A Hard Lesson For Kansas City's Troubled Schools

By Catherine Gewertz

Twenty-three years ago, where two rivers meet in Missouri, there was a dream. Poor black students would overcome the vestiges of discrimination, their test scores rising as they studied side by side with wealthier white students in a resurrected Kansas City school district.

In the prairie city whose divided heart once epitomized a nation's conflict over slavery, $2 billion has been spent to transform a crumbling school system into a phoenix of equal opportunity. But only part of the dream has come true. The district now boasts facilities that are indisputably impressive. But the teaching and learning that take place inside them still are deficient enough that the state last year revoked its powerful stamp of approval: accreditation.

As the date nears for that potentially far-reaching decision to take effect next week, the rare and stinging rebuke has set off a round of soul-searching in people who have watched the nation's most ambitious and expensive desegregation plan unfold. How can it be that even billions can't...