-edition-gown-from-couture-chapeau.jpg

[StoopTroup]

BTW....chapeaus RAWK!

http://www.ballapapass.net/IMG/jpg/Chloe_en_chapeau.jpg

[47straight]

A friend posted a Gawker media article claiming this was evidence that we needed the proposed national standards by the administration.

[Leroy Lizard]

Your friend can't be serious. Not even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberals think that national standards are going to prevent schools from going in the tank.

[Soonerfan88]

Very sad that it took this long to find an administrator willing to do the right thing for KC schools. Past supes have refused to make changes/closures and almost bankrupted the district and endangered their national accreditation. KCMO School District is currently organized to support 75,000 students when they have less than 20,000 left.

[Crucifax Autumn]

They better have it all planned out well or it's gonna turn into a logistical nightmre.

[SoonerInKCMO]

Long overdue - as mentioned in the article and by '88, the district has four times the size needed to deal with its student population. If anything, the cuts aren't big enough. However, the education problem in KCMO has much deeper roots than can be pulled out just by closing some schools and cutting some staff. KCMO is a poor, run-down, violent city. The home lives and neighborhoods of the students and the students themselves are as much to blame for the failure of these schools as are the schools.

[Leroy Lizard]

Very sad that it took this long to find an administrator willing to do the right thing for KC schools.

I read a little bit more about the school improvement issue. It turns out that for a district the size of KC to receive any school improvement money ($1.5 million per school over three years), it must choose a certain percentage of those schools for complete staff overhauls, including the firing of every principal at the low-performing districts.

So it wasn't bravery. He had to, or give up a ton of money from the feds.

Now what? You have a bunch of kids from low-performing schools flooding into nearby schools that were once performing reasonably well. What will that do to the performance of those schools? The new students are more likely to be ill-behaved and your class sizes will increase dramatically.

You're not solving any problems, just spreading them out.

Again, I'm not against teacher/principal layoffs and school closings, but it should be based on what the community wants, not forced from the feds.

[OklahomaTuba]

Ahh Yes, another glorious victory for Liberalism.

This is a perfect case study on how the federal government needs to stay the hell outta education, how public unions have bankrupted a school district, and how throwing money (2 Billion in the last 15 years alone) has had no impact on stemming the collapse of our government run schools. No telling what economic impact this has had on destroying the urban core of KC and running people off to the suburbs.

I hope the people of Tulsa are watching this.

[swardboy]

KC Schools, A Case Study in Liberal Stupidity

Randall Hoven
The AP reports (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/10/national/main6287595.shtml) that the Kansas City school system is closing 29 of its 61 schools due to budget problems -- a $50 million shortfall. The AP quotes KC Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks on the background of the story.


"The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment."

There might be another explanation, one that the AP barely mentions.

The court decision that brought about KC schools' demise was not the 1954 decision, but a 1985 one. The case was summarized by the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html) in 1998.


"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."

The judicial branch ordered the legislative branch to spend money, and told it exactly how to do 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."
How did that turn out?


"The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration."

That was in 1998. But that's not all. In 2000, the Los Angeles Times (http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/04/news/mn-26560) reported a Reuters story.


"Kansas City's public school district has become the first in the nation to lose its accredited status by failing all Missouri's performance standards, and could be abolished unless it improves, officials said Wednesday."

And now the KC school system is broke and has to close down half its schools. This, after a court-ordered $2 billion injection.

I would call that $2 billion quite a stimulus for the KC system. See how well it turned out?