KCMO district is TERRIBLE. Yet it is surrounded by districts that do work well. Charter schools at least keep people in the community. Right now anyone living in the KCMO zone with any brains and money basically sends their kids to private schools or they simple move when they have school aged kids.
Now I have heard that some city, I think maybe Boston? I dont know for sure. Years ago had this dump of an inner city school district. What the state did was they dissolved the district and placed the schools under the care of the suburban districts.