THE WORST EDUCATION MONEY CAN BUY

No one can spend money like federal judges on a misguided mission to save the world.

Since 1981, Missouri has spent $2.5 billion to carry out federal court mandates to desegregate public schools in St. Louis and Kansas City.

The state has set aside $361 million for desegregation costs in the 1995 fiscal year, which begins July 1. That's a lot of money to spend to educate students in just two school districts.

A week ago, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 17-year-old Kansas City desegregation case, arguing that a recent appeals ruling has created an unfair burden on the state.

It marks the fifth time the state has asked the nation's highest court to review the case since the original suit was filed on behalf of Kansas City students in 1977.

In the latest petition, the state takes issue with a December ruling by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that makes student performance a factor in deciding whether a school district has met the obligations of a desegregation order.

As Nixon correctly sees it, the law requires equal access to programs. It doesn't demand equal academic results.

The attorney general is also objecting to a ridiculous part of the ruling that provides for salary increases to non-instructional employees in the Kansas City schools -- a decision that is costing the state about $40 million over several years.

It strains credibility to understand how raising the pay of janitors and school cooks could fit into any desegregation plan.

Ironically, Democrats like Nixon previously had criticized Republican Bill Webster -- when he was attorney general -- for how the state had waged a legal battle with the federal courts on the desegregation issue. Now, however, Nixon is doing the same thing.

But even the attorney general's petition doesn't deal with the real problem of judge-ordered, federal desegregation, which is that it doesn't work.

Forty years ago this week, the Supreme Court -- in Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. -- ruled that segregation of the races was unconstitutional.

Since then, billions of dollars in taxpayers' money has been spent on America's federal desegregation programs, yet integration remains a myth in many schools.

In the case of Kansas City, more than a billion dollars has been spent developing 56 magnet schools for the district's 37,000 students. While many of the state's school districts are sorely lacking in even basic equipment, Kansas City schools have robotics labs, and computers by the thousands. The district even has an Olympic-size pool with an underwater alcove so coaches can film a diver's technique.

Last year, the Kansas City district spent $13,500 on each student -- $3,000 more than the next highest district.

Short of spending money, the federal desegregation program has been a dismal failure.

Despite the costly attempt to lure suburban white children, Kansas City schools are less integrated than they were when the magnet-school program began.

Today, minorities comprise 75 percent of the student population.

What's more disheartening is the fact half of high school students in the district don't even graduate. Students in the magnet schools actually have lower test scores than children in the 18 traditional schools that haven't joined the program.

In fact, in a black neighborhood on Kansas City's south side, parents have helped turn a mediocre elementary school into a first-class educational institution by focusing on the basics -- reading, writing, math and science. Even the parents get graded. Quarterly report cards evaluate the performance of parents, such as attendance at parent-teacher meetings. And this transformation has occurred without a large influx of desegregation dollars.

Unfortunately, federal judges are often immune from reality. And Kansas City and St. Louis public school students continue to get the worst education money can buy.