For Release: June 18, 1998
Contact: Melissa Forsythe 502-564-2611
Elizabeth Davenport

(Wednesday, June 17, 1998) Governor Paul E. Patton, joined by U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley and Chairman of the Southern Regional Education Board Commission for Educational Quality Gerald L. Baliles, participated in the release of the 1938-1998 Education and Progress in the South report in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

"This report shows the dramatic improvements the South has made in the areas of education and economics during these last sixty years," Patton said. "Kentucky initially was slow, but in the past years has been one of the most progressive states in the nation in education on all levels and economic development."

"Education has and will revolutionize the Southern economy. The economy of the South took off when the people of the South took on education in a serious way. And it will continue to grow if the South continues to take education improvements seriously," Secretary Riley said.

The 1998 report used President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1938 National Emergency Council report on the South to measure progress in the areas of education, health and economics.

Roosevelt’s report painted a South in dire straits. In July 1938 Roosevelt declared the South to be "the Nation’s #1 economic problem." The Roosevelt report outlined the three main causes for the poor condition of the South: population problems, highlighted by fewer productive adult workers and more dependents; economic problems, the assessed value of taxable property averaged only 34% as much as the Northeastern states ; and the inability to adequately support education, the South educated 33% of the nation’s children with only 17% of the nation’s school revenues.

The SREB 1998 report compared those three areas to their status in 1998. The population of the South today constitutes nearly half of the nation’s population growth. Of that population, 79% of adults have high school diplomas and more than 21% have college degrees. Compared to the 1938 figures of 19% adults with high school diplomas and 4% with college degrees, the figures show tremendous progress.

The economic condition of the South was recently described by The Economist as being "a locomotive powering the American economy." The assessed value of taxable property in the South now reaches 95% of the nation, an increase of 61% from 1938. Economic success stories can be found across the region, from the United Parcel Service hub in Louisville to The Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. More than half the U.S. job growth in the 1990s has been in the South.

The financial support of education in the South has grown tremendously. Today, the region spends for elementary and secondary school students an average of 82% of the national spending average. The student-teacher ratio in the South is now lower than the U.S. average. The region has also experienced an increase in the number of adults entering college. Nearly half of all U.S. growth in enrollment in college in the past decade has occurred in the South.

"There are in the SREB states today continuing challenges of racial inequities, along with poverty, health, education, transportation and environmental issues," Chairman Baliles said. "But there is an optimism in the South, an uncommon aptitude for facing problems and working together to solve them…"

The report also noted an area of more than 600 counties across the midsection of the South that have not progressed at substantial rates. This section contains 35% of the nation’s poor and 90% of the nation’s poor, rural African-Americans. The area is plagued by unemployment, low educational attainment and poverty. High school and college attendance and graduation rates of African-American and Hispanic youths in the South also raises concern. The report identifies these problems as areas the South must tackle to move ahead.

"The report shows us that we have a long way to go and we’ll continue working to close the gap," Patton said. Parts of Appalachia Kentucky are included in the 600 counties that are lagging behind the rest of the South.

The 1938-1998 Education and Progress in the South report was written by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Commission for Educational Quality. Chairman Gerald Baliles is the former Governor of Virginia and chair of the Commission and Governor Paul Patton is the chair of the SREB.

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