Kansas City Missouri School District loses its accreditation (Independence, Lee's Summit: section 8, real estate)

[luzianne]

I feel like somehow this is going to be Johnson County's fault...

http://www.kmbc.com/news/29240206/detail.html (broken link)

[PVPete]

I'm as liberal as the day is long, but school choice needs to be implemented to save our urban neighborhoods and to end the prison of bad schools our poor kids are forced to attend.

[brewcrew1000]

You could put 20 Blue Valley Schools inside of KCMO with all the same teachers and curriculum but If the students don't have good parents, the schools will still fail and lose accreditation. I really think parenting is the key to these Urban schools, why don't we make the parents accountable. These kids need discipline, i really don't think a lot of them are getting it at home because a lot of times the disciplinarian (Father) is not around.

If one student is a trouble maker and is a disturbance to others and bringing down the whole class, kick the kid out of school and set him up for some life skills schooling that will teach him how to flip burgers at mcdonalds, stock shelves at a super market, change oil/tires, etc

Maybe we all need to go back to the days of schooling when the nuns struck you with a ruler if you acted out.

[aragx6]

Originally Posted by brewcrew1000

You could put 20 Blue Valley Schools inside of KCMO with all the same teachers and curriculum but If the students don't have good parents, the schools will still fail and lose accreditation. I really think parenting is the key to these Urban schools, why don't we make the parents accountable. These kids need discipline, i really don't think a lot of them are getting it at home because a lot of times the disciplinarian (Father) is not around.

If one student is a trouble maker and is a disturbance to others and bringing down the whole class, kick the kid out of school and set him up for some life skills schooling that will teach him how to flip burgers at mcdonalds, stock shelves at a super market, change oil/tires, etc

Maybe we all need to go back to the days of schooling when the nuns struck you with a ruler if you acted out.

hitting kids who've grown up with violence does nothing. They're immune to it.

KC is still very behind other comparably sized cities with magnet and charter schools. I am so concerned that we're providing a terrible education to so many underpriveleged kids right now that it makes me sick, but there's two, what I've come to believe, essentially separate, issues at play:

1. How do we educate the kids who have a rotten home life; those who grow up in poverty with no emphasis on education, and

2. How do we educate middle class kids who do have decent/good home lives who are being dragged down in rotten neighborhood schools currently?

One solution alone won't fix this, but running middle class families out of the city isn't the way to bring in tax revenues and that won't fix either problem.

KC needs more selective-enrollment and alternative magnet schools, and to look at (well run) charter school options. Like now.

[PVPete]

I think parenting is a big deal, but there are kids that do have good parents or are somehow able to overcome bad parenting and are simply not getting the education they need. What is wrong with our public school system is that it must cater to the lowest common denominator. "No child left behind" is our motto when perhaps it should instead be "allow those with talent and promise flourish, and if the rest can't get it together, there are good vo-tech options we will make available."

I will also say this, there was an interesting study done earlier this year that showed even our affluent public schools were well behind other countries in even the most basic subjects. So its not just an inner-city problem in this country.

[brewcrew1000]

^ Of Course we are falling behind, when a good majority of our households have more Flat Screen TV's, and DVR Boxes then Books there is a problem.

The movie Idiocracy is slowly starting to become true in this country.

[kcmo]

The only way to fix the KCMOSD is to dissolve it and combine it with the other school districts in the county. They could combine all the districts in Jackson County into one district. That's how they are out here. Districts are by county, which makes them very large, but they seem to be able to deal with social diversity better that way and are better run. But it would have to be the entire county rather than just the ones nearest to the KCMOSD such as Center.

The only problem with that is it would cause a perceived image of the entire county having bad schools because combining KCMOSD, Center, Hickman Mills, Independence, Fort Osage, Blue Springs, Grain Valley, Lee's Summit, Raytown and Grandview into one district will improve some, but lower the stats of others.

There would be some desegregation involved such as some bussing from the inner city to the outer suburbs so that some kids could take advantage of certain programs etc.

I wish people could look past those stats though. For example, if you go to Lee's Summit West and they get a few inner city kids which will lower their overall test scores, does that mean kids with parents properly raising them would get a less quality education? I seriously doubt it. It probably wouldn't hurt the kids of Lee's Summit West to interact a little more with people of different backgrounds.

But, and this is a BIG BUT...

The state line does in fact come into play here. Luzianne, it's not JoCo's fault, but simply another serious challenge for KCMO caused simply by the "lay of the land" in KC.

If Jackson County and Missouri decided to do something as drastic as this or some other major reorganization, what do you think will happen? I can tell you what will happen, because it has already happened before. Fear will scare existing and potential families from living in or relocating to the MO suburbs and will choose the "easy" route of avoiding the entire situation by living in JoCo vs any district on the MO side.

This will not only halt, if not reverse suburban jackson county growth, it will make it less likely for the entire re-organization to succeed and so inner city schools may not improve much.

When the KCMOSD was court ordered to desegregate, there was a lot of talk about bussing kids to places like Raytown, Independence, Grandivew and Blue Springs. Just the threat of this (and the real estate industry selling it as a threat) was a major contributor to the white flight of these suburbs and the migration of the fast growing suburban growth from Jackson County to Johnson County. Growth was booming in many areas of JaCo and it came to a grinding halt and didn't recover. Even the outer suburbs didn't really take off till the 80's and 90's when it appeared the threat of being forced to interact with the KCMOSD finally seemed unlikely. This was much of what sparked the MO side's second wave of suburban development in the late 90's.

So, how do you fix the state line issue?

Simple. Combine JoCo and WyCo schools into one district so they will have the same demographic challenges as Jackson County. There would then be no golden school districts to run to. You would still have good schools, but no one district would be the "easy" route and no one district would be completely avoided.

Any of this likely? Absolutely not. But it's really the only way to fix the schools in urban jackson county and probably wyandotte as well.

There is no other way to fix it. Metro KC is way too socially and racially segregated and there is just demographically not enough left in many urban areas of KC to sustain good schools no matter what you do with the schools. It's too late to fix the problem via teachers and schools alone. Massive reorganization is the only thing that will fix it and hopefully reverse some of the demographic damage that's been done in KC and get more people to live in the city that know how to properly raise children.

[aragx6]

Originally Posted by PVPete

I think parenting is a big deal, but there are kids that do have good parents or are somehow able to overcome bad parenting and are simply not getting the education they need. What is wrong with our public school system is that it must cater to the lowest common denominator. "No child left behind" is our motto when perhaps it should instead be "allow those with talent and promise flourish, and if the rest can't get it together, there are good vo-tech options we will make available."

I will also say this, there was an interesting study done earlier this year that showed even our affluent public schools were well behind other countries in even the most basic subjects. So its not just an inner-city problem in this country.

We definiitely see eye to eye, Pete.

I also wish people would realize how much money we should be spending on this. It costs far more to provide WIC or section 8 vouchers or Medicaid and especially incarceration than a good education.

I'm going to go look for the article, I believe it was in the NY Times, about how one of the main arguments used for doing nothing is that many times urban schools spend as much as or even slightly more per student than their suburban counterparts. The crux of the article was such a duh rebuttal to that nonsense that I was stunned I'd never heard it before: That doesn't take into account how much a suburban family spends on their kid's enrichment per year.

Think of private tutoring, new school clothes and all those school supplies and kleenexes parents bring to class at the beginning of the year in the suburbs. Think about the piano lessons, traveling hockey leagues, parental volunteers on field trips, hell extra money sent to school for field trips! And fundraising -- I know we always sold crap from that wrapping paper catalogue every year in my school district -- how are kids in the hood supposed to sell that crap?

If the parents can not provide that support, we're going to need the community to do so. If we shirk that responsibility, we all pay out the ass for it in the long run. Not smart.

[brewcrew1000]

Originally Posted by kcmo

So, how do you fix the state line issue?

Simple. Combine JoCo and WyCo schools into one district so they will have the same demographic challenges as Jackson County. There would then be no golden school districts to run to. You would still have good schools, but no one district would be the "easy" route and no one district would be completely avoided.

Wouldn't those families from JoCo just end up moving to Miami County, Leavenworth County and other far reaching suburbs?

Why doesn't KCMO or the state of Missouri offer online education, they are doing this in Kansas and some of the Wyandotte County schools are hurting because some families are just starting to do the online thing now and pulling kids out of WyCo schools.

Hell, you could offer online education but the students would still have to go to a building to get social interaction, it could be all privately run but would be very cheap because you wouldn't really have to pay teachers, you would just pay babysitters.

[PVPete]

I think its silly to say the state line has much to do with this since pretty much EVERY urban area has a failing school district as well, some that lay close to state borders, but many of which do no. This it not a KC problem, this is a NATIONWIDE problem and we really need a NATIONWIDE solution.