The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [14]
Everyone has heard the all-too-familiar news stories about kids who can’t read, gang violence in the schools, classrooms without textbooks, and drug dealers at the school doors. For the most part, the problems aren’t just about flawed educational policies; they are also depicted as the evils associated with poverty.34 Even President Bush (who didn’t exactly run on a Help-the-Poor platform) focused on helping “failing” schools, which, by and large, translates into help for schools in the poorest neighborhoods.
So what does all this have to do with educating middle-class children, most of whom have been lucky enough to avoid the worst failings of the public school system? The answer is simple—money. Failing schools impose an enormous cost on those children who are forced to attend them, but they also inflict an enormous cost on those who don’t.
Talk with an average middle-class parent in any major metropolitan area, and she’ll describe the time, money, and effort she devoted to finding a slot for her off spring in a decent school. In some cases, the story will be about mastering the system: “We put Joshua on the wait-list for the Science Magnet School the day he was born.” In other cases, it will be one of leaving the public school system altogether, as middle-class parents increasingly opt for private, parochial, or home schooling. “My husband and I both went to public schools, but we just couldn’t see sending Erin to the [local] junior high.” But private schools and strategic maneuvering go only so far. For most middle-class parents, ensuring that their children get a decent education translates into one thing: snatching up a home in the small subset of school districts that have managed to hold on to a reputation of high quality and parent confidence.
Homes can command a premium for all sorts of amenities, such as a two-car garage, proximity to work or shopping, or a low crime rate. A study conducted in Fresno (a midsized California metropolis with 400,000 residents) found that, for similar homes, school quality was the single most important determinant of neighborhood prices—more important than racial composition of the neighborhood, commute distance, crime rate, or proximity to a hazardous waste site.35 A study in suburban Boston showed the impact of school boundary lines. Two homes located less than half a mile apart and similar in nearly every aspect, will command significantly different prices if they are in different elementary school zones.36 Schools that scored just 5 percent higher on fourth-grade math and reading tests added a premium of nearly $4,000 to nearby homes, even though these homes were virtually the same in terms of neighborhood character, school spending, racial composition, tax burden, and crime rate.
By way of example, consider University City, the West Philadelphia neighborhood surrounding the University of Pennsylvania. In an effort to improve the area, the university committed funds for a new elementary school. The results? At the time of the announcement, the median home value in the area was less than $60,000. Five years later, “homes within the boundaries go for about $200,000, even if they need to be totally renovated.”37 The neighborhood is otherwise pretty much the same: the same commute to work, the same distance from the freeways, the same old houses. And yet, in five years families are willing to pay more than triple the price for a home, just so they can send their kids to a better public elementary school. Real estate agents have long joked that the three things that matter in determining the price of a house are “location, location, location.” Today, that mantra could be updated to “schools, schools, schools.”
This phenomenon isn’t new, but the pressure has intensified considerably. In the early 1970s, not only did most Americans believe that the public schools were functioning reasonably well, a sizable majority