Looks like schools in Kansas City, MO have once again proven what the common-sense crowd has been pointing out for years -- money does NOT make learning happen.
Word on the street is that the city's school district wants to close half of its urban schools because of lagging test scores and high rates of transfer to suburban schools.
That's not the news, though. Schools fail kids every day and they suck up taxpayer monies that could be used elsewhere for more effective means of actually educating children into solid future citizens.
The news in Kansas City, MO is how much was spent in the years leading up to this decision and the striking, telling comment by its superintendent of schools. The story is posted on the website boston.com:
Buffeted for years by declining enrollment, political squabbling, and a revolving door of leadership, the district’s fortunes are so bleak that Superintendent John Covington has said diplomas given to many graduates “aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.’’
Oh, and the dollars. Are you ready?
Again, from boston.com:
Kansas City appeared headed for a recovery when a federal judge in 1985 declared the district was unconstitutionally segregated. To boost test scores, integrate the schools, and repair decrepit classrooms, the state was ordered to spend about $2 billion to address the problems.
The district went on a buying spree that included a six-lane indoor track and a mock court complete with a judge’s chamber and jury deliberation room. But student achievement remained low, and the anticipated flood of students from the suburbs turned out to be more like a trickle. Court supervision of the desegregation case ended in 2003.
And the district continues to lose students. In the late 1960s enrollment peaked at 75,000, dropped to 35,000 a decade ago and now sits at just under 18,000.
At the height of spending in 1991-92, Kansas City invested more than $11,700 per student - more than double that year’s national average of $5,001, according to US Census figures. Today, the district spends an average of $15,158 on each student, compared to a national average of $9,666 in 2006-07, the latest figures available.
See, the district was nailed in the mid '80s for not being desegregated enough so it bent too far backwards to correct the problem. Its goal was to make its urban schools so inviting that students would stop leaving them for the suburbs.
The abovementioned enrollment figures show how that didn't happen.
Instead of making reasonable repairs to dilapidated buildings, the district squandered two billion dollars.
Two billion dollars, dear readers. TWO BILLION dollars!!!!!
And the superintendent himself admits many of the diplomas issued to students are worthless.
Why? Because all the king's horses, men, ransom and wishful thinking couldn't put in place what was likely missing all along. Couldn't buy the one thing that can't be bought but is so vital to learning.
Common sense -- it lets educators choose their materials wisely and present their information effectively. It makes administrators, state officials and the feds think twice before claiming that standardized testing is the cure that will save us all from ignorance. It makes parents sit up and take notice of what their children need at home in the years before they start school and all those that follow. It loosens our dependence on television, computer games and overly structured activities as substitutes for real-time parenting. It compels communities to look for alternatives to what isn't working. And it makes us all stop, look, listen, and ponder the far-reaching consequences of whatever it is that we are about to do.
But like far too many things in the realm of education these days money and only money drives the bus.
And the students get thrown beneath it.
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