Tag Archives: John Covington

KCMSD in the News (July)

DoTheRightThingForKids.org

Why the time is right for Superintendent John Covington’s plan for the all-male Kansas City Preparatory Academy. http://www.kansascity.com/2011/07/03/v-print/2992189/a-school-for-just-one-sex-boys.html   It will take patience and another year to see advance­ment in stu­dent per­for­mance lev­els due to the student-center learn­ing sys­tem which is being imple­mented in the Kansas City Schools. http://www.kansascity.com/2011/07/03/v-print/2991979/kc-academic-reformers-look-ahead.html   The stu­dents are the ultimate […]

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Superintendent Covington on Transformation Phase 2

DoTheRightThingForKids.org

Stating that the gen­eral pub­lic doesn’t “have a clue what we’ve done the past two years,” Superintendent John Covington sum­ma­rized oper­a­tional changes in the Kansas City School District at meet­ings at the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the Paseo Academy. He rolled out his ambi­tious plans for Transformation Phase 2 which will con­cen­trate on improv­ing teaching […]

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The Star on latest Board/Superintendent Rift

DoTheRightThingForKids.org

Warning of the poten­tial for micro­man­age­ment, the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City and the Kansas City branch of the NAACP urge the school board to change its recently approved pol­icy and allow the super­in­ten­dent to oper­ate the entire port­fo­lio of schools. http://www.kansascity.com/2011/06/11/2943731/rift-between-school-board-and.html

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KC Star: KC board, Covington diverge on plan for ‘portfolio’ district

DoTheRightThingForKids.org

The fol­low­ing arti­cle from Wednesday, May 31 and the edi­to­r­ial in the Thursday, June 2 news­pa­per illus­trate the dan­ger of the KCMSD’s Board recent actions regard­ing their rela­tion­ship with Dr. Covington. They need to fos­ter sta­bil­ity in the dis­trict by work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tively with the super­in­ten­dent. This bears watching…which is the mis­sion of Do The Right Thing […]

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Right Sizing Plan Passes by a Narrow Margin

Tonight, the KCMSD School Board nar­rowly approved the Right Sizing Plan pro­posed by Dr. Covington. 26 build­ings will be closed in an effort to redi­rect the District’s resources to improv­ing the edu­ca­tion of its 17,000 stu­dents. The Board voted 5–4 to move for­ward with the plan to trans­form the KCMSD. Sadly, Dr. Covington’s vic­tory may be short-lived. After vot­ing unan­i­mously to bring Dr Covington to town to reform the District, four Board mem­bers proved that they weren’t will­ing to sup­port him as he makes the tough deci­sions. The frac­tious board now places the imple­men­ta­tion of the Right Sizing plan in jeop­ardy. The com­mu­nity can­not take for granted that Dr Covington will be allowed to dis­miss teach­ers, intro­duce new cur­ricu­lum, imple­ment per­for­mance stan­dards and rev­o­lu­tion­ize the qual­ity of edu­ca­tion in our District. The administration’s pro­pos­als may even be chal­lenged in the com­ing months by board mem­bers who will be elected to serve on April 6th. The fate of our District depends on whether the new board will sup­port the super­in­ten­dent and his staff as they trans­form the dis­trict. As you attend the school board can­di­date forums and debates, ask each can­di­date if they plan to stand by this admin­is­tra­tion and the Right Sizing Plan that the com­mu­nity endorsed. Can the com­mu­nity afford a school board that is not uni­fied in its vision? Ask each can­di­date if they intend to Do The Right Thing For Kids.

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KCMSD Superintendent Hand –Picks Cabinet

Kansas City, Mo. School District Superintendent, John Covington, recently intro­duced the mem­bers of his hand-picked lead­er­ship team. Click on the link above to read their bios and learn more.

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Questions We Asked:

  1. In a recent Lewis Diuguid col­umn in the Kansas City Star, it was noted that Dr. Covington may need to elim­i­nate up to 1,500 employ­ees. We sup­port this swift action to “right-size” the District’s admin­is­tra­tion. What assur­ances can the admin­is­tra­tion give par­ents that the ter­mi­na­tions will be based upon the per­for­mance and effec­tive­ness of those employ­ees and not solely related to their tenure?
  2. In an effort to stream­line the District’s oper­a­tions, Dr. Covington has noted that it may be nec­es­sary to close as many as 20 schools. What pro­ce­dures are cur­rently in place to insure that no new cap­i­tal improve­ments are pro­posed, approved or con­ducted on build­ings which may be closed in the com­ing year?
  3. In addi­tion to clos­ing schools cur­rently in use, the District owns many vacant schools that have been des­ig­nated as “sur­plus”. These build­ings are closed and may be cur­rently for sale. Please pro­vide the num­ber of build­ings owned by the District that are listed as “sur­plus” as well as all vacant build­ings not cur­rently for sale and how much it costs the tax­pay­ers to main­tain these facil­i­ties on an annual basis.
  4. Dr. Covington noted in a recent inter­view with Steve Kraske that each teacher in the dis­trict will be pro­vided an annual eval­u­a­tion of their per­for­mance based upon class­room obser­va­tions. We applaud this effort and to that extent, wish to know in what ways these teach­ers will also be held account­able for the aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance of their students?
  5. Additionally, Dr. Covington stated that good teach­ers have the sin­gle biggest impact on stu­dent achieve­ment. We agree that our stu­dents deserve fully cer­ti­fied and qual­i­fied teach­ers. With the excep­tion of the Teach For America teach­ers, how many teach­ers will the dis­trict retain this year who hold only sub­sti­tute or tem­po­rary certifications?
  6. Dissatisfied with the per­for­mance of the Success For All read­ing pro­gram, the school board charged the admin­is­tra­tion with the task of research­ing alter­na­tive pro­grams. Our dis­trict promised it would spend the 2008–2009 year research­ing read­ing pro­grams. It was not clear to the audi­ence who attended pre­vi­ous board meet­ings what read­ing pro­gram was even­tu­ally approved by the Board. Please pro­vide us with the details of what read­ing pro­grams have been adopted by the dis­trict for the 2009–2010 school year and in what ways the staff have been trained to instruct them.
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John Covington’s Challenge

The Kansas City Star’s Lewis Diuguid sug­gests that Dr. John Covington, KCMSD super­in­ten­dent, just may be able to reverse decades of fail­ure in the dis­trict if only he can rally the community’s sup­port. Will spruc­ing up the school yards and putting up bill­boards be enough to close the achieve­ment gap, put qual­i­fied teach­ers in the class­room and “free the schools of a cul­ture of com­pla­cency and fear?” Sounds like a mon­u­men­tal task with­out a fun­da­men­tal shift in the way our dis­trict is run.
Click on the link above to read Mr. Diuguid’s col­umn and enter your comments.

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Questions We Asked

Click above to see three ques­tions we asked of the KCMSD admin­stra­tion on September 9th. We wanted to know about plans to eval­u­ate teach­ers, plans to retain only cer­ti­fied teach­ers and plans to imple­ment proven, research-driven read­ing pro­grams in our schools.

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