Challenges in KC
While similar efforts have been undertaken in other cities, the Kansas City consortium will work not only with multiple districts, but from two states with different political and educational policy structures. That’s an element missing from similar efforts in other cities, which have tended to focus on a single, large urban district.
“In spite of the fact that there are many different micro-communities within a district like Chicago, where they have had a research consortium operating for decades, there is still a single set of polices and programs involved with a single district,” Heppert said.
“In Kansas City, it is much more evocative of taking a look at what represents all schooling in the United States: You can’t characterize education in Kansas City as one thing—it’s rural, it’s urban, it’s suburban. It’s really a picture, if we can assemble it, that is more representative of the diversity of educational experiences across U.S. than any of these large districts with research consortia.
Given that scale, he said, “the challenges are enormous” in researching this region’s district.
“I don’t anticipate close collaboration with each district immediately,” Heppert said. “Our ambition is to eventually develop partnerships with each of the districts. We want to demonstrate that this could be of tremendous value to a number of districts throughout the Kansas City area.”
Labor-Pool Insights
One question researchers hope to help resolve, Heppert said, is how the labor force is affected not only by the state line dividing the broader community, but by the additional layers of division with multiple school districts and their varied policy goals and program initiatives.
“Labor economists are interested in understanding more about the dynamics of the work force in the Kansas City metropolitan area,” he said. “Where do the workers come from, is there an adequate supply, how does having a state line—and the potential to move back and forth across not only that state line by so many districts—affect the labor force, and what causes people to want to move?”
The consortium’s stated goal is to provide all regional educational stakeholders—school districts, charter schools, community organizations, and private sector partners—with tools for data-driven educational policy research, evaluation, and implementation.
How? The early effort is focusing on three areas of research: algebra instruction, the quality of the teaching work force, and, in Murdock’s case, barriers to transition from high school into college, an issue vital to employers, given its focus on raising the overall educational level of the region’s work force.
While collaboration between university researchers and public schools has gone on at some level for years, Heppert acknowledged, this study holds the potential for a truly groundbreaking understanding of public school dynamics.
“This is not to say that there aren’t other groups within the Kansas City area, such as PrepKC, that aren’t involved in important research with school districts,” he said. “This is not intended to displace any of those activities. But there is simply an enormous amount of progress that can be made, an enormous number of questions that can be asked. Universities in the region have individuals trained to ask these questions, trained to learn about these aspects of learning,” Heppert said.
Answers to those questions, he said, could prove useful for districts and for policymakers about setting new directions for education.
Ready for Answers
Any solutions wrought by the research couldn’t come soon enough for Morrison back at Cold Stone Creamery.
To be sure, the behavioral issues—flabby work ethic comes to mind—are hassles to manage, and contribute to staff turnover.
Her bigger issue, though, is the lack of book learning that young workers exhibit, and not just those from the
historically troubled urban districts.
“I see this at the stores in Indepen-dence, the Plaza and Zona Rosa,” she said. “The schools need to be more accountable. They’re raising our children, whether they realize it or not, and I don’t think they care about these babies like they should.
“Some of them can’t even write,” she says. “We’re not giving these kids the kinds of skills they need to make it in life.”