Toellner Tells it

Kansas City Citizen Satisfaction Survey

The Star announced today that the city has just released its 2008 Citizen Satisfaction Survey. It certainly is interesting timing -- a) right after the election, not before. I'm assuming that this was an effort to not remind everyone how disgruntled they are in hopes of passing the light rail vote and b) right after the election of the first non-white as President in the history o fthis country and the survey could more easily get buried in headlines a bit because there is other stuff going on.

There aren't a ton of surprises in the survey, however the city saw pretty significant drops in satisfaction in 32 areas of city services.  Ouch. 

Sixteen areas got below a 20% approval rating.

Six of those are directly related to programs and availability of programs that are the responsibility of the parks department (swimming pools, city sponsored athletic programs, ease of registering for programs, etc).

Five are directly related to basic infastructure issues (building, road, sidewalk maintenance and cleanliness).   

Two are directly related to codes enforcement including abandoned buildings and overgrown weeds.

Certainly I think the mayor's declarationg of war on weeds and metal plates has raised public awareness of how bad these situations are in the city...but suffice it to say, they have not seemed to show improvement at this point. I certainly think the codes enforcement issues seem to have gotten worse over the past couple of years, and not better.

Two are particularly disturbing as they show a concern for the lack of effectiveness of city boads and commissions and the amount of public involvement in local decision-making.  Three other areas just barely made the 20% cutoff with "how ethically the city conducts business", "overall quality of leadership by the city's elected officals" and "effectivenesss of the city manager" all scoring at 23% or below.

I would certainly say that the lack of satisfaction with the administration and the council as a whole certainly came out in the disapproval of the city council and the mayor's Light Rail plan yesterday.

Overall, the city was graded fairly well as a place to live and a place to work -- but horribly as a place to raise children. Concerns over the amount of crime -- particularly in eastern neighborhoods and in public parks at night -- and no doubt the schools (even though they are measured in the study) are playing a role in that.

There's a lot of data in here -- and I'm sure I'll be pulling out nuggets for awhile, but thought it was worth sharing.

Bill Eddy Drops out of the School Board Race

Bill Eddy has announced that he is dropping out of the school board race.  Eddy was in the only contested race for school board.  His leaving the race leaves Airick West as the lone ballot candidate for the vacant school board race.

Eddy's leaving the race is a good thing if we allow it to be.

Dan is right in his post today that one hurtful thing about Eddy's leaving the race is that it takes away from the school board campaigns and increasing awareness of the issues in the school district. And if we continue to ignore the issues within the school district and pretend that it's "their problem" the problems will not get solved.

However, West making it onto the school board (which seems all but a done deal at this point), has to be seen as a net gain for the KCMO School District.

A while back, I got the opportunity to talk with Airick about his vision for the school district.  We talked about the need for stability at the Superintendent level -- that even if the Superintendet wasn't perfect, rotating the leader of the school in and out every 18 months would make success for the school district virtually impossible (2 weeks later, Superintendent Amato left his position as the head of the KCMO schools).

We talked about big things like the Superintendent issue, but also small things like how many students Airick talked to didn't like the mandated school uniforms -- primarily because their families could only afford a couple of outfits for them to wear each year and the school uniform basically guaranteed what they'd wear all year -- not just to school, but to the movies and the mall on weekends and sometimes to church on Sundays.

Airick also talked about how the schools were Kansas City's problem.  Not a school board problem. Not an inner city problem.  But a city-wide problem.

He layed out a vision -- maybe a dream -- of getting more community and business involvement in the school district:  more mentorship programs, more after school programs, more community support for fixing the schools.

During his brief campaign, Airick West gained a long list of supporters.  The list includes local and state politicians, neighborhood activists, political hopefuls, ministers, bloggers, bloggers' moms, and people who's names I don't recognize.  We supported him because we believed in the vision - -and believed that there was hope for a better KCMO school district.

As it looks more and more like Airick will get the position on the school board he sought, the people on that list's jobs are not finished. The school district is not Airick West's to fix...it's for all of us to fix. If we make it now Airick's problem, and walk away, we will basically assure that he school district will flounder with him on board just as it did with Bill Eddy and the others.

While Airick's election to the school board will be a great first step, the support for him should not be over.  In fact it should just be beginning.

Should KCMO start promoting alternative schooling option

I've heard the conversation many times -- from friends of ours that are looking at moving from Kansas City, MO to the Kansas Side of the state line.  "We're moving because 'jr' is going to school next year, and, well...", and everyone nods in understanding.

The reverse conversation is also true, when people say -- "gosh, that bar/restaurant etc sounds really fun, and we really like the local restaurants, but they're so far away, and we can't move to the Missouri side until 'Kimmie' heads off to college.

Maybe its time that Kansas City starts promoting its vast array of alternative schooling options.  KCMO has a variety of great schools for kids to attend. Oh, sure, Rockhurst and Pembroke Hill come to mind as great private schools for those who can afford it.  But there are also a lot of Charter Schools and Academies that cost far less money -- many are even free -- that offer great, and sometimes unique, educations.  Schools like Academie Lafayette and the Foreign Language Academy offer language emersion education that is unique in the area.  Not only does your kid get the opportunity to learn history, math and social studies, but he will also come out being bilingual.  Which in today's culture, is pretty cool.

Other charter schools are also great.  University Academy, Cristo Rey and the new KIPP school offer outstanding alternatives to the struggling Kansas City Missouri Public Schools.  What's more, most of these schools do an outstanding job of meeting the grades on standardized test scores and equal many of their suburban counterparts based on the Kansas City Star's report of test scores for 2007.

Many people seem unaware of the availability -- and overall quality -- of our Charter school system.  I think many people who move from Kansas City, Mo to the suburbs when they have children might consider staying if they only knew about these schools and programs.  I also think people on the Kansas side might consider moving over if they realized these alternatives.

Additionally, based on one recent study, more education of the value of these charter schools may help those who need it most.  Based on the abstract:

We find in both cases that providing parents with transparent information on the academic achievement at schools with their school choice forms results in significantly more parents choosing substantially higher-performing schools

Yeah, duh.  But there's more:

There is growing empirical evidence that low-income parents place lower weights on academics when choosing schools, implying that school choice plans may have the smallest impact on the choices of the families they are targeting.

And:

Suggest a small policy change that lowers information or decision making costs for these parents had a substantial monetary impact on their children's lifetime earnings, adding to growing evidence that small changes in information can greatly affect choices, program participation, and outcomes.

So not only would the middle class folks likely benefit from this increased promotion, but also many of the city's most underpriveledged would benefit from knowing, and understanding, the importance of this improved education.

I haven't completely given up on the KCMO school district, but it has a long way to go. A short term solution may be to help promote educational alternatives that would lead lead to short-term growth of young families in Kansas City and slow the demand for sprawl in our suburbs.  Meanwhile, giving neighborhoods control of their schools to allow to rebuild the city's schools at a grass-roots level would benefit us tremendously. 

Maybe it's time we start focusing on our good qualities in promoting the city while we fix the problems behind the scenes.

Clarification on KCMO Schools Post

Yesterday, I posted a note and a link to a new study that indicated that the quality of a student's school was less of an indicator of success than the student himself (and his parent's emphasis on school).

This post was picked up and misinterpreted by a couple of other sources.

My point was to never say (or imply) that the KCMO school board is doing a great job.  Yes, the school board, and past superintendents have historically been a disaster.

But it's way too easy for us to sit back and blame the KCMO school boards and superintendents for the mess that is the KCMO public schools.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock School Crisis...and Time Magazine recently did a followup of the landmark event.  According to their numbers, American Schools are nearly as segregated now as they were 50 years ago.  Nearly 75% of Blacks currently attend schools that are predominantly Black and Latino -- while the average white student goes to a school that is over 80% white.

"White Flight" started this trend based largely an racial motivations...but even more recently "black flight" has occurred and left many inner city school districts filled with mostly minority students from financially poor families.  Many of these inner-city schools now have declining test scores and have the reputation of being "bad schools". 

However, research shows that these schools are less "bad schools" as they lack good students. Because of their reputations, most parents that have the means -- regardless of race -- take their kids out of these struggling school districts and moved hem to "better" schools.  However, there is little evidence that these schools "plus up" the students or that the schools are simply starting with better students.

The same is true in many colleges and universities - -that due to their reputations they have a great demand for students to go there, so they have very high standards to get in.  So these schools continue to graduate great students.  Is it because they continue to be great schools?  Or is it because they started with stronger students to begin with?

The point is, and the research shows, that good students can (and do) quite often get a good education from "bad" schools.  It is often way too easy to blame "bad schools" for a child's poor education -- or as a reason to move to the suburbs.  It's then easier to blame the school board for the school's lousy test scores.  It's much more difficult to look at ourselves and our own decisions that have cause the school to have lousy test scores  Be it  our racist or classist decisions to move to the suburbs.  Or our lack of desire to work with our kids and put an emphasis on learning, allowing them to succeed even if they aren't in the "best' schools.

In a society where it seems it's always someone else's fault...it's time we start looking at ourselves and our decisions and the affect they have had on our schools.  While there are a lot of factors to blame, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem.  Which are you?

Are "good" schools over-valued?

A couple of weeks ago, Airick West posted on the Kansas City Post about his decision to send his kid to KCMO public schools.  Many criticized his decision as KCMO has statistically one of the worst school districts in the state.

Interestingly, the Freakanomics Blog also did a story on school choice and the overall affect that the actual school district has on a child's performance.  The blog posting was based on a paper that studied school choice in Chicago.

Overall, based on their studies (and earlier studies by the folks at Freakanomics) they have determined that factors other than the school are involved in a child's success in learning.  In fact, as Freakanomics puts it:

"Part of the answer is likely that the definition of “better” is based on outputs, like how high the test scores are at the school or what fraction of its students attend good colleges. That sort of metric ignores the fact that “better” schools tend to attract “better” kids. These are kids with strong families and good academic backgrounds. So even if the school is not at all good at adding value, it will still have the best outputs, because it had the best inputs. If the school does not have high value added, there is no reason to expect that a child who transfers there will do better than she did at her previous school."

In other words, kids with more aptitude, and parents who invest in their children's education, improve more in school.  The unfortunate reality is that the "best schools" tend to draw more of these types of students....while poor schools tend to attract more kids who's parents don't invest in them.

This has certainly mirrored what I have witnessed in working with many inner-city kids in KCMO...the ones who's parents treat school as important do quite well.  Unfortunately, many come from families that don't put an emphasis on school.  So, more than anything, research shows that as KCMO has built a reputation of bad schools, many of KCMO school district's problems are a product of bad inputs (because good parents tend to try to get their kids out of the 'bad school'. 

If more people would do what Mr. West is doing by caring about his child AND sending them to KCMO public schools, then the schools would instantly start performing better...which would have a building affect.

It just takes a few people to step up and make a stand...because the school is more of a product of its inputs and what people make of it.  And really smart people who do real research agree with me.

Improving our schools - Part 4 of 4

Over the past month, I've talked a lot about some of the different things that need to be done to improve the KCMO School district long term. Most are long-term solutions, improving accessibility to jobs for people in the urban core, strengthening neighborhoods, and improving the culture are very long-term goals.

There is something I think can be done in the short term, and I think the new Superintendent is maybe taking steps in that direction. Two weeks ago, the superintendent of KCMO schools announced that they would be closing down several junior high schools and merging 6th, 7th and 8th graders into elementary schools.  The goal is to focus on creating neighborhood schools.  While this decision hasn't been popular, I think it's a step in the right direction.

I think in the short term, the school district needs to put more power to improve schools in the hands of the neighborhoods -- creating truly neighborhood schools will help that. 

I also think the KCMO School district should break down the school district into smaller districts, with each High School representing its own mini-district. The KCMO School district has MANY problems, and they're overwhelming to a school board trying to fix all of the problems. Dividing the district into smaller districts will allow for a school board to just focus on the needs of a smaller group of people. What may be good for people in the Northeast School District would be completely different than what would work for the Southeast School District.  Having a school board focus on a much smaller group of problems will create more instant results for a smaller district.

Most of the KCMO Schools have about 40-45% of their students that are below basic on test scores (the state average is about 11%).  If one of the mini-school districts can get closer to an acceptable range of test scores, then people will be attracted to that area as a place to live instead of moving to other cities once they have kids in school.  As people are attracted to that area, the overall tax base will go up, providing more money that can be shared with the other school districts, so that hopefully they can eventually reach the same success.

It's important that while they are separate districts from a school board and test scores perspective, that the money is shared between districts because we don't want to further isolate poor parts of the city.  But allowing for school boards to focus on smaller problems, instead of such large, overarching problems, will benefit everyone in the short term.  This will give neighborhoods more ability to affect change quickly, than the massive problem that faces the entire district as-is.  This is why the consolidation into neighborhood schools is a decent first step.

It's not sexy, or earthshattering, but I think it's a really solid first step -- that along with other long-term changes, can get KCMO out of the horrible tailspin it currently is in.

Helping Public Schools (Part 3 of 4)

Last month I started a series on improving our public schools -- and due to work/life/time I'm just now getting back to this.  Sorry.  In part 1, I layed out some of the issues that affected why our school system stinks (not as much of it is the school's fault as you might want to think) and talked about how public transit could help improve the performance of our schools.  In Part 2, I layed out how community imvolvment can help make changes that will improve the school district at large.

In part three, I will talk a bit about the changing of the culture that is going to be necessary before our schools will be successful.  And I realize that this is one of the more ambiguous posts I'll ever do -- so I'll appologize in advance.

One of the main things affecting the school district is that the culture of many of the people in the KCMO School district don't put an emphasis on education.  To them, it's not important - -and in many ways, they view it as succombing to the societal norms that have for so long intentionally excluded them.  In my volunteer work, I see countless kids that are actually ENCOURAGED to skip school by adult family members. I've also seen many kids who are allowed to play video games 3, 4 and 5 hours a night instead of doing their homework. It's disheartening.  For the forseeable future, we will always have cultural influences that encourage some of the wrong types of behavior.  While we can and should speak out against many of these influences, we shouldn't stop there.

Many of these kids in inner cities have few positive influences...and these positive influences certainly don't over-ride the negative ones they're surrounded with.  Virtually every troubled part of Kansas City (and most other urban cities) is completely riddled with low-income/lowly educated people. At some point in the 40s and 50s we decided that it was cool to move away from these people and leave them all alone in one area together -- and the further away from us, well educated people, the better. 

Meanwhile, the government has been more than happy to accommodate rich people's desires, by allowing concentrated areas of low-income housing, and designating entire 300-500 unit buildings as low income, often Section 8, housing. This ensures that the all poor children ever get to see in life is more poor people.  They don't see people who are able to make the system work....people who have found life beyond government support. 

If these kids are never even exposed to the POSSIBILITIES that exist for them -- if they're willing to work for it -- they can never achieve it.  And so we perpetuate the problem by isolating them.

While HUD (Housing and Urban Development) has changed their guideline to some degree on concentrated areas of low-income housing, they are still creating more problems.  There are certain standards for Section 8 housing -- one of which is that they cannot lower the total number of low-income units.  So when a property comes off of Section 8 status, they either have to a) renew it (causing another 20 year continuence in vertical segregation) or b) find more Section 8 housing to supplement the lost units that come with making a building mixed-use.  The only problem is that our NIMBY mentality doesn't allow for creating Section 8 developments in developed neighborhoods.  We believe in it in theory, as long as it's not in my back yard.  For all you NIMBY"s out there, let me say this: poor people are never the problem.  Poor people, in large concentrations, that only see more poor people and lose hope, are the problem.

So this has created a scenerio where 300+ appartments were recently renewed as Section 8 housing along Armour Boulevard -- a single Boulevard that currently contains over 20% of the city's Section 8 housing stock.

We have to integrate lower-income people into society.  That, more than anything, will help change their culture.  At the same time, we need to have more people, and more incentives, to get people with means to move into poor neighborhoods -- and then take on the mentality of it being THEIR neighborhood -- shopping at the shops, eating at the restaurants, walking their dogs, etc.

This isn't rocket science -- but we must do every little thing to fix it.  And it's all baby steps. Without exposing these urban youth to anything other than what they know, they will only perpetuate the lack of desire for education, and the subsequent low income/poverty/crime, etc that follow.  We cannot allow our society to fail another generation of urban youth. It's already been too long.

Next time, one quick step schools can take to start the improvement process now.

Helping Public Schools (Part 2 of 4)

Last week, I mentioned three things that I think would help build back the KCMO public schools.  Keep in mind, this is a long-term fix, not a short term fix. Most short term fixes are merely band-aids.  KC needs a heart transplant.  You can't fix that with a band aid.

The first step I recommended was improving public transit. Our urban core is so depleted at this point, that there are very few jobs for the people in the urban core to get.  Opening up their job options with better public transit would allow them to become more financially stable, and allow some kids to stay in school vs going into the work force.

This will help feed into these local people's communities, which is the 2nd step.  As there becomes more money in these neighborhoods, there will be more businesses that open in these neighborhoods to try to get a piece of this new-found money.  As these businesses open up, more jobs will be available in the urban core for these people to work in.  As there become more jobs in these neighborhoods, there will be less blight. If you believe in the the broken windows theory (I do), less blight will lead to less crime.  Less crime, less blight, and more jobs, will create more demand for people living in these urban core areas.  In several areas of the KCMO area, over 30% of the houses are vacant and abandoned.  Creating more demand for these homes would also help decrease the blight.

What many of these areas have lost is their sense of community. People with the resources to get out, get out....leaving only those with no option.  Having local businesses to go to, clean neighborhoods, good jobs, homes with people in them, all help with the sense of community. Once people are get invested in these communities, there is more desire to fix the community to make it better.  Getting more people moving into these areas to work to make them better is important.  This is happening throughout Kansas City.  As a city, we have become very good at distancing ourselves from our city's problem areas.  If we don't see it, we don't feel obligated to make it better.  Acknowledging it and doing nothing is merely impossible.  But some people are changing that tide.

One man decided that he wanted to make Troost Ave a destination...no longer a dividing line between the "ok" part of Kansas City and the "undesireable part".  So he decided to plant tulips along Troost to make it pretty this spring.  70,000 tulip bulbs later, he's well on his way.

Other groups are going in and helping to educate neighborhood kids, or improving housing, or picking up trash.  Making a big difference, one small step at a time.  These people are making a huge difference in building back these communities.  As these communities get re-established, they will invest back into the community to make it better.  Schools will be a part of that.  Getting just a few people who COULD move out of the community, but choose to stay to improve it would be a huge step for every part of the community -- especially the schools.

It's not glamourous. It's not a quick fix.  But it's doing it the right way...it's doing it in the same way that these communities were built in the first place...which would be a huge step for the urban core in Kansas City.  Long term.  And Lasting. 

Helping Public Schools, Part 1 of 4

On Monday, I laid out three areas that I think are currently killing the KCMO school district, and I would suspect, many other school urban school districts across the country.  The three areas I think that hurt urban schools are:

1) Limited financial resources cause kids to leave school early to support their families

2) Lack of community support for FIXING the problem, vs moving to another area where the problem doesn't exist

3) Cultural views in that cause "school" not to be held in as high regard as it should be.

The first, and easiest problem to address is problem #1.  This doesn't take a cultural shift, or an opinion shift, it just takes a little forsight and planning.  Since the 1920s, along with the advent of the automobile, people started fleeing urban areas to their cozier and quieter suburbs.  In the 1940s, the lobbying groups that represented the big auto manufacturers in Detroit started getting trolly lines ripped out of cities so that there would be more room for automobiles.  And most cities caved quickly.

After 60+ years, we have seen what the lack of quality public transit can do to a city's urban core. Good jobs that once resided in cities have since moved out to the suburbs...and without efficient public transit to get people without cars to these jobs, these jobs aren't available to all people. Over time, a lack of good jobs being available meant lower disposable incomes in urban neighborhoods, which meant many of the businesses (jobs) that existed in the urban core, were forced to close.  This led to fewer good jobs in the urban core, which meant less money, which has all cycled into a deterioration of neighborhoods -- where there aren't good jobs for people, people can't get good jobs, and the neighborhoods themselves have no money. This has led to blighted and abandoned neighborhoods and businesses.

Good public transit can and will reduce this cycle in Kansas City. There are many areas in the city that are desperate for good help.  The Legends area in KCK is desparately seeking a way to get workers our there on public transit because they can't find good help.  I've heard of similar problems at Zona Rosa. Even ultra-rich Johnson County is struggling with finding enough help to fill blue collar service positions as most of their population is very well educated and "above" work such as cleaning office buildings and being busboys/wait-staff.

Good public transit to our suburbs would open up better paying jobs for more people in KCMO's urban core.  If mom (and sometimes dad) was able to support the family, then kids would be afforded the luxury to think longer-term about their lives and actually stay in school (with maybe a part time job after work for income) vs feeling the pressure to drop out of school early in order to take a full-time job to put food on the table for their younger siblings.

This won't fix all of the problems in the urban core....or in education. But it will keep some kids in school.  Which is a start.  And a fairly simple, short-term solution to create at least a band-aid fix.

But it's a start.  And it will also help solve problem number 2.  Which we'll talk about tomorrow.

Fixing Public Education IN KCMO

Local politician Mark Funkhouser hosted a press conference at Central High School today to talk about the importance of improving education in Kansas City, MO.  His opponent for the mayoral race in Kansas City, Alvin Brooks, attended the press conference.

I've been thinking a lot about education recently.  It's one of the many issues that faces Kansas City, MO and many other urban core communities throughout the country.  The KCMO school district epitomizes the problems.  In the Central High School area, only about 25% of the students that enter High School there eventually graduate.  Of those 25%, only 15% ever even try to go to college...and of those, only 15% of them ever make it out with a college degree.  For those of you counting at home, that's approximately 1 student out of every 200 kids that enter the Central High School going on and getting a college degree.

My friends over at the Flogging of America do a nice job of breaking down the root cause of the problem. However, the solutions are much harder than they appear.

One day a week, I go down to this general area and help with an after-school program for junior high kids. The problem runs much deeper than just fixing the schools.  Many of these students come from families that don't believe that school is important (one of my students just spent the past 2 weeks skipping school with his grandfather and one other student missed almost half of his days of school for nearly 2 months at the encouragement of his mother).  And these are our best kids.

Many kids drop out of high school because they have to decide whether to get a job to support the family so they can eat, or finish high school.  In a society so fixed on just surviving week to week, long-term thinking like -- if I finish school, we'll make more money in the long term -- seldom crosses their minds.

So not only is our problem more of a social problem, than a schools problem, it's also cyclical.  If parents don't care about school, and the kids aren't graduating, the schools get bad ratings.  If schools get bad ratings, people who care about schools try to get them out of those schools, which make the school ratings worse.  Well, now, we have the problem in reverse.  No self-respecting parent with an option of where to send their kids to school would even consider sending them to a KCMO High School. So no one will move in and help be part of the solution to the problem.

In the old days, when something was wrong in a community, the community banded together and fixed the problem.  Now, people just move out to community where the problems are already solved.

So the problem is cyclical...and it's gotten to the point where everything needs fixing.  The schools, economy, roads, and social structures are all broken. And you can't fix just one thing...you have to fix them all together.  The best schools in the world will fail if parents continue to not encourage their kids to go there....or if kids drop out in order to get a job to put food on the table. 

Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to lay out where I would start in forming this solution.  But as a culture, we have to decide that this is important to us...it won't work unless everyone wants it to.