On Thu, Aug 4, 2022 at 08:06 PM, Steve Sundur wrote:
I'd be curious to hear your response to it.
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First, that's a bummer.? Looks like they missed the boat, focused on race and forgot to focus on academics.? Gotta have both.? Here's part of the larger picture:?
"A 2019??confirmed what Kansas Policy Institute?.? Most of the more than $400 million allocated to At-Risk students ¡°was used for teachers and programs for all students and did not appear to specifically address at-risk students as required by state law.¡±
Legislators gave schools a seven-fold increase in at-risk funding between 2005 and 2019, going from $50 million to $413 million.? But since most of that money wasn¡¯t spent as intended, it¡¯s not surprising that achievement for at-risk students remained abysmally low.??
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Despite spending more than $2 billion over two decades to improve education and attract more white students, the Kansas City School District has essentially been judged a failure by a state education review board, which has denied it accreditation.
With the loss of state accreditation on Monday, public schools in Kansas City, Mo., took another blow to its battered image. Despite long and ambitious efforts stemming from a 1977 desegregation lawsuit, it remains a district where about 75 percent of its students are members of racial minorities and where test scores remain low.
He said the district had seen improvements in the attendance rate lately and had already begun several new strategies at improving education, including a move for more demanding standards on literacy.
The problems of the Kansas City schools, and the long court remedies designed to improve education and more fully integrate the schools, have long been a centerpiece in the national debate over race, test scores and the competing notions of raising academic achievement.
Ms. Grant said that while the school district had spent lavishly on new facilities and had instituted programs like those at a Greek studies magnet school, designed largely to attract suburban students, not enough attention has been paid to basic learning in the classroom.
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Em
Emily Mae