gat

For more than ten years Judge Clark oversaw the spending of a $1.6 billion windfall in an attempt
to desegregate Kansas City schools and raise the reading and math scores of poor kids. I
arbitrarily select his story from many which might be told to show how unlikely it is that the
forces which gave us our present schools are likely to vanish, even in the face of outraged
determination. Or that models of a better way to do things are likely to solve the problem, either.
Judge Russell G. Clark took over the Kansas City school district in 1984 after adjudicating a case
in which the NAACP acted for plaintiffs in a suit against the school district. Although he began
the long court proceedings as a former farm boy raised in the Ozarks without an activist judicial
record, Clark’s decision was favorable to the desegregationists beyond any reasonable
expectation. Clark invited those bringing the suit to dream up perfect schools and he would get
money to pay for them! Using the exceptional power granted federal judges, he unilaterally
ordered the doubling of city property taxes. 4 When that provided inadequate revenue, he ordered
the state to make up the difference. How’s that for decisive, no-nonsense support for school
reform as a social priority?
Suddenly the district was awash in money for TV studios, swimming pools, planetariums, zoos,
computers, squadrons of teachers and specialists. "They had as much money as any school district
will ever get," said Gary Orfield, a Harvard investigator who directed a postmortem analysis, "It
didn’t do very much." Orfield was wrong. The Windfall produced striking results:
Average daily attendance went down, the dropout rate went up, the black-white achievement gap
remained stationary, and the district was as segregated after ten years of well-funded reform as it
had been at the beginning. A former school board president whose children had been plaintiffs in
the original suit leading to Judge Clark’s takeover said she had "truly believed if we gave teachers
and administrators everything they said they needed, that would make a huge difference. I knew it
would take time, but I did believe by five years into this program we would see dramatic results
educationally." Who is the villain in this tale? Judge Clark is. He just doesn’t get it. The system
isn’t broken. It works as intended, turning out incomplete people. No repair can fix it, nor is the
education kids need in any catalogue to buy. As Kansas City proves, giving schools more money
only encourages them to intensify the destructive operations they already perform.
4 They actually were raised 150 percent, from a base already not low. With what effect on homeowners just
holding on was anyone’s guess. Here, as in the case of Benson, Vermont, up ahead, the institution’s aspect as
predatory parasite appears in stark relief.
Education’s Most Powerful Voice
At the 1996 annual convention of the National Education Association, delegates were delighted to
learn that the union would pay them a $1000 bounty if they could succeed in getting themselves
elected as a delegate to the upcoming Democratic National Convention. No similar prize was
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