TIME FOR CUTOFF

Nearly two decades and $3.6 billion later, Missouri is working to end court-ordered integration of public schools. For the past 15 years, the state has spent about 10 percent of its education budget on integrating schools in St. Louis and Kansas City. The result has been gold-plated schools in inner cities that don't attract white students.

The effort has failed miserably. Despite all the spending, both districts have larger minority enrollments than when the lawsuits were filed in the 1970s. Now the local districts will find it hard to maintain these lavish schools on their own.

Blacks in St. Louis and Kansas City initially sought desegregation -- the right to attend their neighborhood schools. The courts mandated integration, which is more of a social philosophy. It brought bussing and magnet schools.

In St. Louis, this massive effort began with one mother's fight. Minnie Liddell objected to the transfer of her four children from one all-black school to another in the summer of 1971. Ironically, her objections had nothing to do with the ratio of black to white students. She simply wanted her children to remain in a neighborhood school.

Liddell and four other parents filed a class-action lawsuit on Feb. 18, 1972, to desegregate the city's schools. U.S. district courts took over and eventually changed the course of Missouri's educational spending. A separate court action was filed in Kansas City in 1977.

Since that time, Missouri has spent more on these court-ordered integration efforts than all other states combined. That's hardly fair. Missouri's schools weren't worse off than anywhere else in the nation. But the state learned quickly of the power of one U.S. district judge -- Russell Clark -- who has held Missourians hostage nearly 20 years, ordering extravagant spending left and right. California has spent $2.4 billion on desegregation programs affecting 1.6 million students. Missouri's efforts affect only 156,000 students. That concentrated funding on two school districts has come at the detriment of all other Missouri school systems.

The spending abuses have been particularly bad in Kansas City. The district pursued one of the most expensive and aggressive magnet-school plans in the country to lure white students to inner-city schools. Today, all but 17 of more than 80 schools in the district are organized around such magnet themes as performing arts, computers, health and college preparation. But the effort to bring white students to the inner cities didn't work. Of 37,000 students attending public school in Kansas City, 78 percent are minorities. A mere 700 white students have transferred to magnet schools from the suburbs.

The court-ordered effort has generated feelings of resentment as well, both within the cities and throughout the state. Other districts looking in at the extravagant spending understandably feel slighted. Kansas City's spending per pupil is about $8,900. That's two or three times what other districts are spending on each student. Outside of these inner-city schools, there is little money for lavish computer labs, greenhouses, performing arts centers or frequent field trips. The loss of billions of dollars from Missouri's education budget has negatively affected all other schools. They suffer from a reverse discrimination of spending.

It is time for Missouri to end court-ordered and taxpayer-funded integration. The state has more than fulfilled its duties. The money spigot must be slowed in St. Louis and Kansas City so Missouri can better meet the educational needs of all its children.