June 10, 2002

By Facsimile: 418-7411

Ms. Kathy Walter-Mack, General Counsel

School District of Kansas City, Missouri

1211 McGee Street

Kansas City, MO 64106

Re: Jenkins v. KCMSD, Curriculum Writing Requirement

Dear Kathy:

I am writing on behalf of the plaintiff schoolchildren to provide our assessment of the KCMSD's implementation of the writing requirement that was the subject of an agreement among the parties earlier this year. While our assessment is not positive, we plan to take no further action in this regard this year in the hope that by next year the District will appropriately implement the writing requirement. As you know, Communication Arts (English) is one of the measures of the black/white achievement gap and one of the core assessments on which the State determines accreditation. Writing is a significant portion of the MAP Communications Arts assessment. The writing of KCMSD students is, thus, not unimportant to the District's attainment of both unitary status and full accreditation.

As you know, last month we asked for identified samples of the District's implementation of the Communication Arts writing requirement, e.g., Grade Five, Fourth Quarter, Section 11.17. From the samples that you provided us, we make the following observations:

1. It appears that some schools did not receive word of the curriculum change to add the writing requirement that the parties entered into early this year. For instance, Chick School pointed out that the curriculum it was implementing for 2001-2002 did not have the fifth grade writing requirement of a 4-5 page research paper. Thus, it seems, the Chick students did not do the writing required by the agreed upon amendment to the curriculum. Sugar Creek submitted a number of papers written by fifth graders that missed the requirement by such a wide margin (all were hand-written, very short - one page, mostly - and contained no sources) that the school must not have known of the writing requirement. Swinney School submitted a description of its fifth grade writing efforts that told students to use the "five paragraph Theme" consisting of an opening paragraph, a concluding paragraph, and three paragraphs of content in between; this too must reflect a failure to learn of the District's fifth grade research writing requirement. We trust that this requirement will be fully disseminated next year.

2. Some schools seemed to have interpreted the research writing requirement to be a research project requirement as evidenced by the considerable number of poster projects, masks, assemblages, maps, and other colorful creations you provided for us to review. While project-centered learning is certainly important, research writing is too. It appears that a number of schools, Northeast Middle is an example, mistakenly believed that by doing research projects they were partially satisfying the writing requirement. The writings that those project schools submitted did not meet the requirements of section 11.17 by a wide margin.

3. We did not find a single example of a paper that met the high school requirement of a ten-page research paper with at least fifteen sources cited. From Northeast High School, one class submitted the papers of eight students. They were two to three pages long containing from zero to two cited sources. There were eleven papers from a class at Southeast; none were ten pages long, most lacked a thesis statement or conclusion; and one was apparently assembled by cutting and pasting passages downloaded from the Internet. From Central High School, thirteen papers were submitted ranging in length from one to nine pages, most being about four to seven pages long; many had no citations, and those with cites had about three to five; one paper about basketball cited some sports programs on TV; there were a couple of decent papers, including ones about James Madison (six pages, six sources) and Japanese Culture (nine pages, eight cites) while there were many that were papers in name only (Success in School, one page, no cites), Success and Goals (1.5 pages and no cites) and one with no title, no student name, no cites, and little content.

4. As to the quality of the research reflected in the papers, the quality of the organization and thinking evident from the papers, and the quality of the writing itself, it is apparent even to a layperson that these papers from a wide swath of KCMSD schools at all three levels do not measure up to the standards that the MAP tests assess. For example, by the end of the third grade Advanced students should "write effectively for various purposes and audiences; summarize text accurately; follow rules of standard English." There is not much evidence of that from these fifth grade students. By eleventh grade the MAP tests expect students in the middle classification, Nearing Proficiency, to write to demonstrate that in their writing they can use "organization and general supporting details, attempt to gain reader's interest; identify and apply rules of standard English; begin to apply revision strategies". The high school papers that were produced showed very little of those qualities.

Next year, if the monitoring occasion continues to present the need, plaintiffs will ask to see a broader array of the writing papers required by the curriculum. We hope that by that time the writing of KCMSD's students will have improved markedly.

If you have any questions give me a call.

Yours very truly,

Arthur Benson

/AB

cc: Dr. Charles McClain

Ms. Patricia Brannan

Mr. Maurice Watson

Mr. Brian Wood