Smart, talented people are the primary ingredient for successful economic development. Strategies to grow a creative workforce connect to education beginning as early as childcare. Competitive Communities understand that investment in human capital through quality education is a more effective long-term plan than incentives to attract companies. In addition, these brainpower cultures are more entrepreneurial resulting in greater numbers of business owners and more local wealth. Connecting brainpower and innovation makes sense. Understanding the relationship between education and quality place is equally as important in effective economic development strategies for Competitive Communities.
 
Education policies and community growth policies are often unintentionally connected by undesirable outcomes of disconnected planning. Parents want a good education for their children. Home ownership and property values are higher in good school districts. Lower performing school districts tend to have more poverty and lower property value. Schools influence settlement patterns in communities. As jobs and wealth move to greener pastures, schools eventually follow. New school facilities serving low-density growth stretch school system resources resulting in abandonment and consolidation of inner schools serving a majority poverty population. School sprawl contributes to the spatial mismatch between poverty and jobs. This cycle of growth divides communities into socio political economies of haves and have-nots. Leaving out a segment of the population from opportunities available in the knowledge economy is not a successful strategy for aspiring brainpower communities. Public resources are inadequate to overcome this disparity without changing growth patterns. Connecting education planning (brainpower) with physical growth (quality place) and economic development (innovation) planning is the formula for Competitive Communities.
 
In a 2004 Knowledge Works Foundation report by Jonathan Weiss, Public Schools and Economic Development, confirms the role of education in shaping communities. Key findings include:

“There is a clear consensus among researchers that education enhances productivity.

Research indicates that quality public schools can help make states and localities more economically competitive.

Public schools indisputably influence residential property values.

Emerging evidence suggests that the quality, size, and shape of school facilities themselves affect economic development.”
 
Additional information about both short and long term economic development roles of education beginning with child care is found in an April 2004 report by the Cornell University Department of City and Regional Planning, Investing in New York – An Economic Analysis of the Early Care and Education Sectors.


If you are interested in how schools should fit into our communities check out a 2003 NCEF publication, Schools as Centers of Communities: A Citizens Guide for Planning and Design.

 For additional information check out these entries on our blog, Knowledge Centers for Competitive Communities, Schooling Growth  and Learning the Hard Way.