Last week, Time magazine had a feature that included an article about KCMO's public schools.
The article focused on the closing of Westport High - along with 27 other schools in the KCMO school district.
According to the article, in the 1960s, KCMO had about 75,000 public school students.
Up until 10 years ago, the school district had 35,000.
Today, that number is around 17,000.
The loss of 60,000 students in the past 50 years has had a lot of causes - mostly due to suburban flight. However, in the past 10 years a lot of the loss has been to the charter schools that are popping up in the area.
Over the next 2 weeks, I'm going to cover a lot of different angles on the idea of charter schools, and what they mean to the now downsized KCMO school district. It's a tough subject -- but I think one that we need to look at closely as we figure out how to manage what has become of our the biggest single factor that is negatively impacting our urban core -- poor schools.
Look forward to reading . . . as a charter school parent, a proponent of urban education and a huge believer in our school district . . .
Posted by: Sandie | June 11, 2010 at 03:20 PM
Another chapter of a good read. I certainly agree on the statement.
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