THROWING MORE MONEY AT SCHOOLS DOESN'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM

Sometimes, a view from afar hits home convincingly. We take note, then, of an article that appeared a few weeks ago in the "American Survey" section of The Economist, a London-based publication. From across an ocean and half a continent, an observation is offered about education in Missouri that rings more true than anything being said in this state. The thrust of the article: Money, even exorbitant amounts of money, is not the cure-all for education's problems. It is a point worth repeating and pondering.

The Economist article focuses specifically on the Kansas City Public School District, Missouri's foremost host to the American judiciary's grand social experiment called desegregation. Since 1986, when U.S. District Judge Russell Clark mandated changes (on the taxpayers' tab) to fabricate a more desirable racial mix in the Kansas City schools, that urban district has experienced a windfall from public treasuries.

While The Economist described Judge Clark's action as "a bribe" to get middle-class families not to flee the urban district for the suburbs, a more generous appraisal is that an enormous project of gold-plating was set in motion. "Magnet schools," 56 of them, were established to specialize in particular academic disciplines, and other creative programs were launched. Whatever the programs required in the way of facilities -- from greenhouses to state-of-the-art garages to a $5 million swimming pool -- was supplied with no consideration of price tag. Kansas City Central High School was not remodeled, it was rebuilt at a cost of $32 million. Compare this open-checkbook policy with the creative-financing, town-gown-partnership manner in which the city of Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri State University built the Show Me Center at less than half that cost.

And it wasn't as if the citizens of Kansas City -- those most directly affected -- were being stood up to face this enormous fiscal burden. The state of Missouri was brought into the act and many years has seen up to seven percent of its total budget go toward paying for the federal judge's desegregation impulses. Thus, while Kansas City has assigned a school to teach foreign language through "total immersion," there are schools in the Bootheel with no foreign languages taught. While schools in this region, tight on cash, are dropping numerous courses (art, driver education, physics) and limiting the number of offerings in instruction of the Three Rs, Kansas City students could avail themselves of fencing courses.

In Kansas City, $900,000 is built into the annual budget to promote the district through television advertising. How many teachers would that $900,000 hire in Scott City, Marquand, Marble Hill ...?

On paper, Kansas City school officials must have seen this as an educational dream, ideal programs and shining, new facilities ... costs be damned. In Cape Girardeau, when the school district wants more money to replace crumbling schools, the taxpayers get the final say. There was none of that messy business in Kansas City; a federal judge, using his considerable power to the maximum, supplied the taxpayers' nod of approval, not only within the affected district but around the state.

And what has been the result of this experiment? The racial balance in the Kansas City school system is the same as when Judge Clark issued his decree. Reading and mathematics scores on standardized tests have dropped for black students. And the graduation rate in the district has fallen from above 55 percent in 1987 to just below 40 percent in 1992. For all the spending done on education in Kansas City, and all the fiscal sacrifices made by other school districts around the state, the dropout rate stands at 60 percent.

Does more money mean better education? No. Sufficient money is necessary to provide a proper base from which education can take place, but more money does not automatically lead to better students and more learning. Education reformers should take note.