Better schools will bring better jobs to Georgia

In covering the state Legislature for more than a decade, I’ve listened to dozens of lawmakers insist that low corporate taxes and generous tax breaks are essential to securing Georgia’s economic future. Few argue that the state’s destiny depends on better schools and smarter workers.

Two new reports cast doubt on Georgia’s strategy to use low costs rather than an educated work force as its calling card.

Last week, the Atlanta Regional Commission issued a report showing a stark decline in metro area jobs that pay $5,700 per month or more. According to the ARC, more than 40,000 such jobs have been lost since 2001, while many new jobs created in that period were in the low-paying service sector.

In addition, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, funded by the nonprofit Kauffman Foundation, released a study last week of the states best able to thrive in a knowledge-dependent, global, entrepreneurial economy that will rely on highly skilled and highly technical workers.

Leading the 2008 State New Economy Index were Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and Virginia, all states with high-achieving schools and more educated residents. Georgia ranked 21st on the list. In 2007, the state ranked 18th.

The downside of Georgia’s reliance on low taxes and low wages is that the taxes and wages can never be low enough. Industries recruited on that basis are quick to pack up and go when they find even cheaper places to do business. They’ve done so in droves, moving factories to India, Mexico and China. That’s left Georgia with a large unskilled labor force and a shrinking unskilled labor market. According to the ITIF study, Georgia ranks 35th in work-force education.

Eight years ago, University System Chancellor Stephen Portch irked many lawmakers when he criticized the state for its anti-intellectual culture. He gave Georgia’s k-12 system an “F” for educational attainment, a “D” for educational climate, and warned that “we can’t continue to be the No. 1 importer of college degrees.”

Now even that status is in doubt. Georgia ranked 41st in the category of “immigration of knowledge workers,” which means the state is luring fewer highly mobile, highly skilled workers from different countries in search of what the report calls “good employment opportunities coupled with a good quality of life.”

Nor does Georgia rank high in attracting similarly skilled American workers. The state ranked 38th in the “migration of U.S. knowledge workers.”

“Just as countries compete for talent, so do states,” the report explained. “And while foreign immigration is important, the lion’s share of immigration into states is from Americans moving across state lines. Accordingly, states now compete with one another not only to attract business, but also to attract the skilled workers who will work for those businesses or start their own.”

Georgia ought to court those smart workers because they improve the state’s per-capita income. Everyone benefits when an ambitious and bright New York couple moves here to launch a high-tech business: the employees they hire, the real estate agents who rent them office space and sell them a house, the contractors who renovate that house, the shops that sell them curtains, furniture and appliances and the communities in which they pay their higher property taxes.

But before such couples bring their knowledge and their wealth to Georgia, they often want to know one thing: How good are the schools? In too many cases, the conversation ends right there, especially in rural areas most desperate for economic development.

The solution is not a return to some magic good old days of public education in Georgia, as some lawmakers contend. That golden era never existed. Schools were worse a generation ago, and romanticizing them won’t change that fact. Nor will pretending the problem lies with “government schools,” which has become the pro-voucher crowd’s favorite slur.

Georgia first has to catch up with states such as Massachusetts that have always put a premium on education; then it has to surpass them in producing competent, creative and innovative students. And we better start now.

Maureen Downey is a member of the editorial board.

mdowney@ajc.com