Goldstein: Why Cities Increasing Faster Than Suburbs Is Good For Education

It appears that, for the first time since World War II, major American ubran cities are increasing at a higher rate than those of suburban areas.  There seems to be a number of reasons for this that has taken place.  There are also a number of reasons to be skeptical that this is just a temporary statistical "blip" and not a long-term trend.  Here is an exert from Will Oremus of Slate:

This shift has been in the making for over a decade. As early as 1999, a Brookings report noted that “declining crime statistics, falling unemployment rates, balanced municipal budgets, and a resurgence in downtown living have cities across the country claiming that they are in the midst of a renaissance.” Back then, though, those claims were undermined by Brookings’ finding that suburbs were still outpacing cities in job growth. According to Frey’s new analysis, just five of the largest metropolitan areas saw greater urban than suburban population growth between 2000 and 2010. (One caveat: The U.S. Census itself can't confirm Frey's numbers, since it doesn't break down the data in this way.)

The question now is whether the past year’s reversal is a blip or a leading indicator of America’s urban future. If you think it’s the former, you blame the housing bust and the economy for the suburbs’ short-term slowdown, and predict that they’ll resume their growth when the market clears.

In any case, let's suppose this is a long-term trend.  If that is a case, than this means potential benefits for American education and the cause for integration of public schools, according to Dana Goldstein:

We know school segregation is a major social crisis because—despite the good performance of some high-poverty schools—poor children tend to have better academic outcomes when they attend school alongside middle class students.There is also some evidence that highly effective teachers prefer working in integrated schools.And it is my own strongly held belief that all children benefit from exposure to other children whose backgrounds are different from their own.

With more middle and upper-income young families now showing a predilection for urban living, city school districts have a wonderful opportunity to create more integrated schools. There are several ways they can do this:

1. By purposefully drawing school enrollment boundaries to encompass both high-income and low-income housing stock. My small Brooklyn neighborhood of Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill contains multimillion dollar, single-family brownstones, as well as a large housing project. Yet only one of the local elementary schools is truly diverse while the other two—both in easy walking distance—are segregated.

2. By asking charter schools to embrace diversity as part of their mission statements, and recruit students from across all races and classes, instead of focusing solely on poor children.

3. By creating magnet schools that draw students from across the city, and that do not require high test scores for enrollment. (Chris Hayes’ new book, Twilight of the Elites, is eloquent on the problem of frantic, expensive test-prep contributing to urban school segregation.)

4. And by attacking residential segregation head-on, in part through the sort of housing policies that Slate’s Matt Yglesias proposes in his book, The Rent is Too Damn High.

All of these suggestions have merit to them, and should at least be up on the table for debate in policy and political circles.  I do have one suggestion for the second proposal above regarding charter schools, assuming they are part of this picture to begin with.  Right now, they do more to hurt the cause of integration in public schools than help.  And it is one thing to "ask" charter schools to embrace diversity, but I think they will.  I am uneasy about how selective charters would become if they are given the ability to recruit white, middle-class students.  The one fear I have is that they may overrecruit white, middle-class students who tend to perform better on standardized tests.  School boards and politicians have to make sure that in such a scenario as Goldstein is proposing, that such selectivness doesn't take place.

I would also add that redrawing boundary lines is a good suggestion, but good luck getting the public and local politicans (especially in more, white suburban districts) to agree to it.  Here in the Kansas City metro area on the Kansas side for example, I have a hard time imagining Johnson County schools (Shawnee Mission, De Soto) agreeing to share students with Wyandott County schools (Turner, KCK).  Goldstein expresses similar skepticism at the end of her post:

Sadly, no American governor or big city mayor I know of has committed to school integration as a central, clearly articulated facet of his or her education reform agenda. In part, this is because so many middle and upper class parents still feel skittish about sending their children to school with poor kids, and so “school choice” policies have evolved, in many cities, as a way to de facto segregate the children of the creative class. If we continue down this road, we simply won’t be taking advantage of the social, civic, and academic upsides of our rapidly diversifying cities. That would be a national shame.