In 1985 a federal district judge took partial control over the troubled Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) on the grounds that it was an unconstitutionally segregated district with dilapidated facilities and students who performed poorly. In an effort to bring the district into compliance with his liberal interpretation of federal law, the judge ordered the state and district to spend nearly $2 billion over the next 12 years to build new schools, integrate classrooms, and bring student test scores up to national norms.
It didn’t work. When the judge, in March 1997, finally agreed to let the state stop making desegregation payments to the district after 1999, there was little to show for all the money spent. Although the students enjoyed perhaps the best school facilities in the country, the percentage of black students in the largely black district had continued to increase, black students’ achievement hadn’t improved at all, and the black-white achievement gap was unchanged.(1)
From
Money And School Performance:
Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html
Thanks.....
Check the date in the article. I believe that Judge Russel Clark took over the KCMOPSD around 1974 or 75. Or that might just have been when the federal suit was originally filed. Either way, this whole "desegregation plan" has been going on since the mid-1970s.
One really ugly thing he did that went to the SCOTUS was Clark, a federal judge, actually levied a tax on Kansas City, MO, because he felt that more local money needed to go to the school district. In his decision, he stated that the welfare of the students overrode the silly Constitution of the United States. After the SCOTUS overrode his decision, he just ordered the KC City Council to levee a tax increase, under threat of contempt. That should have gotten Clark impeached, but AFAIK, he's still serving on the bench in Springfield, MO.
The whole thing has been such a financial disaster that 60 Minutes actually did a show on the monumental waste on the district. And I think that show was more than a decade ago.
Mark