By Dean Hubbard, Kansas City Star Editorial Advisory Board columnist

Lewis Diuguid’s recent posting after his interview with Kansas City’s new school superintendent, John Covington, outlines a clear and compelling agenda for fixing Kansas City’s school system. As noted elsewhere in the Star, the stakes couldn’t be higher for the future growth of the city. Of the many changes suggested in the article, three stand out in my mind:

1. Develop an agenda for changing the “culture of complacency and fear” that strangles the district.

2. Eliminate “do-little contracts” and non-value-adding practices.

3. Adopt interactive learning materials (including electronic textbooks) that exploit student’s interest and media savvy skills.

A fourth important change was touched on elsewhere in the Star:

4. Expand the school day and year. If this country is to compete we must at least match or exceed Japan and other high performing systems. I’d go further and opt for year-around schools interspersed with short breaks. After all, time on task matters. (All things being equal, the student who spends more time studying math is going to learn more math!)

The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that our current system is not working. In future columns I’ll expand on the incremental changes noted above, but to take a real leap forward I’d suggest something far more radical and creative: fundamentally restructure the system itself.

Currently we have three artificially divided and totally independent educational systems with very little substantive articulation: K-12, community colleges, and baccalaureate and graduate-level education. If we narrow the focus to high school and college, the system is 4 + 4: four years of high school followed by four years of college to obtain a BA. (Community colleges fit in between for some students.) As I noted previously, there are huge knowledge and skills, work habits and cultural gaps between each of the three sectors: high schools, community colleges and four-year institutions.

What if we adopted a totally integrated 3+2+3 system? Three years of high school (drop the senior year, it is a near total waste of time), followed by two years of genuine college preparatory classes for those capable of completing a three-year baccalaureate degree. Other students would be required to complete two years of serious vocation training. The five years (high school and the two transitional years) would be publicly funded. Note that the time to complete a baccalaureate degree under this scenario is still eight years, only more productive. Some gifted students could complete a degree in six years by transitioning directly from high school to college. (Students enrolled in The Missouri Academy of Math, Science and Computing on the campus of Northwest Missouri State University are currently doing just that.)

Community colleges could provide the transitional education. Pre-college and vocational training should not be offered on the same campus or blended. When that is done both are compromised. Under this model we would see higher success rates in college, a much more educated work force and greater efficiencies.

In order to transition from our current dysfunctional system to the one I envision, I’d suggest peeling off some K-12 schools, community colleges and four-year institutions into a charter-type entity governed by a single board. The Federal government is about to put up billions to change our educational system. Let’s go for some of that money to really change the system.