‘Nuclear option’ for KC schools: a weapon of mass delusion
Anything termed “the nuclear option” ought to give pause. Especially when generations of children are at stake. And politicians are in charge. For the Kansas City School District, the nuclear option is doling out its schools to surrounding districts. Admittedly, it’s more apt to be called nuclear by detractors. One version of this idea is already proposed in legislation, and other forms of it are in the works. This is a bad idea that won’t go away easily. Legislators need to recognize that the soon-to-be-unaccredited school district’s greatest problem is achievement. And low-income students from struggling families do not perform remarkably better in any of the surrounding districts. The instability of their homes won’t magically change if they attend the same school, just tacked onto a new district.
Yet, that was the rationale for forced desegregation, that low IQ blacks would magically do better if they were placed in the same classrooms as high IQ whites. The infamous Kansas City experiment was the deseg mentality in reverse, that Kansas City’s low IQ blacks would get better if olympic swimming pools and model UN theaters lured in high IQ whites from the suburbs and got them in the same classroom as the resident blacks.
