A couple of weeks ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the "voucher program" created by the city of Cleveland, Ohio, did not constitute government establishment of religion and was, therefore, constitutional.
The cheers and jeers were both immediate and deafening, as advocates on both sides of the debate hailed the decision as either the salvation -- or the death -- of public education. The passage of time will prove that it was probably neither.
You might be asking yourself, right about now, why an economic development newsletter would be writing about such a controversial legal and political topic as school choice.
The reason is that this is about more than the narrow issue of school choice. Rather, it's about the future of public education in the United States, and that's a major economic development issue. In fact, there's no bigger issue facing the economic development community at the moment.
Let me clarify that point just a bit. Public education as a whole is not in trouble in the United States. It is flourishing in the suburbs, and in our small towns and rural school districts.
Where it is in crisis is in most of our major urban school districts, where dropout rates are high and learning is low. This situation isn't news to us. We've known it for a long time. Study after study -- such as Expansion Management's annual Education QuotientTM that compares nearly 2,500 school districts nationwide -- confirms it.
No, the argument is not about the problem, it's about the solution. How do we solve this problem before it strangles our economic growth and vitality? Urban economic development professionals have been grappling with the effects of this problem for decades, and it's only getting worse.
Let's face it. Without a decent education, people in America will be left behind. That's a fact. Imagine spending the rest of your life in an entry-level job -- that's the bleak future many public schools are presenting our children with. And the longer we continue on our current path, the more kids we condemn to a life of watching others live out the American Dream.
But that's only part of the problem.
We will also continue to watch our central cities slide further and further into disrepair, as jobs and the middle class continue to move out into the suburbs. Metro area populations will continue to be driven by suburban growth, while inner-city population totals decline.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to connect the dots.
If we don't do something to dramatically improve the quality of our urban school districts, our cities will continue to shrivel up and die. Is that being overly melodramatic? Probably a little bit, but not much.
One thing about the Supreme Court's recent decision is that it at least gives some children an opportunity to receive a better education and, consequently, have a better life. Do I see it as the solution to the crisis in public education? No, not by a long shot. It's simply not enough.
Neither will the remedies proposed by the other side of the debate: higher teacher salaries, smaller class sizes, more spending in general. Not that any of those things are bad -- they're certainly not. They just won't fix the problem.
The problem is not bad teachers, it's bad parents. Don't forget that school kids are just that: they're kids. They don't have great common sense, they don't always make the best decisions, they would usually rather goof off than study or go to class, they're often disruptive, their hormones are raging, and they're in the midst of trying to figure out who they are and what type of adult they'll eventually become.
Anyone who has kids knows this. You can't put them on auto-pilot and expect them to navigate their way trough school to adulthood all by themselves. They need a lot of adult supervision and guidance, much more than the schools can provide. Schools have kids for eight hours a day; somebody else has to take responsibility for the other 16 hours.
Otherwise, our schools will continue to populate our work force with people who can't read and who have no concept of a day's work for a day's pay. Employers don't exactly flock to those kinds of locations.
To expect teachers and school administrators to shoulder the entire responsibility is a cop-out, and a rather feeble one at that.
I believe strongly in public education, as do most Americans. I send my kids to public schools, as do most Americans. That's why I live in the suburbs, as do most Americans. And that's also why, when given the option, I chose office space in the suburbs. After all, life's much too short to spend in daily bumper-to-bumper commutes.
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? There are consequences.
Every week our editorial office receives dozens of press releases from all over the country announcing business expansions and relocations. Most of the expansions that take place in major metropolitan areas seem to be occurring in the outer suburbs. Only occasionally do we receive a press release for a major job-creating business project in a downtown area.
Sure, it's anecdotal evidence, but government employment and population numbers seem to bear out this trend. And if we truly want to reverse that trend, we've got to do something to improve our urban school districts.
Otherwise, that suburban town on the outskirts of your fine city will eventually become the epicenter -- and namesake -- of your metro area.
Means the article is accessible only to our magazine subscribers.
