End of An Illusion
By Blake Hurst
The longest running and most expensive experiment in the history of U.S. public education is coming to a close: The Missouri State Board of Education has pulled the accreditation of the Kansas City School District, and the school district cannot survive in its present form.
In 1985, a federal judge named Russell Clark took the Kansas City School District completely under his control, as a result of a desegregation suit filed in the late 1970s. Judge Clark found the district and state jointly liable for past discrimination, and embarked upon a unique and hugely expensive remedy. Instead of busing in children from neighboring districts, he ordered the Kansas City schools to fund a series of magnet schools that would be so wonderful as to attract non-minority students voluntarily. (See TAE May/June 1995, pp. 52-56.)
As a result, the state poured nearly $2 billion into building the most lavish school infrastructure in the nation. The district now spends more per pupil than any other urban district in America and has a student-teacher ratio under 13 to 1, the lowest in the nation. Included in the 15 new schools built in the district are a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation facilities, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a robotics lab. At the height of the spending orgy, 44 percent of Missouri’s total budget for elementary and secondary schools was going to St. Louis and Kansas City, even though the two cities enroll only 9 percent of the state's students.
Though transportation was not a problem (the district would send a taxi for any suburban students who didn't live near a bus route), the added amenities were not enough to attract white students from surrounding suburbs. The former Soviet Olympic fencing coach was simply not a sufficient draw, and even the chance to learn French from French-speaking natives of Quebec, Belgium, and Cameroon failed to increase white enrollment.
More importantly, test scores remained abysmal. In the most recent results from the Iowa Basic Skills Test, Kansas City students in the third, fifth, eighth, and eleventh grades scored well below the national average. In the ACT (the college entrance exam taken by most Midwestern students), Kansas City students earned an average score of 16.9--while 36 is perfect, and the national average is 21. Statewide, the average black student scored 17.9. When Kansas City students took Missouri's new statewide assessment tests, only 5 percent of black eleventh-graders in the district scored at a "proficient" level in reading and writing. Nearly half the black students in the district either didn't finish the assessment test, or failed to show up at all.
The district’s apologists have launched all the usual rationalizations. Arthur Benson, the attorney who helped spearhead the Kansas City desegregation case, discounted the horrendous test results, insisting that any standardized exam "tests a very narrow range of low-level skills like vocabulary and rudimentary math. It doesn't test anything important like understanding, the ability to think and solve problems, the ability to express oneself in complex thoughts." Apparently believing that even complex thoughts begin with good vocabulary and basic math, the state of Missouri ignored Mr. Benson and pulled the district accreditation.
In 1994, the Missouri legislature passed, and Governor Mel Carnahan signed into law, a program they promised would improve Missouri schools. The bill raised taxes dramatically, stiffened requirements for teachers and curriculum, and included a program to evaluate school district's performance on statewide tests in order to achieve state accreditation. There were immediate, iron requirements for certified teachers, curriculum plans, and extra staffing that caused several school districts to lose accreditation as a result, including the rural district that my children attended (see TAE March/April 1995, p. 75).
But while the axe fell quickly on schools that didn’t sharply increase their inputs and spending, the state Department of Education has been much slower to penalize schools for poor student performance. In an interview last year, the department reported that no schools had been found wanting. Five years after the Missouri School Improvement Act became law, it wasn’t clear that it had been anything but a huge payoff to the teachers' groups that supported Democrat Carnahan's election.
But with Missouri Education Commissioner Bob Bartman and the State Board of Education pulling Kansas City's accreditation this spring, for failing to meet any of the 11 performance standards in the latest review, perhaps that cynicism was misplaced. Bartman spent a year as a platoon commander in Vietnam, and that experience will serve him well in the political and legal firestorm that is now following his decision.
At this point, the school district has two years to meet the requirements for accreditation. If it fails, the state will assume control of the district, and the district can be split or merged into neighboring districts. But as soon as the state certificate is pulled on May 1 of 2000, district students can legally begin leaving the district for neighboring districts. The Kansas City school district must not only pay the tuition for transferring students, but also their transportation costs. That is a neutron bomb dropped on the K.C. schools. Their lavish buildings will remain, but many of their students may be gone.
Needless to say, the district immediately appealed the decision to Federal District Judge Dean Whipple, the successor to Judge Clark in the desegregation case. Judge Whipple not only refused to disallow the state action, but in a surprise move, he ended the desegregation case completely. The school district, at least for a few months, was free of court control. In the language of the day, Whipple made it clear that he would no longer serve as enabler to the school district's addiction to spending state money without improving student performance.
Alas, the Eighth District Court of Appeals couldn't keep their hands off Judge Whipple's decision, and in February they reinstated federal control. They not only resumed court oversight of the schools but, in a less-than-judicial snit, fired Whipple as the judge in charge of the case. And in the most disturbing part of the decision, they made it clear they would be amenable to overturning the state's accreditation ruling if asked.
Education costs come in "lumps." Once the infrastructure for a school is in place and the teachers and administrators are hired, the marginal cost of an additional student is extremely low. The immediate reaction of adjoining school districts to Kansas City's loss of accreditation was muted, but chances are, they will accept as many of the K.C. students as they possibly can, because it is in their financial interests to do so. The district is home to 15 charter schools, and they are already reporting phone calls from parents inquiring about openings. Another 20 charter schools are being considered, and if the new charter schools are opened, the competition between the charter schools in the district and existing nearby schools will improve education for every student in the Kansas City area. The Kansas City Star reports that even the president of the Kansas City school board is considering removing his children from the school district.
The Kansas City district will find it difficult to cut costs as their students leave. Though the district is home to slightly over 30,000 students, the loss of just a few thousand of those students could force the district into extreme financial difficulty. Unless accreditation is restored, it is unlikely the district will survive.
With their monopoly threatened, the school board, teachers’ union, school administration, and desegregation monitoring committee are up in arms. Spokesmen for these groups have pleaded with the state school board and Judge Whipple to "consider the children." But when only 5 percent of black eleventh graders in a given system can read and write proficiently, despite billions of dollars worth of court-ordered extra spending, that system’s promises to do better should be treated with contempt.
The state of the Kansas City schools has national implications. Judge Clark invited the school district to "dream" when the district submitted its plans, over 20 years ago, to remedy past discrimination. The judge and the taxpayers of Missouri fulfilled those dreams. Yet the result has been nothing less than a nightmare. The lesson is clear: Even unlimited funds do not in themselves produce good education.
Until the unfortunate intervention of the appeals court, the Missouri Board of Education, Commissioner Bartman, and Judge Whipple had shown the courage needed to act upon that lesson. They began to demand real improvements in student performance. If Judge Clark had tied his initial billions of spending to measures of performance, today’s mess could have been avoided.
Failure should have a price. If the Eighth District Court ultimately blocks Kansas City’s loss of accreditation, the school district will lack any incentive to improve. Already, in the few short months since the State Board acted, observers of the district have noticed impressive changes. To quote Commissioner Bartman, "nothing improves your focus like a walk to the gallows." As soon as the appeals court intervened, however, the actors in this never-ending drama began to return to type. The teachers’ union is complaining about a merit pay plan. The opponents of charter schools are arguing for a five-year delay in the opening of any new ones. The school board has resumed its racial and ideological bickering.
No improvement will ever occur without strict accountability, no many how many billions are poured into Kansas City’s gilded classrooms. Happily, there is an easily attainable alternative to the decades of overspending, half-baked educational theories imposed from above by a federal judge, and penalty-free incompetence of the local schools. All that’s necessary is competition between whatever remains of the Kansas City School District and the local charter schools, private schools, and neighboring districts. If the judges in their wisdom will only allow that a good education for the children of Missouri's second largest-city could be just around the corner.
TAE contributing writer Blake Hurst is former president of Westboro School District in northwest Missouri.
