Across the board excellence, not "choice," should be the primary objective for the delivery of public services

Given all that has been written about the DC Public Schools lately and test scores, I have been mulling over the big problem with the point that was made 20 years ago in In Search of Excellence, that "what gets measured gets done."

If you are measuring the wrong things, then the wrong things get done.

An example of completely missing the point is a study funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley, Annie E. Casey, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations about how transportation limitations prevent families from enrolling their students in "better" schools.

The point shouldn't be to figure out how to bus students around the city or to support carpools and other trip generation strategies. Instead it should be on building a great neighborhood-based school system, so that the need to travel to school is reduced (this is called planning for trip reduction), that the trip to school can be performed ideally by walking or bicycling or transit, rather than generating automobile trips.

The study, Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation, and School Choice found that parents are significantly less satisfied with their current school than are parents for whom transportation was not a barrier. According to the report:

• Most children who attend out-of-neighborhood schools are driven by their parents.
• Children attending charter or private schools travel much farther than children going to neighborhood schools.
• Many low-income parents say they would let their child travel farther to a better school, if they could.

SO FOCUS ON MAKING GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS, WHICH IN TURN HELP SUPPORT THE STABILIZATION AND IMPROVEMENT OF NEIGHBORHOODS, thereby achieving multiple objectives, rather than the dissipation of neighborhood, community, social, and organizational capital, by focusing instead on promoting school choice and the development of charter schools disconnected from place.

No wonder things are so "F"ouled up.

When the questions you are asking are wrong to begin with, any answers you generate are wrong also.

Interestingly, there is a low income neighborhood revitalization program in San Diego, funded by Price Charities in the City Heights neighborhood, that is focused on strengthening in-neighborhood institutions such as schools, libraries, and parks, rather than dissipating the value of neighborhood institutions.

Clustering is the most basic of strategies, of "agglomeration economies," and the development of social and other forms of capital. While this paper, The Development of the cluster concept: present experiences and further developments, is about economic development and clustering, the concept of cluster development is fully relevant to neighborhood revitalization and municipal excellence and efficiency.