MISSOURI WATCH: MISSOURI SCHOOLS: PASSING OR FAILING?

This article comes from our electronic archive and has not been reviewed. It may contain glitches.
Sunday, April 27, 1997

The politics of public education in Missouri is in a confused and peculiar condition on several levels. Missouri's unique position as the nation's largest contributor to public school desegregation programs now provides another conundrum: how to divide the savings of a 16-year, $3 billion-plus outlay of public money so that it is both equitable and productive. At the same time that it seeks resolution of this critical puzzle, the state must also deal with a more common but nonetheless equally confounding challenge of improving the learning abilities of its K-12 school children. It would be unwise to choose one over the other since each relates to the whole and one defies resolution without solution of the others.

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