I don’t have any children in the Norfolk Public Schools, never have and never will. Yet I am dismayed to learn of the ever-widening scandal related to “irregularities” on the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests that seemingly hits the front page of The Virginian-Pilot almost daily. Not because it reflects poorly on the school system, the appointed school board, and the City Council – it does – but because it hurts one of my most prized assets: my home.
Conventional wisdom has long said that there is a correlation between property values and schools: the better the schools, the higher the property values. In a recent article, realtor Sharon Alva pulled together the research on the topic.
Studies have shown that schools are pivotal in a buyer’s consideration of where to buy a home. A survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors concluded that Americans rank quality of public schools second only to crime when deciding where to live.
[…]
UCLA economist Sandra E. Black calculated that parents are willing to pay 2.5 percent more for housing per 5 percent increase in test scores. This increases property values for all homeowners. Moving from the bottom 5 percent of schools to the top 5 percent is associated with an 18- to 25-percentage point difference in value according to a 2003 study by UCLA, Dartmouth and Kennedy School of Government researchers.
I’ve lived in Norfolk for more than 30 years. I’ve watched the revitalization efforts of the city – Ghent, Robin Hood, Lafayette Shores, East Ocean View, and downtown, to name a few – yet the realtors continue to steer new Hampton Roads arrivals away from Norfolk. Many of those moving into the renovated areas of our fair city have the means or make the choice to send their children to private school or to home school.
Where are the advocates for the public schools? Outside of the employees, I’ve not heard from any.
Is it any wonder that the revitalization projects in Norfolk always require taxpayer dollars? Look at the projects I mentioned above: were any done solely with – or even a majority of – private money? When Norfolk launched its “Come Home to Norfolk” campaign a few years ago, they brought in a consultant from South Carolina. I recall asking him what was the one thing that Norfolk could do to make the project a success. He gave the answer I expected: a great school system.
Despite the investment of Norfolk taxpayers, our school system is not where it should be. And I place that responsibility squarely on the shoulders of City Council. It is as if they missed the forest while looking at the trees. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t solve the problem. Passing the buck to the appointed school board doesn’t solve the problem. Instead of investing in holes in the ground, Council should have made the connection that our schools are the priority, since so much of the rest follows from that.
Had Norfolk made the schools a priority – and I don’t mean by spending more money – we as a community would understand our vested interest in seeing them succeed. Perhaps instead of shoveling dirt at the ground breaking of this or that project, our council should have been volunteering in the schools, setting an example for the rest of us. (And no one has ever explained to me why private schools can require parental involvement but public schools can’t.)
In this “me first” society of ours, I’ll admit that I’m selfish in wanting my property values to go up and my taxes to go down. I don’t see that happening unless Norfolk has the best school system in the region. Whatever it takes to get there, I’m for it.
If it takes an elected school board, I’m for it.
If it takes replacing the council members that chose this school board that chose this superintendent that chose these administrators, I’m for it.
And because it affects what is most people’s largest single assets, we should all want it.
And the side benefit? A well-educated populace.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Once you let the schools go to hell, it’s hard to get them back. It is not the money spent in the schools, and teachers can only do so much. The number one indicator of school performance is the parents. Not parental involvement with the schools, but with their kids.
Private schools can require parental involvement because they have an enforcement mechanism. They can kick the kids out. How can you do that in public schools?
Yes, it’s hard. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all be trying.
No, you can’t kick the kids out. But perhaps there should be some mechanism to encourage parental involvement – and by that I mean the volunteer time at the school.
Shortly after I moved back to Virginia from San Diego, I had a conversation with a former Maury H.S. classmate, who still lived in Norfolk. When I asked his wife if they were sending their kids to Maury, she quickly replied, “My God, no! We aren’t going to have our kids have to deal with a bunch of animal and we aren’t going to have them used for a bunch of social experiments.”
Her quick, vituperative response caught me completely by surprise, especially considering my classmate’s prior political work for Democratic and social justice campaigns.
My opinion of Maury, is that it is still the very best of Norfolk’s public schools. However, even thirty years ago, we had plain-clothes cops patrolling the halls and we still had a few minor race-riots. Most students would avoid going into the basement level of the school early in the morning or late in the day, since you were more likely to get robbed or stuck with a knife, during those times.
The way Maury used to deal with the differences in their students’ abilities and aspirations, was like a layer cake. If you were a “troubled youth” your classes were mostly on the first and basement levels. The kids who were trying to get an education or had plans for college, had classes on the top two floors of the building. All of the AP classes were on the top floor. As a consequence, if you were taking the AP classes, you would likely never have to deal with the violence prone characters who haunted the basement.
I can see why parents, who want the best for their children, would pull their kids out of the public schools. We have reached the point where there is so much stratification of our education system, that many areas look like a third world country; with the richer people sending their kids to private academies, while the only folks left for the public system are those who can’t afford any alternative.
I wonder how my high school experience at Maury would have been degraded if the top twenty percent of students had been siphoned off by private, charter, and alternative programs? When I was at Maury, the mayor’s kid was a classmate, as were the daughters of the school board superintendent, and many of the sons and daughters of Norfolk’s most wealthy families. I learned a great deal from those “country club” kids. Now, most of those kids among our current students are off at White-flight academies, special magnet programs, or are home schooled.
One solution that I have heard of, is to return to local control of schools, along with a return to neighborhood schools, where faculty staff and students mostly come from the same part of the community.
Related to this issue is the need to restore community stability, but to get that done, we need to establish more community homeowner’s associations, and/or repeal the Fair Housing Act so that property owners reacquire their right to sell homes to whomever they wish.
Stable communities will lead to better schools, not the other way around; and we will never get there by simply handing over more money to the education establishment.
I understand that parents want what’s best for their kids – which is why I have a hard time faulting them for putting them in private schools. At the same time, I, like you, know what it is like to go to school with kids from backgrounds other than my own. I think it benefits everyone.
Which brings me back to the issue of parental involvement. Norfolk has already returned to neighborhood schools for elementary and middle schools. Certainly not all of the communities are unstable. So that’s no excuse.
I’m convinced that everyone is trying to give their kids an edge – nothing wrong with that – and feel that they cannot do that unless the kids are not in public schools. I think that’s the wrong approach.
(By the way – we didn’t have security in the schools when I was in high school. And while there were different classes for different groups of kids, they weren’t separated by the floors.)
There’s a bit of the free market here in Hampton Roads. It’s not like one big regional school system. It’s not difficult to move from Norfolk to Chesapeake, to Virginia Beach, Suffolk. It’s mere miles.
You and I have talked about what the problems are and how to solve them. Appointed school boards don’t do it.
I’m amazed people have all sorts of studies and statistics about economic levels, demography, and I’ve never seen anyone cite a statistic about fatherless homes. I’ll bet a shiny, new nickel it’s the greatest determinant of student behavior and performance on the aggregate.
You’re right, though. Norfolk hasn’t had education a priority. I think VB’s revenue formula and elected school board has it right. Takes the politics out of budgeting.
There really is no excuse for poor schools, and no better barometer of a city’s vitality than the quality of its education system. Norfolk’s children deserve the finest education they can get, no matter where they live. Anything less devalues the city and all who live in it.
Good education is still the best route to success and the best way up and out of poverty. To be sure, there are challenges. But the answer is not, as Brian suggests, to point fingers at fatherless homes–such a tired excuse– or simply abandon the system for one in another city. Neither does anything to fix the problem; that the children of affluent households are siphoned out to private schools only further weakens the social fabric of public education.
Success in education lies in allowing good teachers–not mediocre teachers or teachers who are just biding their time or teachers who have to put up with a lot of bureaucratic politics–the time and space they need to do their work well. I’m pretty sure that most teachers felt at least once in their career that they could make a difference. Let’s let them do it. I’ll bet every successful person you know can cite at least one good teacher, if not more, who made a meaningful difference in his or her life.
Many teachers and most teachers’ unions resist the idea of making teachers more accountable because they can’t agree on what constitutes a fair measure of comparison. But if educators wants to be taken more seriously and compensated in a way that reflects their contribution, they must figure this out, isolate the conditions that obstruct their progress and work to eliminate those obstructions. Noting else matters and nothing less should be accepted by citizens of Norfolk.
I think the correlation gets it backwards: areas with higher property values have better public schools since it’s usually property taxes paying for them. Thus, areas with a larger tax base can afford to spend more on schools.
I agree on the importance: if this region is ever to become an economic powerhouse, our schools are going to need to turn out top-notch students.
More money in the schools does not correlate to better education. Also, money from the high-property-value areas, such as Northern Virginia, is siphoned off to the other areas of the state.
You’re both right, sort of. Throwing more money at education by itself is not the solution. Some of the nation’s worst public school systems (e.g. Newark, Detroit) have the highest per-pupil expenditures.
Northern Virginia residents, particularly in Fairfax County, place a high priority on education and are willing to support those priorities with their pocketbooks. You can see the evidence of this priority in the disproportionate representation of Fairfax County kids in the freshmen classes of the state’s more elite public universities.
Hampton Roads voters, on the other hand, place a higher priority on being cheap and keeping the already low taxes as low as possible, no matter what the mediocre outcome of our public education system.
By the way, Warren, local property tax money collected for local schools does not leave localities. That money is never in the State’s hands. Both Hampton Roads and NoVa, on the other hand, underwrite other parts of the state when it comes to state income taxes.
In any event, the entire HR area gets a MUCH larger portion of its school funding from the state than NOVA does.