No doubt public schools are a primary issue of discussion planning economic goal, recruiting new business and laying foundation for a wide array initiatives intended to improve a community. It always seems the 'inner city' has the absolute worst school districts while schools on the edge of town have the best -- at least that's what the text scores and tracking data tell us.
I don't know all that. Really. I think we may not measure or tracking important components of education. Wouldn't be the first time testing of institutional infrastructure is the faulty aspect of measurement. Good schools are vastly more important to the evolution of communities on the edge of town than the evolution of communities in a well established city, especially in edge of town communities targeting growth among the highly educated families with abundant disposable income. All sorts of white flight and red-line issues muck up the testing of school district performance.
If the community composure is minority majority, less educated than average, without disposable income, bilingual and housed within maintenance-differed infrastructure then of course the tests that show how well the up-and-comers continue to do will show the down-trodden are still down-trodden. Clearly, the schools have to adjust the classroom for the neighborhood, but really, why is it that for generations it's always the poor kids who "on average" pull down the test scores? My generalizations are sure to overlook and be ignorant of important issues in the education discussion, but where there's smoke there's fire. something like that....
The structure and foundation of an economic development plan to grow "downtown" Fort Worth should be simple, but for some reasons (some obvious) municipal decision makers swing influence to losing propositions and disregard strengths. HA - figuratively and literally - I think much of the impotence rests in the lap of the good ole boy network. The innovative thinking from the past has aged out of relevance, grown withered and flaccid as things actually do change in a flexible society. As the directives reinforce themselves, the become too ridged and narrowed.
The Fort Worth potential is certainly there, more potential than ever, but the turn of the century happened almost a generation ago and the perception of thinking & decision making in Fort Worth is still pre-2K. Cities are supposed to be progressive, that's where society changes and grows.
Fort Worth is not progressive -- and that's all fine because all are certainly an equal in the way of life, but don't complain that nothing changing... when nothing changes.