Dashboard report reveals fault lines in our prosperity
The report reveals a community that has troubling disparities by race, income and geography.
The Austin metropolitan area has emerged from the Great Recession as one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. But this growth has not brought prosperity to all people.
The 2015 Community Advancement Network (CAN) Dashboard provides an annual snapshot of how our community is doing across a broad array of indicators. It reveals a community that is recovering from the recession, but with troubling disparities by race, ethnicity, income, and geography.
CAN is a partnership of leaders and decision-makers from local government, health, education, business, faith and economic sectors. CAN released the first dashboard six years ago and updates the report each year to generate conversations about how we can work together to build a community where all people have access to equity and opportunity.
There are several conversations that I hope will be spurred by this year’s report.
The first is about how we are becoming a region that is segregated by income. Fast population growth has put pressure on housing costs, especially in the urban core. As a result, more people are seeking affordable options in eastern Travis County and in neighboring counties. Some of the consequences of this are congested roads and neighborhoods that are economically segregated.
People may find affordable housing, but they are isolated from transportation services, higher education, social services and economic opportunity. We need to have conversations with our partners throughout the region about how to better connect housing, transportation, educational opportunity and jobs so more people can share in our region’s economic prosperity.
Another important conversation for our community is how to give more kids a fair chance at a good future. The Dashboard report shows that low-income kindergarteners are less likely to be “school ready” than their peers, but pre-kindergarten programs can help eliminate this gap. Local school districts, such as Austin ISD, are helping by funding full day pre-K, even though the state of Texas only reimburses them for a half-day.
Our community is also working together and making strides in closing the gaps in educational attainment. More students are graduating from high school, and disparities between high school graduation rates for various racial and income groups are narrowing, though they still exist. But still, only 13 percent of low-income students earn a college degree within six years of graduating from high school.
The Martin Prosperity Institute recently named our region as the most economically segregated large metro area in the country, based on educational attainment. We must do a better job to help more children get a good start and the education they need to share in our region’s prosperity.
Finally, taking a look at this year’s findings, I was pleased to see a report that describes a community working together to improve outcomes for more people. Collaborative efforts in school readiness, health, mental health and education are making a difference. The School Readiness Action Plan — facilitated by United Way for Greater Austin — and Austin Travis County Integral Care’s Plan for Children’s Mental Health are two good examples. Partners from across the community came together to develop these plans and will work together to implement them. It is clear that we can achieve far more together than we can as individual organizations.
My hope is that stakeholders and decision-makers use the CAN Dashboard report as a tool to continue to ask: Are we moving closer toward our shared vision of equity and opportunity? What collaborative efforts are helping, and are they sufficient? And, finally, what more can each of us do?
Visit cancommunitydashboard.org for a copy of the report.