No other subject even comes close. The airwaves and journal pages are full of stories analyzing the labor situation from a dozen different angles, and all of them spell bad news for the future.

Does that mean that the United States has suddenly turned into a nation of dolts? Of course not. 

What it does mean is that, given the size and complexity of our economy — as well as the nature of the industries we are likely to lead in — finding the right mix of quantity and quality of workers at a price companies can afford, will be an even greater challenge than it is now.

With nationwide unemployment approaching 4 percent, the U.S. labor market is tight.  On top of that, with smaller family sizes, fewer people will be entering the work force in the future. And, as the baby boomers slide ever nearer to retirement, the average age of an American worker is now over 40. 

All of this portends a labor market that will drive businesses in ways heretofore unimagined. More than ever before, business location decisions will be driven by the quality and availability of workers, and the winners in this new paradigm will be those communities which are producing the best and brightest workers.

How will businesses find those communities? Simple … by looking at their schools.  For the past nine years, Expansion Management has evaluated secondary school districts throughout the nation as a way of helping our readers compare the type of work force they are likely to encounter should they decide to expand or relocate their companies to a particular location.

That’s why we do it. We have no particular stake in the ongoing education debate, except as it applies to the quality of the graduates our schools are producing. We leave the matter of how best to produce those results to parents and educators.

Who gets picked?

There are about 8,500 degree-granting secondary school districts in the United States with enrollments of at least 700 — our minimum for the study — according to the U.S.  Department of Education. Because our purpose is to provide our readers with a comparative snapshot of the type of work force they are likely to encounter in various communities throughout the country, we don’t even attempt to evaluate all of them. In fact, we only evaluate about 15 percent.

However, since we want to give our readers as broad a sampling as possible, we identify every U.S. city with a population of at least 25,000 and make sure that we evaluate at least one school district from that city. For larger metro areas, we obviously include several districts.

Due to space considerations, we publish a shortened list of school districts in the magazine itself. 

It’s results that matter

People differ on how to evaluate our schools.  We prefer to evaluate them by looking at the results — how much did students learn and did they stay in school long enough to finish what they started. We focus on these aspects because that’s what employers look at.

The Graduate Outcome Index measures the end product of the education process and includes graduation rates and college board scores (SAT and ACT). This is the most heavily weighted index.

College board tests are still the only national standardized criteria by which we can measure knowledge among high school seniors. We also take into consideration the percentage of students taking the test, since some schools encourage everyone to take the test while others discourage all but their best and brightest from taking it.

Graduation rates, in our judgment, provide a pretty good indicator of the type of work ethic you’re likely to encounter in that community. Quitting establishes a negative pattern of behavior that will usually repeat itself often throughout life.

The Resource Index measures a community’s financial commitment to its children’s education, and consists of student-teacher ratios, per-pupil expenditures and teacher salaries.

It’s great for everyone to want terrific schools, but a community must be willing to commit resources to that end since it will go a long way in determining what type of community will exist a decade or two from now.

Obviously, not all communities have the same ability to fund public education. The greater a community’s resources — which we measure in the community index — the greater its ability to spend money on education. 

One would expect to see a correlation between a community’s affluence and its spending on education. While you may often find communities with little affluence spending heavily on education, it may be cause for concern to find highly affluent communities that spend very little — relative to the rest of the county — on educating the next generation.

The third category is the Community Index, which measures the level of affluence and adult education in the district.

Studies have shown for a long time that the children of college graduates do better than children of parents who are high school graduates. Ditto for children of more affluent parents versus children of welfare recipients. It’s when you find districts with a low community index and a high graduate outcome that you know that you have found a diamond-in-the-rough work force. 

The final index — the Education Quotient — is a combination of the above three indices, weighted to reflect the greater importance of the graduate outcome and the resource index.

For the mathematically inclined, all four of the indices are calculated on a scale of 50 to 150, with 100 being the midpoint.

Ranking the districts

As in years past, the top districts received the Gold Medal designation and are among the nation’s top performing schools. Schools in the second quintile are also well above the national average and received the Blue Ribbon designation.

Most school districts fall within the middle category and received a Green Light designation. These are all good, solid school districts.

The final two quintiles scored below the national average and received, in order, Yellow Flag and Red Zone designations.

Finding enough well-educated workers who can master today’s more technically demanding job skills is the No. 1 challenge among today’s growing companies. We are now in the midst of an era where brainpower – from top to bottom – is absolutely critical to a company’s success. 

Communities that do not invest in educating their future work force will find themselves at a serious disadvantage when it comes to competing with other locations for the best companies and the best jobs.

So, if you want to know where the economic growth will be in the next 30 years, look at the schools. It’s as simple as A, B, C.

For the entire Special 1999 Ratings Issue contact knichols@newhope.com.