
Online School Ratings and Segregation in America (2019) - hhs
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3265316
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vsskanth
I do not agree with the conclusions of this paper because it ignores a massive
factor that is leading to this type of segregation - Access to housing.

If one wants to send their kids to a good school you HAVE to buy a single
family home in that school district. For some reason, many of these homes are
massive McMansions with 4 bedrooms, 2 car garage, backyard etc. This makes it
even more expensive to either own or rent (compared to an apartment) and
completely inaccessible to a lower-middle-class family. The property tax based
funding model skews this inequality even further.

Access to good education is a very good way to move up the social ladder and
the way its currently setup only locks people out.

Either there should be no restrictions on zoning for housing or you have to
force state-wide pooling of property taxes to fund schools. I understand some
states use a lottery system to assign children to schools but I don't know if
it really solves the problem.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> For some reason, many of these homes are massive McMansions with 4 bedrooms,
> 2 car garage, backyard etc. This makes it even more expensive to either own
> or rent (compared to an apartment) and completely inaccessible to a lower-
> middle-class family.

The reason isn't mysterious. That is what keeps the quality of the school up.

~~~
Thriptic
It isn't that simple. The public high school I went to is one of the best in
the country and was largely comprised of middle class and upper middle class
families. The very wealthy largely sent their kids to nearby private schools.
The parents of the children at my school were largely professionals /
tradesmen / small business owners, worked incredibly hard to get access to the
school district (I know mine certainly did), and placed a large priority on
education. This resulted in a culture of parental involvement in the schools /
their childrens' education and a competitive academic spirit which kept
standards high. High property taxes also produced a funding model where at
least 95+% of funding was coming from local taxes, local bonds, and communal
fund raising by engaged parents. Local people supporting their community
schools because they cared. These were being levied against regular homes as
well as large homes.

There were attempts made to bus in people from outside but they were fought
tooth and nail by families across the income spectrum in the district because
the perception was that it was unfair that they had to work extremely hard to
get access to these resources but other people could simply show up and get it
for free.

