September 6, 2001

Mr. Thomas R. Davis, Vice-President, State Board of Education

Dr. D. Kent King, Commissioner of Education

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

PO Box 480

Jefferson City, MO 65102

Re: School District of Kansas City, Missouri (Kansas City 33)

Dear Mr. Davis and Dr. King:

As you know, I represent the class of all present and future students of the School District of Kansas City, Missouri ("KCMSD"). In that capacity I write to set forth briefly reasons why, in my opinion, it would be inadvisable and imprudent for the State Board of Education to exercise such authority as it possesses to cause the KCMSD to lapse or in any manner to takeover the administration and operation of the school district.

First, the KCMSD is improving the academic achievement of its students. The District has been able to decrease substantially the number of students in the lowest two performance categories on the MAP tests. While achievement in the District remains far below the level the schoolchildren are entitled to, the KCMSD has, for the first time in many years shown meaningful improvements across the board. Should the State Board cause the District to lapse or otherwise cause it to be taken over, the school district would likely be thrown off the path of improvement by the state-caused disruption. Then, the very goal we all agree on would be made further distant. Unless the State Board has a surefire formula for academic success in this urban, poverty-ridden, mostly minority school district, it would be best not to interfere with the first tangible sign of real academic success.

Second, state takeovers are a failed, not a proven, means of improving student achievement. While state takeovers seemed in the early 1990s, when Missouri’s Outstanding Schools Act ("OSA") was adopted, to offer promise to states desperate to do something dramatic to improve urban education, that experiment has since been proven unsuccessful. Recent literature summarizes the poor experiences with state takeovers. For instance, Stone, Henig, Jones, and Pierannunzi in Building Civic Capacity, The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools, University of Kansas Press, 2001, at 165-166 note that legislators or executive agencies have little or no experience in directly implementing policies, lack tactical savvy for dealing with teachers’ representatives or other interest groups, and have no experience in mobilizing the tens of thousands of persons whose cooperation is needed to effect system-wide reform of an urban district. States are thus greatly disadvantaged in running school districts they have taken over. Stone, et al. point out that New Jersey officials conceded six years after taking over the Jersey City school district that improvements in academic performance had not been as "high as we hoped." New Jersey ended its takeover experiment in Jersey City in 1999 with only "marginal" test score improvements after ten years and "high financial and political cost." Stone and his fellow scholars concluded that "external interventions [such as takeovers]…erode indigenous forces for systemic reform by encouraging a collective tendency to pass the buck to the more powerful external actors". They also noted that a state’s reform initiatives are stymied by takeovers because such takeovers "provide local defenders of the status quo with a convenient foil for rallying resistance to reform initiatives".

Hill, Campbell and Harvey in It Takes A City, Brookings Institution Press, 2000, observe at page 59: the "lack of evidence that a state could run schools more effectively than local officials", the "importance of retaining local control as a mark of local legitimacy", and note the conclusion that a "state takeover was not an acceptable alternative."

On the other hand, there is no evidence in any treatise or peer reviewed journal that I am aware of that has concluded from empirical evidence that state takeovers are an effective means of improving academic performance, especially in a large urban school district with myriad problems. In the face of this evidence, it would be imprudent, it seems to me, for the State Board to take on what are now Kansas City’s problems and make those problems the special charge of the State Board. The evidence seems to argue strongly that such a takeover would serve primarily to exacerbate not resolve the KCMSD’s academic problems. What may have seemed a good idea when the OSA was drafted in 1993 does not survive scrutiny now as an effective means of systemic educational reform.

Third, as you are well aware, the members of the State Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education were defendants in the Kansas City school desegregation litigation from 1977 to 1998. During that period of time these Missouri defendants were ordered to fund what became an expensive remedy for the still lingering effects of the State’s and the KCMSD’s past racially segregative practices. By settlement, the State Board and the Commissioner were dismissed as defendants. The KCMSD board and its superintendent, however, remain defendants in the desegregation case. The primary remaining remedial goal is to close substantially the academic achievement gap between black and white students. The KCMSD is attempting to close that gap by implementing court orders with the resources it has at its disposal.

Should the State Board cause the KCMSD to lapse and appoint a three-member panel to administer the school district, the State Board would automatically replace the KCMSD board as defendants in this case pursuant to Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. And, when the State Board appoints a three-member administrative panel, that panel would automatically replace the KCMSD superintendent as defendants. The State Board and its administrative panel would then become responsible for using state financial resources in all practicable efforts to close the black/white achievement gap. Unless the State has a speedy and affordable plan for closing that gap, it should be prepared for reengagement in the Kansas City desegregation case until that gap is closed to the extent required by the March 25, 1997 court order in the case.

Fourth, at the call of Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, a community-wide collaborative has been formed to find means to build the capacity of the community to effect major changes in the educational achievement of all Kansas City students. Challenged by a similar collaborative effort in El Paso, Texas, an effort that has been responsible for significant educational improvements there, the Kansas City effort just began this summer the long and difficult task of creating a community institution with roots in all sectors having an interest in public education. From institutions of higher learning to the Chamber of Commerce, from parent groups to city government and your Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, from child welfare non-profits to area foundations, and from captains of industry to area ministerial alliances, the Mayor has pulled together an organization with the clout to cause systemic educational reform, preferably by supporting the KCMSD but necessarily without it, if required. The collaborative is addressing parental education, early childhood needs, before and after school programs, and the entire fabric of community resources needed to assist the KCMSD in becoming successful for its students. Now would be a particularly destructive time for the state to takeover the KCMSD. It would kill off, perhaps for a generation, the community capacity building process that the Mayor has called into action and focused on urban education reform. There does not appear to be any means better suited to effecting widespread urban education reform than this community capacity building process. A state takeover would end the best hope our schoolchildren have for the education we all aspire to provide them.

For all these reasons, it seems to me that the course of action that would best meet the important, urgent, and long frustrated educational needs of the schoolchildren of Kansas City would be for the State of Missouri to end its threat of a state takeover, assure the school district, its students, their parents, the district’s teachers and other employees, and all the area’s citizens that the State will continue to support the local efforts of local citizens and area leaders to build the capacity of this community to effect the district-wide improvements in academic achievement that the students and the community deserve.

Yours very truly,

Arthur Benson