October 15, 2010 COMMENTARY BY: Heather Schwartz TOPICS: Education, Improving Access to Quality Public Schools, Workers & Economic Inequality, Poverty
The education reform debate is dominated by efforts to make high-poverty schools work better, but this report suggests that a more promising strategy involves providing low-income families a chance to live in more-advantaged neighborhoods, where their children can attend low-poverty public schools. Housing Policy Is School Policy, conducted by Heather Schwartz of the RAND Corporation, compares two strategies being used by Montgomery County, Maryland, that have shown promising results for their public schools. Download the report.
Most K-12 education reforms are about trying to make "separate but equal" schools for rich and poor work well. The results of these efforts have been discouraging. The Century Foundation looks at ways to integrate public schools by economic status through public school choice. At the higher education level, we examine ways to open the doors of selective and non-selective institutions to students of modest means.
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Mark Thoma is a professor of economics at the University of Oregon. His research involves the effects of monetary policy on inflation, output, unemployment, interest rates, and other macroeconomic variables.
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