Be honest. When you think of Washington, D.C., or Phoenix or Baltimore or Philadelphia or Kansas City, Mo., do you think of good public schools? Me neither.
In fact, those cities have been fighting the perception of poor schools for decades, and the reputation of their public schools clearly has an impact on companies deciding where to place a new manufacturing facility or distribution center.
For the executives of these expanding companies, it’s not so much a concern over where their own children will attend school. For them, there’s always the private school option. No, their concern is about the quality of their future work force, most of which would be a product of those public schools.
| Top Metros for Public Schools
1. State College, Pa. MSA
2. Ithaca, N.Y. MSA
3. Lawrence, Kan. MSA
4. Iowa City, Iowa MSA
5. Sheboygan, Wis. MSA
6. Charlottesville, Va. MSA
7. Eau Claire, Wis. MSA
8. Madison, Wis. MSA
9. Columbia, Mo. MSA
10. Harrisonburg, Va. MSA
11. Wausau, Wis. MSA
12. Ames, Iowa MSA
13. Missoula, Mont. MSA
14. Grand Forks, N.D.-Minn. MSA
15. Billings, Mont. MSA
16. Appleton, Wis. MSA
17. Bloomington, Ind. MSA
18. Flagstaff, Ariz. MSA
19. Glens Falls, N.Y. MSA
20. Oshkosh-Neenah, Wis. MSA
21. Blacksburg-Christianburg-Radford, Va. MSA
22. Jonesboro, Ark. MSA
23. Burlington-South Burlington, Vt. MSA
24. Fond du Lac, Wis. MSA
25. Ocean City, N.J. MSA
SOURCE: Expansion Management’s 2006 Education Quotient. |
.
That’s a distinction that most corporate executives and site location experts have finally come to understand and appreciate. And it’s because the quality of the public schools has become an increasingly key site location factor that it’s important to take a broader view of the entire metro area’s schools.
Most metros of any size are usually characterized by an underperforming urban school district surrounded by a ring of good-to-excellent suburban school districts. The underperforming school district is almost always the namesake school district and is characterized by low graduation rates and even lower test scores. Unfortunately, those school districts have a negative impact on the reputation for the entire metro area.
What we at Expansion Management have consistently found during the past 15 years of ranking public schools throughout the United States is that those broad brush reputations are unfair and, even more important, inaccurate. To fully evaluate the quality of the public schools, you have to look well beyond the namesake urban district.
In fact, when you consider all of the suburban districts, as well as the main urban school district, the results often fly in the face of common [mis]perceptions.
What do I mean by that?
I hope you’re sitting down for this bit of news because, among large metro areas with more than 250,000 public school students, the Washington, D.C., metro ranks No. 1, followed by Phoenix, Baltimore, Minneapolis and Philadelphia.
Among mid-size metros, Raleigh-Cary, N.C., ranks No. 1, followed by Austin, Texas; Richmond, Va.; Honolulu; and Bridgeport, Conn.
Top Mid-Size Metros
(100,000 to 250,000 Students)
1. Raleigh-Cary, N.C. MSA
2. Austin-Round Rock, Texas MSA
3. Richmond, Va. MSA
4. Honolulu, Hawaii MSA
5. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn. MSA
6. Rochester, N.Y. MSA
7. Pittsburgh, Pa. MSA
8. Albuquerque, N.M. MSA
9. Columbus, Ohio MSA
10. Salt Lake City, Utah MSA
SOURCE: Expansion Management’s 2006 Education Quotient. |
Among the smaller metros (less than 50,000 public school students), State College, Pa., again ranks No. 1, followed by Ithaca, N.Y.; Lawrence, Kan.; Iowa City, Iowa; and Sheboygan, Wis.
Not surprisingly, the top 37 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) are all smaller metros, and almost all of them are home to a major research university. That fact is just one more reason why university cities will be the economic powerhouses of the future. [NOTE: Click here to read the 2006 Knowledge Worker Quotient .article, “College Towns Are at the Heart of the Knowledge Sector Economy.”
A Look Behind the Numbers
The primary research behind our metro area rankings comes from the 2006 Education Quotient ranking of every school district in the U.S. with at least 3,300 students. The most recent EQ, conducted annually by Expansion Management’s award-winning Research Department, was published in our December 2005 issue.
[The article, “How Well Are We Educating our Future Workers?” can also be found at www.ExpansionManagement.com, under “Research Studies.”[
Using the data from this study, we grouped school districts according to their particular MSA, and weighted each district’s scores according to its total enrollment as a percentage of the metrowide total student enrollment.
Top Large Metros
(Over 250,000 Students)
1. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Md.-Va.-W.Va. MSA
2. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz. MSA
3. Baltimore-Towson, Md. MSA
4. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minn.-Wis. MSA
5. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, Pa.-N.J.-Del.-Md. MSA
6. Kansas City, Mo.-Kan. MSA
7. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Va.-N.C. MSA
8. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas MSA
9. Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Mass.-N.H. MSA
10. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash. MSA
SOURCE: Expansion Management’s 2006 Education Quotient. |
For example, there are 17 school districts in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Md.-Va.-W.Va., MSA that met the criteria of at least 3,300 students. While the District of Columbia Public Schools fared poorly in our EQ study, it only makes up 8.6 percent of the overall MSA enrollment, while the Fairfax County, Va., and Montgomery County, Md., public schools — which are among the nation’s best — make up more than 38 percent of the total MSA enrollment. In fact, nearly 55 percent of all students in the Washington metro attend school in Gold Medal districts.
The same basic dynamics also apply to all of the large metros that made our Top 10 list.
The top 20 percent of all Metro Areas (there are 362 MSAs, plus eight in Puerto Rico) were designated as “ 5-Star Public Schools Metros “ .
What Does This Mean for Expanding Businesses?
Clearly, the quality of the public schools is a pretty good indicator of the type of manufacturing work force a company is likely to encounter in a particular community.
In fact, if anyone on your company’s site location team tells you that schools are not an important factor in your decision-making process, my suggestion is that you find something else for them to do because they don’t understand what they’re talking about. They’re probably focusing on where management will send their kids to school, rather than on how well educated your future workers are.
Look at it this way: 28 percent of adults in the United States have a college degree, which means that 72 percent do not — and most of your manufacturing and distribution workers will come from that pool of workers.
| Get the Complete METRO PUBLIC SCHOOLS QUOTIENT Results for all 362 MSAs Comparing Cities is OUR business.
Beginning April 15, the newly expanded METRO REPORTS feature of the RELOCATION TOOLKIT now includes 100,000 data elements comparing metro areas throughout the U.S. A one-year subscription to our new Relocation Tool Kit will provide you unlimited access to the complete results for all 362 MSAs for each of Expansion Management’s annual research studies AS SOON AS THEY ARE PUBLISHED.
Visit www.RelocationToolKit.com for details and prices. |
And because the local labor pool usually extends throughout an MSA, it’s equally important to consider all of the public schools throughout the metro area.
It’s not enough to determine where the best individual school in a particular metro, because the site location process is not really about where you or your transferring executives will send your own kids.
Rather, in the site location process, you need to remember that the public schools are the institutions that are producing your future work force. How well they do their job in educating your future workers will, in a very real sense, determine how successful your operation will be in that location.
That’s the real reason why public schools are an important site location factor.
NOTE: Detailed results of the 2006 Metro Area Public Schools Quotient™ are available for all 362 MSAs on our Relocation Toolkit web site at
www.RelocationToolkit.com
For a FREE subscription to Expansion Management, click here.
Means the article is accessible only to our magazine subscribers.
