Using the data from our 2003 Education Quotient TM study, which compared 2,800 secondary school districts throughout the country, we grouped the individual districts according to their respective MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area). Every secondary school district in the U.S. with an enrollment of at least 3,300 students was included in the survey.
For those unfamiliar with the EQ, which Expansion Management magazine has published annually for the past 13 years, school districts throughout the country are compared against one another according to a wide variety of categories, such as college board scores, graduation rates, beginning and average teacher salaries, per pupil expenditures and student-teacher ratio. College board scores and graduation rates, which measure the output of the education process, are most heavily-weighted, while community and state spending on education is less important to the overall final (EQ) score.
EQ scores are calculated as a percentile compared to the other 2,800 school districts, with 1 being the lowest and 99 being the highest. In order to come up with an EQ score for the entire metro area, each school district’s relative contribution was weighted based upon its enrollment as a percentage of the total metro student enrollment.
Let’s use the Washington, D.C., metro area as an example.
The namesake District of Columbia Public Schools, while poorly ranked in comparison the rest of the nation’s schools, accounts for only 8.7 percent of the overall MSA public school student population. On the other hand, the suburban Montgomery, Md., school district is twice as large, accounting for 17.5 percent of the overall MSA student population. Just across the Potomac, the even larger suburban Fairfax County, Va., Public Schools makes up another 20.3 percent.
Both of these suburban districts are among the best in the entire country. In fact, 53.2 of all public school students in the D.C. metro area attend school in Gold Medal districts. In order to receive a Gold Medal designation, a district must rank in the top 17 percent of all school districts nationwide, while Blue Ribbon districts rank in the top one-third.
The situation is much the same in Kansas City, where the Kansas City, Mo., school district (which ranked in the bottom 9 percent nationally) and the Kansas City, Kan., district (bottom 8 percent) combine to make up only 25.5 percent of the overall metro student population.
On the other hand, 45.4 percent of the students in the Kansas City metro attend school in Gold Medal districts, while another 16.8 percent attend Blue Ribbon districts. In other words, nearly two of every three students in the Kansas City MSA are in districts that rank in the top one-third of all school districts nationwide. Unfortunately, one in four students in the metro attends school in a district that ranks in the bottom 10 percent nationally.
You could do the same analysis for each of the big cities on this list. The important fact for economic developers trying to attract and retain businesses in these metros is that, after decades of having to waffle when businesses asked about public schools, now you have something you can point to that quantifies what you’ve always felt in your gut.
A complete list of the Top 20 large, medium and small metro area public school rankings will be published in Expansion Management’s upcoming 2004 Atlas & Guide in April.
Bill King is the editor of Expansion Management magazine and can be reached at BillKing@penton.com.
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