New Report: Impact of Educational Quality on the Community

Posted by on September 1, 2008

Examining what schools mean to their communities

So you think that the quality of public education has major implications for your community — that good schools can have a substantial and positive effect on such things as employment and earnings, local tax revenues, the value of housing in the area, crime rates, and residents’ physical and mental health? If that’s your view, it is also the chief conclusion to be drawn from a broad review of the literature — about 150 books and articles — by the RAND Corporation. The results, summarized in a report that has been made available online, were pulled together at the request of school and community leaders of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District in California. In a nutshell, the analysis finds that better schools are associated with a higher likelihood of employment, higher wages, lower disease rates, higher property values and tax revenues, fewer crimes, increased participation by residents in cultural events, and increased economic growth. The report, by Stephen J. Carroll and Ethan Scherer, includes a bibliography.

See the report at http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/2008/RAND_DB562.pdf