Where are the children?

A Thursday New York Times article (sorry, don't have a link) and a follow-up NPR program describe cities that have been most successful economically but find they have fewer and fewer children. Portland Oregon, for example, has about half as many children as it had in the 1960s.

On a much smaller scale than the cities described in the article, Milwaukee has also enjoyed a revival, notably in Brewer's Hill and along the river. But as with these other cities, few of the people moving in are families with children. An article about Brewer's Hill in the current Milwaukee magazine (not available on the web) describes, inadvertently perhaps, why making schools attractive to middle class parents is so difficult. Palmer elementary school is in the heart of Brewer's Hill but is considered unacceptable to most residents. By most measures, Palmer has been among the poorest performing of all MPS schools for many years.

Yet all schools, no matter how much in need of change, have their passionate defenders. The article describes a proposal from then-board member John Gardner that quickly bogged down in racial and class politics. Yet, according to the same article, few of the Palmer students came from its attendance area.

Side Note: I am increasingly puzzled by Milwaukee magazine's practice of hiring partisans to do reporting without disclosing potential biases. For example, the author of this article is a retired teacher and former union officer who ran against Joe Dannecker (an ally of John Gardner) for school board. The magazine simply describes him as a free-lance writer.