It's hard to learn that money can't solve every problem. Sadly, Kansas City is still discovering this fact of life the hard way.
Right now, author Michael Lewyn offers his important perspective on the local connection to a pervasive dilemma in public education that has thwarted this town in addition to bigger, better cities.
Check it:
Planetizen: Learning From Kansas City
Money line:
"Some commentators argue that if government spends as much money on urban schools as on suburban schools, everyone will achieve at suburban levels, and the middle-class lion will lie down with the low-income lamb . . . During the 1990s, the federal courts tried this strategy in Kansas City. To desegregate the schools, a federal judge sought to entice white suburbanites into the school system by ordering the city to create numerous magnet schools, raise teacher salaries by 44 percent, and reduce class sizes.
At the zenith of the desegregation program, Kansas City was spending twice as much per student as its suburban rivals. Yet the number of white students did not increase, nor did test scores. And during the 1990s, student enrollment in Kansas City schools decreased among both blacks and whites, as middle-class pupils of all races moved to private schools and to suburban school districts. It seems to me that another lesson of the Kansas City fiasco is that money didn’t matter—or more precisely, that even if money matters, it doesn’t matter enough to reduce suburbanites’ collective cultural distaste for urban schools full of poor people.*"
This is one of the best new round-ups we've seen of The Kansas City Desegregation Experiment that was really more about distributing precious green cash to special interests rather than doing anything substantial to encourage diversity.
And again, it would be a mistake to think that Kansas City learned its lesson from this tragic episode given the common City Hall mistake that attempts to play developer rather than deal with more mundane aspect of local government.
Developing . . .
"...or more precisely, that even if money matters, it doesn’t matter enough to reduce suburbanites’ collective cultural distaste for urban schools full of poor people."
ReplyDeleteActually, you ignorant fuck, to be precise, then as now, whites left for the same reasons they leave now. The violence and inability to aquire a qulity education in the chaos and stupidity of a sub culture that in fact is taught only one lesson, they are victims and entitled to equal outcomes not equal opportunity.
Shut the fuck up.
If suburbanites had such distaste for "Poor People" there wouldnt be a single charity to serve those people. It is the middle and upper income classes who dig into their pockets to support the private and public charities, along with the tax payer funded entitlements, that serve the urban and rural poor. The folks who fled the KCSD did so as an act of self preservation. Why would middle class whites want their children to remain in a district run by liberal educators who constantly instill a victimhood ideology in the minds of their minority students, thus making anyone with white skin a target for their misdirected rage.
ReplyDeleteIll second Chuck's Fuck You, to the Authors lazy, predictable, dishonesty .
THIS story from a teacher in Atlanta, is shocking, seriously...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amren.com/features/2014/09/all-i-really-need-to-know-about-race-i-learned-teaching-in-kindergarten/
Abolish the Dept of Education
ReplyDeleteFuck Common Core
http://www.storyleak.com/sixth-grade-students-told-hide-political-beleifs-worksheet-parents/
I only have a fuck you for chuckles and his view it's ok to beat women. KCSD turned to crap in the 60's and has remained crap ever since. The city is in a whirlpool of self destruction and the common denominator of that has been but one race.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget that it's not just white people who fled the urban schools. Minority families who have their children's best interest at heart and understand that getting a good education is key to their successful futures have left in droves and continue to. Look at the demographic changes in Grandview, Lee's Summit, Raytown, and Johnson County.
ReplyDeleteWhat's mostly left on the east side are elderly people who have lived there all their lives, folks who can't escape, and thugs who make life miserable for everyone else.
And many millions are spent each and every year making believe that everyone else is responsible for making the thugs "successful" even though they bring nothing whatever to society, and in fact, don't even try.
And doing the same things the same way with the same people isn't going to produce any different results.
Thank you. There are good black folks that left. Contrary to what the racists on this blog think, many black people are conservative and contribute to society. I know, shocking right?
DeleteThe sooner society realizes that negroes can't be helped, the better off we'll be. It doesn't matter if it's education, housing, family services, etc., spending money on negroes is as logical as flushing it down the toilet. They are never going to change. If anything, they're getting worse.
ReplyDeleteNiggers don't give a fuck as the majority has shown so why should anyone else for give one for them?
ReplyDelete657
ReplyDeleteCan you cite a specific incident when Chuck advocated beating women? I didnt think so. You are obsessed with Chuck. Pretty sure he is a concealed carry guy, careful of that stalking shit.
Damn you people wake up, it's the niggers and those niggers who hang with those niggers.
ReplyDeleteIf we want to see another country get fucked up, just draft and send a bunch of niggers over there and it will soon be all fucked up.
7:19 you are right, many blacks moved to Grandview, ruskin, center, and raytown districts. Sadly the victimhood mentality and violent culture was part and parcel of that move. You need look no further than 2 or 3 stories below this one for evidence of the outcome. These were all predominately white middle class areas, now. not so much.
ReplyDelete7:27 chuckles made some rather rough comments about women pertaining to the Ray Rice incident in needing to be smacked for their actions. If a woman is stupid get rid of her, not an excuse to smack her around.
ReplyDeletechuckles is an old school guy who it appears thinks it's ok to smack the women around if they get out of line.
I've seen this same middle-class whites fleeing poor people meme cropping up other places. Was there a meeting to come up with a stupid excuse to cover what really happened? Decent people of all colors fled violence. That's it. And decent people continue to flee violence as it has crept outward from the city center. Violence! Not racism or poverty but violence is what good people try like hell to stay away from.
ReplyDeleteAnd to take it a step further, what does it say that KCPSD spent a ton of money trying to lure whites back into the schools? Why should you need whites? Why can't the blacks and browns learn and behave without whites? I never get an answer to these questions.
Good point, 8:37. I grew up in a segregated school system. After college I did substitute teaching in that district and both white and black schools. Black students learned quite well with fewer discipline problems.
ReplyDeleteI'm not in favor of segregation, but facts are facts.
7:32
ReplyDeleteHarley JoJo you are a lying cunt.
6:54: That article was exactly my experience working for the KCMSD in 2005-it turned me into the "bigot" I am today. The culture is corrupt, and will remain so until black people take some steps to fix their own problems, and to take some responsibility for their own destructive behavior.
ReplyDeleteThe KC School board became a social token decades ago.Since, little has been about the quality of education. It has been about power and agendas and a mix of corruption with wasted dollar after dollar and no results. No one, including the State, is serious about improving performance, results or the quality of education. The State barks and then uses semantics while giving the school board everything it would have had with accreditation. The school system is a joke and until there is accountability there is no perceived need for it to be anything else.
ReplyDelete@8:17, and many lemons are purple and taste sugary sweet.
ReplyDeleteIt is a damned shame that we have to pay $12K per year for our kid to go to private school - but I'd rather do that than have my child anywhere near KCMSD. At least there are good private schools.
ReplyDeleteIt's a damn shame that 3/4 of the property taxes go to the school district and the return is little more than cheap day care for the bastard kids. If parents actually had to pay the cost of their copulation, instead of teh tax payers, in 20 years the bounty would be plentiful.
ReplyDeleteAren't all of skolars learning Chinese or sumpin' ?
ReplyDeleteIf it weren't for parochial school and the French magnet, Brookside would look just like Troost.
ReplyDeleteIt is not a distaste for poor. It is a distaste for rude, uncivilized and frankly ignorant if not just plain stupidity. Economic status does not matter as long as the students want to learn. Go to center high school and check out that learning environment. It is complete chaos. It's not about poor it's about behavior and ignorance. Keep ignoring the problem which is ignorance, stupidity and a total lack of morals and values and you get the same results. Guess wha,t the world has enough rappers and bball players you might have to branch out.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to live in Brookside and have a family, you better just count on paying both extreme real estate taxes that mainly go to public schools, and also count on paying about a thousand a month per child on top of that to send to a parochial school.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's why there are a lot of childless or gay couples in Brookside.
The more things change the more they stay the same. This is still racist Kansas City. Listen to your comments. I have lived through the entire gambit and have taught pre-K to college level. Yes, from old out dated books to long bus rides across town, to teaching at Magnets, watching wasteful spending and drug ridden communities impoverish homes and children still wanting to learn and of course white/black flight...that hasn't changed... blah, blah,
ReplyDeleteblah. There will be the few that will get an education and have liberty and be productive citizens and take care of their families and have a support system and despite all this hate spewed will better themselves. That article is about 20 years old and written by a white man with an agenda and paid to do so. What do any of you really care about what or how these Black children learn? You don't see a child...you see color. Racist lines have been drawn East to West, North to South. That was decided by the rich long ago and history says so. It's alive and well today. Stop acting like you care, it is about business. It is big money in charter schools. Program them and make them into good little workers and make money for the rich. It is the new wave of slavery in tow. You know you really don't care if these kids learn or not...it is all about masks and money. You wear it well Kansas City....
Complete and total bullshit.
DeleteYou miss the point of most of the comments, Professor . The white middle class does care, we care about our own which trumps all of your social justice, big bad , rich , white power, illuminatti , bullshit. Why give a damn about a group of people who generally see you as the enemy, while their collective hand is the middle class taxpayers pocket. So you are correcto mundo, most of us could not care less.
ReplyDeleteI read the entire article. I pay taxes too. My pocket got emptied and I worked there. Looking back, like it or not was needed to be done. Far money has been "spent" on issues more intense rather fugue, even now with no record of how much is being spent. This is an issue no one likes to talk about. We are too polite about it here or say it behind closed doors and among "friends" how we really feel about race. More exact these years. More in your face since Obama. Economics is the key to building a stronghold in education in the Black community. The new segregation is technology. But there are ways around that. My point and conclusion...it was necessary. Mistakes were made and achievements happened. Good, bad, or indifferent, I consider myself an achievement. I made it through all that mess. I broke the cycle and the first in my generation to go to college and thus my daughter and so will my grandchildren. I had a mother that worked the fields and barely read. She cleaned houses. Don't school me on my history about Kansas City. I chose not to repeat it, so should all...
ReplyDeleteBlacks master technology when it comes to making "mad beatz".
DeleteYes, 4:19, or their free Osambophone.
ReplyDeleteI just proved my point. Thank you. The more things change...
ReplyDelete