By Marilyn Simmons and Arthur Benson, Special to The Kansas City Star

The Kansas City School District is in full turnaround mode, as well it should be.

The district has been failing its children. Educational achievement is unacceptably poor.
The state of Missouri has rightfully criticized the district in eight major findings, focused largely on governance and educational achievement.

But since June the school board has been on a track to effect a complete turn-around of the district.

First, we decided on basic educational principles that we believe are necessary. We call that set of principles “learning for deep understanding.”

They include teachers coaching all students through active learning to build their own understanding to a depth that allows the students to apply that knowledge to new circumstances and to explain what they are doing and why.

Teaching for deep understanding while making state-required “adequate yearly progress” is both desirable and necessary.

With these principles in mind, we are searching the nation for a highly qualified educational leader to be our superintendent.
While that effort continues, the board adopted new statements of the district’s vision and mission.

Not using the high-sounding pabulum common to such statements, this board defined the educational principles that will lead all our students to deep understanding.

Those principles, spelled out on our Web site, include inquiry-based, project-oriented, collaborative instruction led by teachers who continually refine their skills through job-embedded professional development. (Go to www2.kcmsd.net and click on “District MSIP Progress Report.”)

The board included these principles in our accountability plan that we will soon file with the state.

That plan will spell out how the district intends to see that those principles are implemented, with accountability lines running from the board to the superintendent, and through the superintendent to every employee and student in the district, drawing parents and the community into the plan.

This accountability plan will address — and soon fix — all eight of the state’s criticisms of the district, starting immediately.

Early next year we will hire a superintendent who fully shares our commitment that all students can and should learn to deep understanding.

As a school board, we have only one employee to oversee, the superintendent. We intend to permit that superintendent to implement the district’s educational mission by executing its accountability plan.

We do this with the full expectation that sooner, rather than later, there will be abundant evidence that our students are learning to deep understanding and making adequate yearly progress.

In the words of our new vision statement, all of our students will be on the path to becoming equipped to pursue higher education, obtain family-supporting employment, and contribute to the well-being of the community.

And we expect the community to hold us to these promises.

Marilyn Simmons is president of the Kansas City Board of Education. Arthur Benson is board vice president.