The key to good schools? Housing policy

David Rusk & Marc Eisen:

Jason Shepard’s story this week, "How Can We Help Poor Students Achieve More?," points out the strong correlation between schools with high levels of low-income students and substandard academic performance. As Shepard reports, that same point was made about the Madison schools by urban researcher David Rusk in 2001.

Rusk was a headliner at the "Nolen In The New Century" conference sponsored by Isthmus and several community and media groups. His speech was subsequently adopted for publication in Isthmus and became the first salvo in the campaign for inclusionary zoning. It’s reprinted below.(Readers are welcome to form their own conclusions on whether or not IZ has played out in Madison as Rusk outlined here.)

Rusk is the former mayor of Albuquerque. His Cities Without Suburbs, in the words of the Congressional Quarterly, "has virtually become the Bible of the regionalism movement." Rusk’s study of census data linked failing cities to their political separation from the suburbs and, conversely, successful cities to their ability to annex or be part of a regional government. His more recent book, Inside Game/Outside Game, argues that regional land-use and tax-revenue policies are more critical to turning around failing neighborhoods than anti-poverty programs.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 23, 2007 12:59 PM
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