Buckner among the best

Congratulations to Wichita’s Buckner Performing Arts Magnet Elementary School for being one of only five Kansas schools and one of only 287 schools nationwide to be named a national Blue Ribbon School. To qualify, public and private schools must either be among the top 10 percent academically in the state or have dramatically improved student achievement while serving a large number of disadvantaged students. Buckner met both criteria.
Buckner’s success shows that disadvantaged students can perform at a high level academically. But the rarity of the award — it’s only the third Wichita public school in the past 25 years to receive it — also shows how challenging that can be.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

6 Comments

  1. like it is
    Posted October 6, 2007 at 3:01 am | Permalink

    Great JOB

  2. Kev
    Posted October 6, 2007 at 5:59 am | Permalink

    Congraduations to them! This proves that, when managed correctly, public schools can be good schools.

  3. Kansas
    Posted October 6, 2007 at 6:17 am | Permalink

    Applauds Buckner Performing Arts Magnet Elementary School. :)

  4. kelly
    Posted October 6, 2007 at 1:25 pm | Permalink

    My granddaughter attends Buckner, and it is truly a great PUBLIC school.

  5. MPS
    Posted October 8, 2007 at 3:04 pm | Permalink

    I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but all of Kansas’s winners were elementary schools. Buckner is a special performing arts academy, primarily for special ed students.

    Where are Kansas’s blue-ribbon-winning middle and high schools? Here are some smaller states awards:

    Alabama 1 E, 1 M (math, science, tech magnet), 1 H

    Arkansas 1E, 1H

    Colorado 1E, 2H

    DC: 2E, 1M, 1H

    Georgia 7E, 3M, 2H

    Hawaii 1E, 1M

    Iowa 4E, 1H

    Kansas 5E

    Kentucky 8E, 4M, 3H

    Louisiana 2E, 2M

    Maryland 3E, 3M, 2H

    Minnesota 8E

    Mississippi 3H

    Missouri 5E

    Nebraska 1E, 1M

    New Mexico 2E, 1M, 1H

    North Dakota 1M

    Oklahoma 5E, 1M, 2H

    South Dakota 1E

    Tennessee 2E, 1M, 1H

    Washington 1E, 1H

    West Virginia 3E, 1M

    Wisconsin 2E, 3H

    Wyoming 2E

    It’s fuzzy-warm feeling for Kansas to show strength in elementary ed, and for Wichita to show strength in elementary sped, but there’s a lot more to education than this.

    Oklahoma, right across our border, won 4 middle school and 4 high school awards since 2003. Next-door Missouri has won 3MS and 6HS awards.
    Next-door Colorado has won 2MS and 4HS awards.
    Kansas has won 0 MS awards, and 2 HS awards (Baxter HS, Sumner Academy), or 1 and 3 if you count The Independent School as a K through 12 institution.

    In essence, Kansans have the A of education down, but the B and C. Unfortunately the A alone is of little value in the 21st century global economy.

  6. MPS
    Posted October 9, 2007 at 1:25 pm | Permalink

    I compiled the Blue Ribbon data from 1982-2007.

    Thirteen Kansas high schools have won.
    Blue Valley, Shawnee Mission, Olathe (JoCo) 7Topeka 2KCK 2 (Sumner Academy 2-time winner)Salina 1Baxter Springs 1

    JoCo is affluent, but affluence isn’t necessary to win a Blue Ribbon. Sumner Academy, a black-predominant school has won twice. Salina and Baxter Springs are not affluent communities.

    Just 3 hours down the I-35, Oklahoma City high schools have won 4 Blue Ribbons. OKC is not an affluent city.

    Census 2000 data (in thousands of dollars):Med Hsehold Income: Wich $39.9, OKC $34.9
    Med Fam Income: Wich $49.2, OKC $42.6Med Male Income Wich $36.5, OKC $31.6Med Fem Wich $25.8, OKC $24.4Per Cap Income Wich $20.6, OKC $19.1

    The OKC School District has a slightly smaller enrollment than the Wichita School District.

    This is an apples v. apples comparison. It excludes University of Oklahoma hometown Norman’s 2 high school Blue Ribbons, as well as the middle/upper middle class OKC suburb Edmond, winner of 3 high school Blue Ribbons.

    So why hasn’t a single Wichita high school won a Blue Ribbon in the 25 years of the program?

    I think that the major reason is, Oklahoma has a STATEWIDE campaign to improve schools at all levels. For example, in 2005-2006, 70% of Oklahoma public high schools, including smaller rural ones, had AP programs. This was above the national average of 67%.

    Kansas isn’t doing this. At 31%, Kansas was BELOW HALF THE NATIONAL AVERAGE. In fact, Kansas ranked 45TH IN AMERICA–BOTTOM FIVE Dear Readers–topping only Alaska, North Dakota, Louisiana, and Nebraska.

    In dirt-poor chicken-farming-dependent Arkansas 90% of public high schools offered AP courses in 2005-2006. In white-poverty poster-child West Virgina, 77% of schools offered AP courses. In Kentucky, 89% of public high schools offered AP courses. In Mississippi, of which large parts resemble the Third World, 44% of public high schools offered AP courses.

    AP has had far greater penetration in other small, historically backwards states due to STATE initiatives. Kansas doesn’t have one.

    So, affluent JoCo does what it wants, Topeka, with 2 Blue Ribbon high schools, does what it wants, and Wichita does what it wants. But the knowledge base to create Blue Ribbon high schools is absent here.

    Or, perhaps we should say, it is present, but the problem is a district that needs to be broken up so that citizens in the suburbs can run their own public schools. Why should Westside kids whose parents want them to go to university, who want them to go to our flagships KU and KSU, be subject to the vision of a school board that doesn’t have a single alumnus/alumna of either of our state’s top two universities, and a superintendent whose vision reflects his elementary education degree?

    I am FOR public education. SMART public education.