High Cost for Low Grades

“Kansas City is a very, very sad story,” said Gary Orfield, a Harvard

University sociologist who has studied the district for years. “They really

can’t show much of anything, though they spent $2 billion.”

To Orfield, the lesson from Kansas City is clear: Money can’t buy

good schools. Not, at least, in shattered urban districts where poverty

leaves many children ill-equipped to learn.

When students come to class hungry, exhausted or afraid, when they

bounce from school to school as their families face eviction, when they

have no one at home to wake them up for the bus, much less look over

their homework, not even the snazziest facilities, the strongest curricula

and the best-paid teachers can ensure success, he argues. LA Times