Giving Compass' Take:

• A report called Motor City Miles highlights the intersection of transportation and educational equity for Detroit students.  They may have more school choice but not the access to transportation they need to get to those high-quality schools. 

• How can Detroit educators address this issue? Is there a way to help fund better transportation? 

• Read about a model example of school bus routes in Washington D.C. 

Two decades after Michigan created dozens of school choice options for students in Detroit, a new report finds that just a quarter of students are now attending the school nearest to their home. The rest are traveling to schools outside their neighborhoods, making round-trip journeys averaging 14 minutes for elementary school students and 24 minutes for high school students.

Those traveling students are attending slightly higher-quality schools on average than they would if they stayed closer to home, according to the report from the Urban Institute, and researchers from Michigan State and Seton Hall University.

But the report, titled Motor City Miles, warns that not all students have the same access to those better-performing schools. White and Asian students were more likely to travel outside the city for schools than Black and Hispanic students, the report found, looking at the 2015-16 school year, though Black and Hispanic students traveled longer distances.

Most Detroit students — 65 percent — travel to school in a car while 20 percent take a yellow bus to school, the study found.

Another ten percent rely on public transit, but Detroit’s public transit system is not as extensive as systems in other cities. That means that in a city where roughly 25 percent of residents do not have access to a reliable vehicle, Detroiters who want to find a better school for their children sometimes have to make difficult journeys to access quality schools.

Read the full article about transportation and education equity by Erin Einhorn at Chalkbeat