The Sad State Of Public Education in Kansas City

A few weeks ago a poor school district in Rhode Island announced that it was firing all of its teachers and hiring a new staff in order to find a way to increase the performance of the students attending schools in that district. At that time, I thought it was a little drastic since I did not see anywhere that someone had done an analysis proving that all of the teachers were incompetent enough to be fired. It was obvious something had to be done to improve performance but it seemed like taking a tree ax to a problem that maybe needed a scalpel.

However, this was small potatoes compared to what the Kansas City school system just announced:

• they are going to close 29 out of its 61 schools after this school year in order to stay under budget.
• in order to understand how drastic the cut is, Detroit, which is probably the poster child for urban blight and flight, is only cutting 29 of its 172 schools to stay on budget.
• the Kansas City district will cut 7,000 out of 3,000 positions, including about 285 teachers.
• the district was once rich enough, from a desegregation suit settlement, to build itself an Olympic size swimming pool.
• Current school buildings are only half full, with the district's 18,000 students one half the amount the district had a decade ago and one quarter of what it had in the late 1960s.

According to the Associated Press article which reported on the above facts, many former students left the public school system to attend charter, private, parochial, and suburban schools. Not explicitly mentioned was probably the fact that parents wanted to get the best education for their kids and realized they were not going to get it in government run schools in Kansas City. If the public schools had delivered a quality education, they would probably have maintained higher levels of attendance and would not be facing these types of Draconian cuts. It is like any other market service or product, deliver a quality, valued product and you will be able to survive. The Kansas City school system did not deliver on their promise of a good education and obviously did not smartly manage down their assets to match their population. In both cases, mismanagement was their downfall, not the falling enrollment.

Of course, the political class, who in essence manages public schools, does not see it that way or as their failure. According to a Kansas City councilwoman who was quoted in the article, the situation was the fault of the Supreme Court, the real estate industry, banks, retail store abandonment, and grocery store abandonment. Like most politicians, instead of dealing with reality, she is dealing in the blame game. If the Kansas City school system had delivered a quality education, it would have had more students and would not be cutting almost 50% of its school assets.

These are two of the more dramatic situations occurring in public schools as the political class continues to fail in delivering what it promised for our tax dollars: quality public school education. That is why Step 27 "In Love My Country, Loathe My Government" and the education improvement process it proposes is so important. We cannot wait for other school systems to fall so dramatically like the ones in Rhode Island and Kansas City. Doing it the same way that the political class has done it for the past four decades has gotten us into this jam. Doing it another way could not do any worse and if done properly, as outlined in Step 27, would get us much closer to an effective and efficient public school system. Given that most of the political class sends their children to high quality, private schools, change under the current set of politicians may take a while.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.