COMMENTARY

New superintendent just might be up to huge task

Just before an interview with John Covington, I tore a “Thought for the day” out of The Star, enlarged it and handed him the copy during our visit.

The message from former president Woodrow Wilson seemed tailor-made for the Kansas City School District’s newest superintendent: “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”

Covington is well along the path toward doing both. He doesn’t have a choice.

•The school district is only provisionally accredited.

•An achievement gap plagues the schools, which are 64 percent black, 19 percent Hispanic and 14 percent white.

•Most of the schools are not meeting the No Child Left Behind standards.

•The dropout rate in the district is way too high, and parental involvement is too low.

Each has to change.

Also, the district must earn the confidence of more parents to reverse the enrollment drain. The district has only 16,810 students, down from about 18,000 last year.

In addition, Covington has to forge plans to close more schools and cut about 1,500 jobs in the district. The cost savings has to go to improve the quality of education.

To do so will require an exceptional effort by the remaining teachers, principals, administrators and support staff to push improvements in the often dysfunctional system. Educators and students will have to expand the time they are devoting to academics.

If phantom workers exist, they must be purged and criminal charges pursued.

Like Covington, I think the district can be stellar. But it will have to shed the favoritism and long-protected status given to some workers who should’ve been fired years ago.

Any one of these changes could put Covington in the long line of superintendents who in the last 40 years were marched out of the job. But Covington honestly thinks he can rally the community’s support and make the needed improvements.

As he repeats often, he doesn’t believe he’s more talented than anyone else. He just happens to believe he stepped into the job at a most opportune moment in the district’s history.

To be successful, Covington will have to get the district to jettison all do-little contracts and long-held unsuccessful practices that fail to further student achievement. But most of all, he’ll have to free the schools from a culture of complacency and fear.

After observing classrooms at different schools, Covington said traditional teaching methods — lectures to attentive kids religiously taking notes — don’t work with today’s students. Young people demand interactivity. They live it as big consumers of today’s many media gadgets.

Teachers have to get into that interactive arena to connect the students with real, lifelong learning. Change is terribly painful. But in the end, it can be a lot more fun and yield off-the-chart, beneficial results.

Ending the culture of fear in the district is huge. Too many teachers fear the students, administrators, parents and change. Students often fear other students and violence. The resulting class disruptions pummel any attempt to teach or learn.

Fear stanches risk-taking geared toward substantive academic improvement. Fear is never a good motivator.

Covington’s challenge is to capitalize on the positive community energy from a growing number of folks who’ve pledged to do all that they can to improve the schools. Last summer more than 200 church and community volunteers spruced up area schools, and the Black Agenda Group put up billboards to promote good parenting.

All of these individuals working with Covington also must support the teachers and insist on educational achievement from the students and schools. Together people can get the change the district badly needs and thwart those fighting to maintain the failing status quo.

To reach Lewis W. Diuguid, a member of The Star’s Editorial Board, call 816-234-4723 or send e-mail to Ldiuguid@kcstar.com.

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