It has become cliché to say that America’s economic future rests with its educated work force. However, just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean that it is not true.
As technology drives our factories and our economy, the demand for a well-educated work force continues to rise every year. These days, slightly more than one in four adults in the United States possess at least a bachelor’s degree. However, that also means that three out of four adults do not have a college degree and that group makes up the bulk of the work force.
The demand for smart workers doesn’t stop at the top. It goes all the way down to the factory floor. Today’s workers, most of whom are high school graduates, must possess skills far beyond those needed a generation ago.
The problem with trying to evaluate the public schools in a metropolitan area is that they run the gamut in terms of quality. In fact, it’s safe to say that just about every metro area has both outstanding school districts (usually in the suburbs) and absolutely atrocious districts (usually in the urban core).
| In an era of social promotion and graduation, the quality of public schools is a major concern to companies that will soon be looking to these young adults as future employees. |
In an era of social promotion and graduation, the quality of public schools is a major concern to companies that will soon be looking to these young adults as future employees.
Companies considering opening a new facility in a new metro area want to know, metro-wide, how good the schools are because their potential workers are likely to come from the metro as a whole.
Devising a means of evaluating the quality of public education among metro areas throughout the country — and basing that evaluation upon data rather than anecdotes — is certainly not easy.
Then again, it’s not impossible, either. After all, successful businesspeople don’t want to know how difficult a problem is, they want to know what the solution is.
Behind the Numbers
Each December, Expansion Management publishes the results of its annual Education Quotient ™ , a comparative ranking of 2,800 secondary school districts nationwide.
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The EQ compares these districts according to a variety of factors designed primarily to measure academic performance and a community’s financial commitment to education. (To read the 2004 Education Quotient, visit our Web site at www.ExpansionManagement.com and look under “Research Studies.”)
Using the data from this study, we grouped school districts according to their metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and weighted each district’s scores according to its total enrollment as a percentage of the metro-wide total enrollment.
Finally, in order to provide a better apples-to-apples comparison, we also grouped metro areas according to total public school enrollment of the districts included in the EQ study.
Some Observations
Perhaps the most striking observation is that the metro areas with the best public school systems overall (see page 18) are almost all small and mid-sized, and most are also home to a major research university.
Clearly, the importance of education is well understood in these communities, although only one of them — Ithaca, N.Y., in the 82nd percentile — ranked among the top 20 percent of MSAs in terms of resource spending (i.e., teacher salaries, per-pupil expenditures and student-teacher ratio).
Most of the top 20 MSAs ranked in the 50- to 60-percentile range. Clearly, spending on education is not what produced these results.
Another striking observation is that when one considers the entire MSA and not just the namesake city school district, the metros that rise to the top are quite often places with a reputation for poor public schools. A prime example is the Washington, D.C., metro.
Among MSAs with more than 250,000 students, the Greater Washington, D.C., metro topped the list, despite the fact that the District of Columbia Public Schools itself did not fare very well.
In counterbalance, however, outstanding suburban school districts like Fairfax County Public Schools in northern Virginia and Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland each have enrollments that are two to three times the size of the D.C. school district.
That’s why, when you’re comparing cities for public schools, you need to look at the entire metro area as a whole, and not just the namesake city school district.
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