by Lee Barfield and Bartley Danielsen, Guest Columnists, The Tennessean - Gov. Bill
Lee has a unique opportunity to combine good education policy with
effective economic development and environmental policy for low-income
communities across the state.
Public
school assignment policies currently place heavy burdens on low-income
neighborhoods. Since children are assigned to schools based on where
they live, financially secure families leave areas with bad public
schools and cluster in areas with good schools.
For example, the most recent census
shows that Williamson County has 34 percent more children ages 5-to-9
than should be expected given the number of preschool children. Next
door, Davidson County has 16 percent fewer 5-to-9 year olds than we
should expect.
As wealthier families "vote with their
feet" for high-quality schools, their neighborhoods thrive. Jobs are
plentiful, incomes are higher, crime rates lower and grocery shelves
are stocked with healthy options. Those left behind in concentrated
poverty suffer from joblessness, lower incomes, higher crime rates and
food desert conditions.
Children who grow up in these
neighborhoods suffer life-long consequences, and it's not just because
their schools are bad. Recent research finds that growing up in
concentrated poverty is even more damaging than attending a
high-poverty school, probably because we spend much more time in our
neighborhoods than in our schools. You get the picture. When school
assignments end up concentrating poor people in poor neighborhoods,
everyone in those neighborhoods suffer.
Of course, there are solutions. The
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development proposes requiring
suburbs to build more low-income housing so that inner-city families
can be transferred into these communities.
This program has proven to be effective for younger children, but it is expensive to implement on a large scale.
Fortunately, a less expensive option
exists - one with the environmental benefit of attracting
middle-income families back into cities.
Recent research shows that
school-choice programs have a significant positive impact on
communities that lack good public schools because their programs allow
families to disentangle housing choices from education choices.
When parents can choose their child's
schools, they are no longer concerned about a bad school assignment.
They can choose a more convenient neighborhood near work, enjoying a
shorter commute (an environmental positive) and maintaining a higher
quality of life.
And this effect is not limited to
dense urban areas. Positive neighborhood effects from school choice
programs have been found in suburban and rural communities too.
Tennessee legislators are now
discussing whether (and how) to adopt Education Savings Accounts, or
ESAs. From an economic development perspective, ESAs are the most
flexible (and therefore most powerful) school choice tool ever
developed. ESAs don't just allow parents to choose a better education
option for their child, they allow parents to choose the absolute best
option that they can find.
Recently, Environmentalists for
Effective Education and the American Federation for Children have
worked together to develop a blueprint for implementing "Tennessee
Economic Development Zone ESAs."
This program would ensure that
residents of low income neighborhoods have access to ESAs. Initially,
almost all of the recipients would be low-income families because
financially secure families have avoided these neighborhoods. But over
time, these neighborhoods will benefit from increasing diversity.
Of course, some critics argue that
only the poorest children should get an ESA. The children of doctors,
nurses and engineers should be excluded. But this misses the bigger
issue. We should celebrate when our communities are economically and
culturally diverse. We all know that ending concentrated poverty
benefits poor children and brings jobs for parents.
The best way to fix the problems of
high-poverty neighborhoods is to reform how education is delivered in
them. Economic Development ESAs are good education policy, good
environmental policy and good job creation policy.
Lee Barfield is a retired attorney
who lives in Nashville and serves on the board of directors for the
American Federation for Children. Dr. Bartley R. Danielsen is president
of Environmentalists for Effective Education, and a finance and real
estate professor at North Carolina State University.
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