If a child鈥檚 family lives a block west of Skinker Boulevard, that child goes to Clayton schools. If his family lives east of Skinker, the child goes to 50度灰视频 city schools. In the rankings that were released this past week, Clayton schools scored 98.9 percent, and the city schools scored 24.6 percent.
I do not understand how the state comes up with these numbers, but they reflect a certain reality. Where a child lives determines what kind of educational opportunity he or she receives.
Of course, it鈥檚 not just Clayton and the city. There are a lot of good school districts. There are a few bad ones.
Everybody agrees we should lift the bad ones. That鈥檚 what 鈥淣o Child Left Behind鈥 was all about. Every child will learn! Every single child! Former President George W. Bush and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy were in agreement on that. It has been 12 years since Congress passed No Child Left Behind, and we now know that you cannot will a school district to improve.
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To be fair about it, we have tried a number of things. Early in his first term, President Barack Obama announced his intention to pump billions of dollars into the nation鈥檚 worst schools. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, 鈥淚f we turn around just the bottom 1 percent, the bottom thousand schools per year for the next five years, we could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children.鈥
Among local schools targeted for this dramatic makeover were Normandy High School and Riverview Gardens High School. Enough said.
I remember when the city was looking for a new superintendent in 1996. I was struck by the fact that the three finalists had all been run out of their last jobs. That鈥檚 the way it is, somebody explained to me. If you want a superintendent with big-city experience, you鈥檙e going to hire somebody who has failed. Nobody has succeeded.
Things have gotten so bad now that the editorial page of this newspaper recently suggested that we look to Louisiana for solutions. Who led the post-Katrina effort to rebuild the school system in New Orleans? William Roberti, managing director of the turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal.
We already tried him 鈥 and them. It was a total disaster. I say this by way of confession. I supported the idea of hiring a business turnaround firm. It seemed like out-of-the-box thinking. They were here a little more than a year, and they left the city schools in worse shape than they found them. They declared their mission a success and they fled.
When Roberti announced he was leaving, I wrote, 鈥淭he yearlong experiment is over, and Roberti鈥檚 demeanor as he prepares to leave town is that of a Texas Ranger trying to convince the townspeople that things are better 鈥 not perfect but better 鈥 but his message is hard to hear because of the whooping, hollering, shooting and general lawlessness going on outside. He alone seems not to hear it.鈥
I mention this history of failure because I would not want to raise expectations, but an idea came to me last week when the state Board of Education announced it was hiring a Denver-based consulting firm to perform a $385,000 study of the Kansas City schools, which lost accreditation last year. Their ideas could then be used in our region, too.
While there is nothing wrong with listening to out-of-town consultants, we have the necessary brainpower right here. A lot of smart and idealistic people are in the education business. Don Senti from the Cooperating School Districts of Greater 50度灰视频, Brittany Packnett from Teach for America, Lisa Zarin of College Bound, Kate Casas of the Children鈥檚 Education Alliance of Missouri, Douglas Thaman of the Missouri Charter Public School Association, and UMSL economics professor David Rose come to mind. We ought to get these people and a few others together.
The head of the committee would be Circuit Court Judge Jimmie Edwards. He not only founded his own charter school but is himself a product of the city schools. What鈥檚 more, he might be the most respected person in the region. Even Rex Sinquefield admires Edwards, which matters because so many legislators admire Sinquefield.
I鈥檇 let this committee brainstorm. What should we do with failing schools? How should we judge teachers? Also, what do we tell the Legislature to do about the unaccredited districts? We know they鈥檙e going to be dealing with the matter in the next session, and we need to make sure they don鈥檛 make a bad situation worse. They鈥檙e capable of it.
Let Kansas City have the consultants.