KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jamekia Kendrix is frustrated with the “status quo of experimentation” in the troubled Kansas City Public Schools.
“How did my kids become lab rats in an experiment?” she said, referring to efforts, past and present, to fix the school district which lost state accreditation two years ago, and serves as the latest example of the challenges facing public school districts in urban areas across the United States. Issues of poverty and general instability in such areas, experts say, are often magnified in the educational systems.
“These out-of-school factors have such a powerful impact on what kids are able to learn, how they behave in schools, their stability,” said Lynn Beck, dean of the Gladys L. Bernard School of Education at University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., a city whose largest school district has faced similar issues. “The children who attend city schools, often — not always — tend to be children whose lives have really been heavily impacted by family issues, parental loss of job, incarcerated family members. That’s part of the story.”
The other part of the story, Beck said, is reflected in Kansas City, where Superintendent R. Stephen Green is the 27th person to lead the district in the last 40 years.
“The other more challenging issue is the stability of leadership and stability of the work force,” Beck said. “That’s something a strong school board can do things about. This is the kind of perfect storm of challenging situations in places like Kansas City or Stockton that tends to lead to really difficult