MISSOURI'S SCHOOLS ARE AT A CROSSROAD

The old adage that necessity is the mother of invention receives new meaning from the constructive response of many legislators and other Missourians to the coming end of court ordered desegregation in both Kansas City and St. Louis. Faced with the prospect of disastrous outflows of education dollars form our largest metropolitan areas, legislators from each of our population centers and from outstate joined together to devise a plan which would both avert financial disaster and strengthen educaiton reform.

Historically, Missouri has been so paralyzed by the competing interests of Kansas City, St. Louis and outstate, that cooperative effort involving all three is, itself, news. Also, it is testimony that Missouri has a strong contingent of state legislators who are willing to bend sectional and partisan interests for the good of the people. Throughout the effort, I have been impressed by the knowledge and dedication of members of the General Assembly.

Implicit in the legislative initiative is the recognition that after nearly two decades of court-ordered desegregation, Missouri can take a step back to the way things were twenty years ago or move toward the future and bring better education to the public school students in our state.

Many Missouri students face significant challenges each day. Poverty, rigidities in teaching techniques and excessive administrative expenses in the governance of some school districts are just a few. The end of court-ordered desegregation will give Missouri a chance to overcome these challenges and improve education for the students of the state.

In some Missouri school districts, more than 70 percent of the students are in poverty. Often, these children don't get proper nutrition and frequently they don't have stability at home. Conditions in the homes of many children place additional burdens on teachers and school officials who must spend extra time helping disadvantaged students keep up with their grade levels.

Where large numbers of students need extra assistance, school district budgets are strained. Currently, while the state of Missouri spends millions every year busing students to schools far from their homes as part of a court-ordered desegregation plan, the educational needs of many poor students are not being met.

In the near future, court-mandated desegregation will end in Missouri. When court-ordered desegregation does end, the state will save millions of dollars because the expensive busing program will also end. At the same time, school districts that have received desegregation money will experience a sudden disappearance of funds, absent from offsetting action by the state.

That's why Missourians for Our Children's Future, an organization of educators, public officials and business leaders from all across Missouri, is working to ensure that the state's savings from the end of court ordered desegregation be distributed to well run districts with large percentages of students living in poverty. We believe that young people are the best investment our state can make.

The state funds for education which are now spent on the basis of race should instead be spent on the basis of need, is one of several principles supported by Missourians for Our Children's Future. But reform of education entails more than changing how the state finances our schools. Indeed, the necessity of legislative response to the pending financial crisis in our urban school districts provides an opportunity to enact educational reforms of statewide importance. For this reason, we endorse the following principles:

-- School districts should focus on their resources on education, not administration. Missouri should penalize schools which spend excessive amounts on administration as opposed to spending the money on teaching students in the classroom. We support a plan to withhold a portion of their funds from school districts that are top heavy with administration.

-- Missouri should authorize local school boards or the State Board of Education to create innovative, independently run charter schools -- public schools unencumbered by a centralized bureaucracy. In charter schools, decisions about hiring, firing, curriculum and teaching methods would be made at the school, by the principal, not by a district administration which is removed form day-to-day school activities. Charter schools would provide traditional public schools with competition and parents with choice. In 26 states across the nation, charter schools are already successfully teaching many students to have not been learning in traditional classrooms. The innovative teaching methods offered by charter schools can improve the overall quality of education throughout Missouri.

-- Parents should have the option to send children to schools outside the districts of their residence provided that the receiving districts elect to receive the children. In such cases, state aid should follow the children to the schools they attend.

-- Where school districts fail, either financially or in performance, the state should have more flexible remedies than those provided in current law. Presently, the failed district is attached to a usually unwilling neighboring district. We believe that the state should have the option to place the failed district in receivership, under the control of a board, the majority of whose members live in the district.

Two decades of court-ordered desegregation have taught us important lessons about our state's schools. The time has come to apply those lessons and improve the educaiton of our children. We should distribute saved desegregation money on the basis of need, not race. We should give parents more choice about where their children go to school. And we should encourage innovative and effective teaching, not rigid regulation and excessive bureaucracy. Missourians for Our Children's Future believe the end of court-ordered desegregation can be the beginning of a new era and new hope for our state's children -- one that can benefit all of us.

John C. Danforth of St. Louis, former U.S. senator from Missouri, is chairman of Missourians for Our Children's Future.