So far, the good intentions have fallen short. Despite the attempt to lure suburban white kids, Kansas City schools are less integrated than they were when the magnet-school program began: 75 percent of the students are minorities. Many black students have benefited-one magnet-school graduate won a Rhodes scholarship after college last year. But half of all students who enter high school don’t graduate. Test scores are up only in the lower grades; students in magnet schools actually test slightly worse than children in the 18 traditional schools that haven’t joined the program. And, ironically, most of the district’s 37,000 students must be bused. Too often, says Patricia Kurtz, a white schoolboard member who supports integration, the burden of desegregation is borne by “little kids shivering at bus stops in the dark.”
Many black parents insist that their children are still victims, targets of discrimination more subtle but just as pernicious as that practiced in the days before the Supreme Court outlawed desegregated schools. In their view, the Kansas City district cares more about the coarse arithmetic of integration goals than about meeting the basic needs of inner-city kids. They note that the plan makes it easier for white kids to get into the magnet of their choice. Also, the program excludes suburban blacks, yet white students from outside the district receive free taxis and tuition. “It’s insulting to be told the quality of my child’s education depends on the number of white children in the room,” says Ed Newsome, one of four critics of the Kansas City district who last month won seats on the school board.
Their solution sounds uncomfortably like separate but equal, the doctrine that the Supreme Court set out to destroy 40 years ago. They want Kansas City to forget about trying to bribe white parents to send their kids to inner-city schools, and to focus instead on creating better neighborhood schools. Such schools, by definition, would be more segregated. But improve test scores, Newsome contends, and integration will take care of itself. His logic repudiates that of Brown v. Board of Education: the assumption that “separate but equal” necessarily meant inferior schools for minorities.
The model many blacks point to is J.S. Chick on the city’s southeast side. Four years ago it was a mediocre elementary school waiting its turn to join the magnet program. Impatient parents created a cultural theme of their own. Today the J.S. Chick African Centered Shule’ (Swahili for school) is separate but better. The offerings are modest-unlike the magnets, Chick provides little in the way of computers or other top-of-the-line learning tools-and its students are mostly impoverished kids from the inner city. Nevertheless, their test scores are among the city’s best. Kids greet visitors in Swahili: their wardrobe alternates between African attire and the white shirts and blue pants of their “dress for success” uniforms. African studies are important the library prominently displays a biography of Desmond Tutu-but the real focus is on the basics: reading, writing, math and science.
Chick also reaffirms a simple truth that has been lost in the fog of court orders and policy debates: the surest way to im prove students’ performance is to involve their parents. Quarterly report cards evaluate aspects of their performance, such as attendance at parent-teacher meetings.
It takes more than good parenting to create excellent schools. of course. Educators in other Missouri districts are jealous of all the money-about $199 million this year being spent in Kansas City. George Byers, superintendent of a largely black school district in the poor Bootheel town of Hayti, says, “Our kids deserve fabulous facilities, too. If I sound bitter, I am.” Like many local superintendents, he wants a cut.
Legal requirements stand in the way. The taxpayers of Missouri pick up most of the cost of Kansas City’s desegregation program-the total tab is $1.3 billion and rising because federal court orders have given them no choice. These same taxpayers wouldn’t be shortchanging their own local schools if they didn’t have to. The stakes for the district are enormous. Take away the court orders and Kansas City stands to lose an irreplaceable 53 percent of its budget.
That’s not likely to happen any time soon, however. Next year Judge Clark will decide whether to extend the magnet program for another 10 years. Legal experts doubt that the magnet program will be junked, though it may be modified. For now, new school-board members must try to assuage angry parents without violating the court’s orders.
Some of the complaints about the magnet system are unwarranted. The decline in test scores has more to do with poverty, violence and broken homes than it does with free taxi fare for suburban white kids. The magnet schools may not have worked out exactly as planned, but that does not mean that Brown v. Board of Education was wrongly decided. Everyone agrees that at I east some of the Supreme Court’s high hopes have been achieved: test scores or no, Kansas City students are better of than they would be in the wretched schools their parents attended. But the debate suggests that we may have expected too much from Brown. The decision gave children the right to attend a desegregated classroom. It didn’t guarantee them a good education.
