a 2009 study by R. Gottlieb, food issues "are particularly pronounced in low-income communities where lack of access to fresh, affordable healthy food has direct health and nutritional consequences". He explains that core land-use factors such as housing, transportation, and commercial space are issues of food justice and environmental justice, and that addressing these issues can help reduce health disparities among border residents. Education Education in the border region is substandard on both sides. While completion and attainment rates are much higher in the U.S. than in Mexico, they are far below the U.S. average. The low levels of education along the border region are due to lack of proper infrastructure, low property-tax funding for schools, and pressing financial need which sees children contributing to family incomes. The primary problem with the education system in colonias is the lack of funding. In Texas, the Texas Education Agency determines education directives while the majority of school funding comes from local property taxes. For the low-income colonias, these directives can present fiscal obstacles which stand in the way of the quality of education. Population growth among the colonias make it so the funding of education is controversial and socially divisive. There is also a problem in finding direct-service providers who will educate the children in the colonias. School districts have taken measures to attract teachers to the prospect of working in these areas, though finding qualified teachers has become an increasingly difficult task. Public policy action Rather than being illegal, colonias are considered "extra-legal", in that they circumnavigate the law rather than violating it. In response to these systems, scholars are split between egalitarian and libertarian approaches. Those that support the egalitarian approach believe that colonias currently demonstrate a notion of inferiority for those that dwell there; in response, they propose standards of living enforced by government regulation. However, supporters of the libertarian style favor the informality of this living system for providing an affordable housing option for those in need, and criticize government action to impose living standards without providing colonians with the resources to sustain them. the housing quality of colonias continues to be unregulated. Informality in housing continues to expand while the social distance between the middle class and lower class expands. Fewer opportunities are available to the uneducated and poor. However, legal expert Jane Larson has proposed a policy of progressive realization, which would gradually extend standards in