In the new report Underwater: What’s Sinking Families in Philadelphia, Public Citizens for Children and Youth highlighted our Place Matters report and joined our thinking by taking an asset-risk approach. PCCY presents the main risk for families as economic stress, the main asset as school quality, and the outcome being social mobility.
The strong relationship between school quality and social mobility makes clear that the city and state must commit to strengthening schools, especially in areas where economic stress is the greatest and thus social mobility is the most crucial for residents. PCCY used City Council District 10 as an example to demonstrate this relationship. Overall, District 10 has the highest school quality and the highest social mobility score. This is despite a relatively high rate of family poverty in the area – the fourth highest of all the districts. Reading the full report from PCCY acknowledges that the relationship between these three factors is a bit more complicated; however, it’s clear the important role schools play in social mobility.
We join PCCY in asking the city and state to make investments in schools, especially the ones where families are struggling the most financially, so that every community has great schools and every child has the opportunity to rise up the economic ladder.
Will you join us and others in using an asset-risk approach to decision making? Let’s stop using maps that only show the City’s problems, but rather create and use maps that recognize the assets and provide a path to real solutions.
Read and download the full Underwater: What’s Sinking Families in Philadelphia report from PCCY.
Read and download the full Place Matters report from the Scattergood Foundation.