R. Crosby Kemper III

School choice has focused charters, independent schools and district schools on quality. While on the whole charters have performed about as well, or factoring in demographics maybe slightly better, than district schools both in Kansas City and nationally there are still too many failing schools that face no consequences. Consequences for failure is a philosophical basis of the charter school movement which is why a number of us got together with the KCMSD last year to write an MOU on unified standards and consequences based on the value added performance model being prepared by Dr. Michael Podgursky and others. I believe very strongly in this idea and in the general accountability of charter schools.”

Crosby Kemper III is the Director of the Kansas City Public Library and former CEO of UMB Financial Corporation. Educated at Pem-Day, Andover, Eton and Yale, he has taught English at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China and been a bookseller in Grand Central Station in New York City. He is the editor of, and contributor to, Winston Churchill: Resolution, Defiance, Magnanimity, Good Will published by the University of Missouri Press. In 2003-04, he chaired the Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Missouri for Governor Holden. He served on the board of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which operates  Monticello; and the boards of the Kansas City Symphony, Union Station and Lapham’s Quarterly. He helped Marilyn Strauss found the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival and was its first Board Chair. He also founded and chaired the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. He co-founded and is chairman of The Show-Me Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank for the state of Missouri. In 2008, Crosby received the Difference Maker Award from The Urban League of Kansas City; and he and the Library received the Gold Medal for Libraries from the Institute for Museum and Library Services presented at the White House by former librarian, Laura Bush. In 2009 he was inducted into the Mid-America Education Hall of Fame by the Kansas City Kansas Community College Endowment Association. In 2010 he was appointed to the Missouri Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission by Governor Jay Nixon, and received the William F. Yates Medallion for Distinguished Service from William Jewell College and the 2010 Harmony Humanitarian Hoffman Legacy Award. In 2012, he was an inaugural recipient of the Prime Time Champion Award issued by the Shepherd Center Central.