Opinion: The Key to Student Success Starts with Affordable Homes

Andy Kopp is a Navy veteran and former San Diego chapter director of the Truman National Security Project. He is the former Director of Strategic Initiatives for San Diego Housing Federation and advocates for policies that advance the public good. He lives in Mission Valley.

For years, America’s educators hailed “the Finnish miracle.” The most highly regarded American proponent of Finland’s renowned school system was researcher and historian, Diane Ravitch, who swept through San Diego in 2014, declaring San Diego Unified School District “the best urban district in the nation.”

But she added, “I say this not based on test scores but on the climate for teaching and learning that I have observed in San Diego.”

Not based on test scores. It’s a caveat with legs. Educational gains on standardized tests made after 2014 were wiped out during the Covid pandemic. And as Voice of San Diego’s Jakob McWhinney reports, our kids are struggling to come back. It’s time to look toward a different miracle.

The Department of Defense Education Activity is the federal government school system responsible for providing prekindergarten through 12th grade education to nearly 70,000 children of the DoD’s active duty and civilian families on military installations around the world.

And it’s the highest performing K-12 public education system in the United States.

Martin West, academic dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said it like this: “If the Department of Defense schools were a state, we would all be traveling there to figure out what’s going on,” That’s because while top performing states in education like Massachusetts and New Jersey saw reading and math scores decline significantly from 2013-2022, DoD schools showed resiliency and improvement over the same period.

So what’s driving the DoD’s success in educating students? When similarities between the DoD system and others are accounted for, the standout difference is clear: The DoD’s families and students benefit from secure, stable access to affordable housing.

So much of the conversation surrounding education in the classroom is anchored in the national culture war. Parents across the country seemingly argue for sport over banning books. Parents and students, alike, have real fears about the long-term traumatic impacts of active-shooter drills. But the institutions which study the culture of education point to the basics outside of the classroom for big impacts.

The National Institutes of Health tells us that hunger provokes a variety of behavioral issues that decrease the ability to learn. That will come as no surprise to any adult who has missed lunch and started losing their cool by late afternoon. It’s a conclusion that prompted Governor Tim Walz to sign a law guaranteeing school meals for every child in Minnesota.

Likewise, performance results gathered in Minnesota’s Statewide Longitudinal Education Data System demonstrate that the stability provided by affordable housing is crucial for achieving success in the classroom. A dramatic gap exists in educational attainment and graduation rates between housing-secure and housing-insecure students.

What is housing insecurity? It’s the term used for the collective housing challenges of affordability, quality, safety, and threat of loss (i.e., falling into homelessness). The Journal of Urban Health published that parents and children both suffer the adverse mental health impacts of housing insecurity, as its pressures produce a “higher risk of depression, anxiety, psychological distress, and suicide.”

Housing insecurity is a fact of life in San Diego. Half of all renting households are eligible for a federal rental assistance voucher, but languish without one. That’s a lot of San Diego students entering the classroom every day after leaving a home environment that compounds stress, to say nothing of those who don’t have homes at all.

While the school district is largely independent of the city’s government, its students and families need our city government to lean in and start making serious, annual investments in affordable housing production.

General Fund revenues are unrestricted and can be spent on any priority a mayor and city council deem worthy. In 2016, 66 percent of San Diego’s voters passed Measure M, authorizing the creation of more than 38,000 new affordable homes. Arguably inherent in the passage of that ballot measure was the expectation that our city would support the creation of those homes.

If voters pass this year’s Measure E – a sales tax increase estimated to bring in $400 million new dollars annually for the city – we can begin the work of meeting that expectation.

With a combined budget eclipsing $5 billion annually, an initial investment of $50 million from the General Fund would amount to just 1 percent of the budget. One penny from every dollar the city spends to foster the circumstances at home that support success in the classroom.

“The DODEA miracle” isn’t a miracle at all. And neither is “the Finnish miracle.” Both are the result of investing in “the climate for teaching and learning” beyond the school property line: the affordable homes that kids return to after the school bell rings. That’s how our school system can live up to its billing as “the best urban district in the nation.”