A 6,000 student Midwestern district recently adopted a budget that would result - if all goes according to plan - in a $13.2 million deficit, or more than $2,000 per student. This follows $10 million shortfalls in each of the previous two years. Cash is dwindling. The district’s own financial consultant told its board that the “status quo will lead the district into either financial or academic bankruptcy.” Insolvency, he warned, would result in a state takeover. The district has lost 20 percent of its enrollment since 2018.
Sounds like an economically depressed community that can’t catch a break. Perhaps good jobs have moved away, leading to outmigration and a shrinking tax base. Familiar story.
Nope. This is Evanston, Illinois. Iconic, leafy suburb on the shores of Lake Michigan. Home to Northwestern University and a local population of almost 80,000 that has nudged up - not down - in recent decades. Almost 70 percent of local adults have a college degree.1 It regularly appears on lists of the top places to live in the U.S.
What about funding? By any measure, Evanston’s schools are well-resourced. According to the adequacy formula adopted by the State of Illinois, it has 117 percent of the fiscal capacity required to educate its students properly. Chicago, which borders Evanston to the south, has just 75 percent.
And yet, Evanston’s schools are nearly broke. Something feels off, right?
It’s not an isolated case. In college towns and tony suburbs, we’re seeing bad-news headlines typically associated with high-poverty urban districts.
Ann Arbor (MI) is cutting foreign language, art, and music programs to close a $25 million budget gap. At the same time, 38 percent of students are chronically absent, up from 13 percent prior to the pandemic.
Princeton (NJ) parted ways with its superintendent after just two stormy years on the job, paying her almost $250,000 in severance.
A number of prestigious districts around Boston - including Cambridge, Brookline, and Newton - have lost enrollment to private schools in recent years. Adding insult to injury, Newton also endured a divisive 11-day teacher strike.
Montclair (NJ) has thirteen ongoing federal civil rights investigations on issues such as excessive use of student seclusion and restraint.
Loudoun County (VA) has developed a “reputation problem” after its mishandling of student sexual assaults led to its superintendent being fired and criminally charged.
Berkeley (CA) closed a middle school for two years after discovering widespread dry rot that had been long undetected. It’s also facing a federal anti-Semitism investigation.
Journalists Laura Meckler and Mike Hixenbaugh have published compelling book-length accounts of battles over school integration and racial tension in Shaker Heights (OH) and Southlake (TX), respectively.
The list goes on. These are communities known for highly educated citizens, high taxes and high student achievement. People move to these places for the schools. For the robust programming, the great teaching, the competent administration, the safe hallways.
Why are so many of them in turmoil?
Possible drivers
I spent some time talking to folks, trying to get a better understanding of this (possible) trend.
Are we seeing a post-COVID parent rebellion? According to this theory, parents were disappointed by the quality of instruction they saw during Zoom school and incensed by the lack of urgency to re-open buildings. Some listened to Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story series about deficits in literacy instruction that were ubiquitous in affluent communities. They no longer trust their school systems in the same way - nor do they feel acute social pressure to keep their children in public schools.
Perhaps demographic changes are at play. Some say that more privileged districts are only now confronting challenges that have long been common in urban communities. The suburbs are getting more diverse. Addressing a wider array of student needs - and focusing on equity - can increase administrative complexity and spark backlash from affluent families who are accustomed to being the district’s top priority. A variant on this argument is that districts have become excessively concerned with social justice, and some families are bristling because they want a bread-and-butter focus on academics and achievement.
It is possible that district governance is lacking. Some boards have increased spending - especially to hire more staff - on the assumption that the public would be willing to invest more (i.e. pay higher taxes) to maintain those staffing levels. Maybe they went too far. Evanston, for instance, decided to build a new school whose construction projections have ballooned wildly over budget. Now, with the loss of so much enrollment, the district is likely to close buildings and lay off staff.
I don’t know enough about the ground-level dynamics in each of these communities to say which arguments are valid. There are probably different factors from one district to another. The symptoms themselves are quite varied. However, there is a pattern of friction that feels new.
The prevailing education storyline for decades has centered on urban districts. They had crusading superintendents, cheating scandals, state sanctions, school closures, labor battles. The suburbs had National Merit Scholars. Or so it seemed in the popular imagination.2 Now, some of the most interesting debates in education - and some of the thorniest conflicts - are happening in communities that once floated above the fray.
Why does it matter?
There’s detectible schadenfreude among advocates for urban schools when privileged districts struggle. They are tired of being compared unfavorably to peers they see as having a much lighter lift.
I submit that we should pay close attention to the new suburban disruptions for a different reason. They may preview the future of education policy, posing critical questions such as:
How should we define equity in public schools? Once upon a time, equity generally meant closing gaps related to test-based achievement and graduation rates. More recently, increased attention has been paid to differences in access to advanced coursework, severity of school discipline, availability of holistic supports, inclusiveness of curricula, and educator diversity. Districts - some of them in the suburbs - have adopted a number of new academic strategies to pursue this broader vision of equity. Examples would include limiting early access to algebra, de-tracking high school courses, and eliminating F grades. Meanwhile, progress against the old equity measures has stalled. Want an example? Evanston has just 11.7 percent of its Black students scoring proficient on state math tests - a discouraging result that is only marginally better than the figure for Chicago, 7.8 percent, even though Chicago has far fewer resources relative to student need. Neither well-funded nor under-funded schools are succeeding on core academic metrics the way they were ten years ago.
What is the future of accountability and oversight? Federal laws, including NCLB, left affluent districts almost entirely alone for decades. They were held up as exemplars, not problems. From time to time, prestigious districts would fail to make sufficient progress among key subgroups and end up on a state list, but it rarely went further. Meanwhile, struggling schools in low-income communities were frequently placed into turnaround status, forced to change leadership and sometimes handed to outside operators. Going forward, it will get more difficult for public officials to remain hands-off when suburban districts post poor results in areas like fiscal management, student attendance, and safety... on top of achievement. A possible side effect could be too little attention for city districts, which still have their own challenges.
How much funding is sufficient? As more residents of prestigious suburbs choose private schools for their children, those communities may experience erosion of the local coalitions that defend robust public education - and the high taxes it requires. District leaders must build confidence among homeowners that resources are being invested properly. Otherwise, they can expect stiffer opposition to future referenda to raise more revenue. Voters may demand more fiscal discipline and operational efficiency in exchange for dollars - much the same as happened with urban districts in the past. Evanston’s taxpayers want more than Chicago-level achievement for historically marginalized students.
What choices should be provided to families? Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs) have quickly gained prominence, particularly in red states. We can all agree they have little chance of being adopted anytime soon in blue states like New Jersey, New York, Illinois, or Massachusetts. However, keep an eye on this issue. As Mike Goldstein is showing on his podcast series, there’s a new breed of homeschooling parent taking advantage of ESAs. They are not necessarily religious or conservative. They want a personalized, curated educational experience for their children - and money from an ESA makes it affordable. Mike’s first episode focuses on a parent who grows food in her own garden and teaches kids to cook with it. There are many well-heeled, professional families who could see appeal in that type of arrangement if their local district is mismanaged to the point of bankruptcy.
Welcome to the brave new world. If suburban districts are struggling, efforts to improve them won’t be far behind. And it’s anyone’s guess what’s behind that curtain.
The national average for college degrees is 34 percent. You can find the full list of census comparison stats for Evanston here.
I don’t think it was actually the case that affluent districts lacked controversy in years past. They had plenty. But the issues often centered on luxury problems like how to increase equitable success in AP courses at schools that already had sky-high results or how much to spend on a new aquatics center. We’re now seeing tension over basic functions and stability.
Oof shaker heights. Poorly done “detracking” + endless school closures have done a number there. But there were already problems before that
If you haven’t already read it, Benjamin Herold’s book from last year called Disillusioned is all about challenges in suburban education and interestingly, Evanston is one of the communities he focuses on.