KC school district loses its accreditation (Kansas City: low income, renting, income)

[KUchief25]

Wonder who's to blame...........

"Kansas City slipped to scoring only three out of 14 standards on the state’s annual performance report, down from four in 2010. The district needs to reach at least six standards to make the provisional level and has to reach at least nine t"o reach the fully accredited level.


Of the standards the state reviews for district accreditation, only six are related to students’ academic performance. To be accredited, a district could hit all eight non-student achievement standards and only one academic standard to reach the nine needed."
[LEFT]
Hey lets throw some more money at the problem, which it appears is the bureaucracy and adults running this mess to begin with.

Kansas City School District loses state accreditation - KansasCity.com (http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/20/3156768/kc-loses-school-accreditation.html - broken link)
[/LEFT]

[North Beach Person]

I noticed the article didn't mention what standards weren't met. Was it test scores, dropout rate, attendance rate? The non-student standards would be interesting to see. I know one would be "highly qualified" teachers.

This may not be that bad. It will cost money. In MD some things that are implemented in schools that don't meet AYP (which I think this is what is meant) are tutoring, longer school days and years, additional staff training, better ID for at-risk students.

[lifelongMOgal]

This probably belongs in the Kansas City, MO forum. The KCMO School District loses its accreditation with boring predictability and regularity. It lost another yet Superintendent just days before school was to open this Fall. Who is to blame? A dysfunctional City Council and School Board. It has been a problem since the late 1960's.

[xenokc]

this seems to be an issue with a lot of city cores that have higher performing suburbs. st. louis schools haven't been accredited since i think 2007 and has be off/on. atlanta has been off/on.. tulsa schools at risk. many others.

there's a more serious social underpinning to this that is difficult to tackle. when you have the downward spiral of lack of parenting and nurturing kids to learn, especially in the low income hoods with drug issues, what can be done at the public level to improve parenting? the school board can be partly blamed but there's more going on at a social level.

kcmo has other public schools/charter schools.. they should rename the 'kcmo school district' to something else while working to improve because it implies that that there are no public schools in kcmo that have accreditation.

[PVPete]

I think its a difficult problem to begin with - I think you could transplant the BV or SM superintendents, administration, school board, and it would still be a monumental challenge.

But I do think there is something inherently flawed with having a local school board overseeing things for districts in such despair. You really need an executive who can make wholesale changes. The bureaucracy of a school board bogs things down and leads to political bickering.

But really, we have to come to terms with the possibility that public schools don't work in urban areas and perhaps we need to facilitate school choice so that our urban youth aren't condemned to failing schools simply because of their zip code. It might also have the effect of KCMO becoming a feasible, possibly even attractive place, to raise kids.