patrick.net

I have found that desirable school districts go hand in hand with more desirable neighborhoods.

That is generally true. However, in place with more retired empty-nesters, there are exceptions. Price is probably a better indication of the neighborhood.

It’s also a good way to pre-screen potential neighbors.

It is one good way. The key is to pay a premium. However, I rather choose to pay a the "right" premium.

It's all relative. The "best" school district in the Bay Area is still the "best" school in the Bay Area.

You can easily get a house in a school district that's better than any of the ones in the Bay Area for less than the price of a house in the Bay Area... in New York (well technically Long Island.)

A classic sign of how broken things are here.

This house is in a very good school district (no Nortenos or Surrenos there) and is just a little more than a Mountain View condo:

http://www.mlsli.com/uniDetails.CFM?MLNum=1806241&typeprop=1&start=21&rpp=20

The downside, I guess is the enormous property tax.

The correlation between good school districts and premium neighborhoods falls apart in the cities, since cities generally have horrible public schools, and the good schools often use a "magnet" approach, like Lowell in SF, Bronx Sci or Stuyvesant in NYC, or Boston Latin. My impression is that in the cities, the rich send their kids to private schools, while the rest of the "masses" vie for spots in these schools.

Otherwise, the effect of good schools on childrens' outcomes seems very hard to study. Do parents who spend lots of time and effort with their children usually send their kids to good schools, so that going to a good school is merely a marker for good parenting? Or do good schools have a measurable positive effect on outcomes?

In terms of relevancy to RE, I agree that the perception of a town or neighborhood having good schools certainly appears to correlate with high prices. But contrary to RE permabull thoughts, these towns are not immune to a RE downturn. Newton, MA is currently experiencing price declines, and even the holy ground of Palo Alto was not immune in the early 90's.

The correlation between good school districts and premium neighborhoods falls apart in the cities, since cities generally have horrible public schools, and the good schools often use a “magnet” approach, like Lowell in SF, Bronx Sci or Stuyvesant in NYC, or Boston Latin. My impression is that in the cities, the rich send their kids to private schools, while the rest of the “masses” vie for spots in these schools.

It is more about premium. In the cities, you pay premium for convenience
and proximity to "action".

I would pay a premium to stay away from cities. I rather pay a premium for tree-lined boulevards and aggressive traffic enforcement

What does good primary and secondary education mean?

College will still cost a fortune in the future.

eburbed Says:

The downside, I guess is the enormous property tax.

Another major downside to your example is that the house is butt-ugly (just personal opinion). Judging by the (lack of) foliage on the trees, itseems like the house has been on the market for a while...

Thankfully I'm out.

This stage of my life is now and forever behind me (with the possible exception of grandchildren). When daughter #2 graduated HS this spring I couldn't help but think there was "money involved" or they were just tired of her. Even though we're considered to be in one of the better SD's in OR it was still a relief. The "Summer of Anna" is winding down (or as I like to call it) "I Know What You DIDN'T DO Last Summer" and of course her sequel "I STILL Know What You DIDN'T DO Last Summer"!

Did you know the results are race normed?

What? 8-O

Looks like political correctness is leading to incorrect results.

Peter P Says:

It is more about premium. In the cities, you pay premium for convenience
and proximity to “action”.

But the "premium" only matters if lots of other people want the same premium you want (supply and demand, of course). Lots of people are willing to pay for the premium of the "hip" urban lifestyle or at least convenience to work, or whatever. Lots of people are willing to pay for the premium of good schools. On a bigger scale, the idea of "superstar" cities like SF, Boston, or NYC that the MSM is spewing is just a bigger version of paying for a premium (to live in or near one of these cities). The other way to look at it is that you get a discount to live in a place like Ohio or Michigan, or to buy a house in a not so good school district, or on a busy road or whatever.

Health care costs must be reduced!

Military spending may be necessary. I wonder if replacing most conventional weapons with nuclear weapons can reduce costs.

But the “premium” only matters if lots of other people want the same premium you want (supply and demand, of course). Lots of people are willing to pay for the premium of the “hip” urban lifestyle or at least convenience to work, or whatever. Lots of people are willing to pay for the premium of good schools.

I agree. If I like things that other people do not care about, I may be about to get a discount on my premium. :)

You cannot pay me to live in NYC. I rather live in Las Vegas.

Healthcare costs are one thing, and Defense spending is another. The truly amoral cost is the cost of servicing our national debt. It's fiscally unsound, it pushes the financial burden into future generations, and it's a waste of money. The USA is one big FB!

Healthcare costs need to come down. With everyone in the US now obese that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

A guest worker program in the healthcare industry may help. I think there will not be enough healthcare workers in the future.

The truly amoral cost is the cost of servicing our national debt.

It is amoral, but not immoral. :)

It should be fine. The debt is in USD, a printable currency.

Why buy in a good school district when it's 3x cheaper to rent?

Also, if you have a house already but want to go to school in the next town over, those with the money can just rent a tiny place and leave it empty. Voila, residency. Cheaper than private school.

One of the Giovanotto family, a big landlord in Palo Alto, told me that "a lot" of their rentals are really just to give the renter a Palo Alto address and access to the schools. So they pay $1000 a month for a tiny apartment and never move in.

The really funny part is that even the PA school district is not that great. It's good for California, but that's not saying much. I was looking at school stats on realestate.yahoo.com last year and found that pretty much all of the midwest ties the PA SD in terms of test scores, college admission rates, etc.

The midwest has vast numbers of great schools, but then, you have to live in the midwest to attend them.

Patrick

One of the Giovanotto family, a big landlord in Palo Alto, told me that “a lot” of their rentals are really just to give the renter a Palo Alto address and access to the schools. So they pay $1000 a month for a tiny apartment and never move in.

I wonder if a Mail Box Etc. address will work. :)

Thanks Patrick.

Peter P Says:

It is amoral, but not immoral.

Thanks for the correction, of sorts. Actually, it is indeed immoral, imo. Pushing off responsibility and burden to future generations is sleazy.

Related to guest workers in healthcare, they are already starting to outsource healthcare work to other nations. Some radiology consultation is sent to India, while many folks are taking elective surgeries (not covered by insurance) to other countries where it's cheaper.

Did you know the results are race normed? OMFG, they are so drinking their own kool-aid that they think this escapes notice.

I didn't know that - but, more embarassingly, I don't know what that means.

How is it race normed? And is this documented anywhere?

National Health in England is sending people abroad for covered surgeries and I have heard that the large insurance companies here are looking into it.

It's a matter of supply and demand. If being a doctor wasn't so enriching, all those pre-meds would go into i-banking.

There's this trend of medical students not wanting to go into family practice because it doesn't pay well. That makes sense.

But do we really need 30 dermatologists/plastic surgeons for every 2 internal medicine doctors? I guess we could all pretend we're living in Miami.

There’s this trend of medical students not wanting to go into family practice because it doesn’t pay well. That makes sense.

Medical education is too expensive. Malpractice insurance is too much.

Solution:

1. Make MD a bachelor level degree
2. Limit lawsuit payout

Actually, the public school system and the "good school district" concepts are excellent illustrations of how deeply flawed leftist and socialist solutions are.

The idea behind public schooling is to make sure the same (hopefully, good) quality of schooling is available for kids of all classes (wealthy, poor and in between). But, what happens in reality?

The rich move into good school districts, raise the living cost there and squeeze out the poor, who move into more affordable (read: bad school district) areas.

Net result? Rich kids go to good schools and poor kids go to bad schools. Isn't that the opposite of the desired effect?

Healthcare costs need to come down. With everyone in the US now obese that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

I see rich opportunites for young doctors specializing in obesity & diabetes related medicine, as well as for pharma/genetic R&D scientists. The first lab to create and patent a Twinkie that induces weight-loss and still tastes like a real twinkie wins.

I wonder if replacing most conventional weapons with nuclear weapons can reduce costs.

I suspect this would indeed have the effect of eventually reducing costs to zero...for everyone.

Conventional weapons, even the cold-war era type, are a necessary strategic component of a military which is called upon to project power anywhere in the world. Nuclear weapons are "cheap talk" in this context, because their threat of use is non-credible. Any nation engaging in perceived frivolous "nuclear war" would be instantly isolated and perceived as a reckless enemy of all.

(Whether we should endeavor to project military power abroad as a strategic goal is something that might be debated.)

The argument for keeping a powerful, active, credible conventional force of cold-war proportions is a game-theory one:

* (re)emergent powers exist which endeavor to build militaries capable of countering the US and projecting a defensible sphere of influence.

* such powers are partially or entirely incompatible with US hegemony

* if the US maintains a powerful convential force it provides disincentive to those nations in their strategic aspirations

* if the US publicly spends enough on its conventional forces it sends a credible signal to potential adversaries about commitment to our declared strategy, further raising the threshold of participation by competitive nations.

* on the other hand, if the US disengages from this approach, and competitive nations indeed build comparable or superior (even regional) conventional forces, then ultimately the US will be forced to reengage the strategy, at a higher catch-up cost.

--I'm not saying I agree with said "neocon" reasoning, but it cannot be faulted for being logically inconsistent. Depressingly, it is largely supported by historical experience. That does not mean it must be the path forward, but those who think in game-theory terms do so by the process of reverse induction, which necessarily invokes historical lessons.

SFWoman,

If you get those wieght-loss chips/TV perfected, don't forget all your friends here at Patrick.net. As is "pre-IPO preferred stock offering".

Conventional weapons, even the cold-war era type, are a necessary strategic component of a military which is called upon to project power anywhere in the world.

You have a point.

BTW, The Falkland War is always fascinating to me. UK was able to project power swiftly half across the world with minimal casualty.

Margaret Thatcher was an amazing leader.

@Robert Cote,

I wonder, why is there no public outcry over "race norming" and how it insults/patronizes people of certain ethnic groups? If I'm a low income minority, would I really welcome being told that I'm so genetically inferior that I cannot compete on a level playing field with other races? I'm supposed to appreciate being patted on the head, given my "special" card and automatically promoted?

Why isn't this practice roundly denounced as inherently racist?

Does Margaret Thatcher sound like a model politician for most people on this board?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcherism

"Thatcherism" is characterised by a free market economy, monetarist economic policy, privatisation of state-owned industries, low direct taxation but conversely higher indirect taxation, opposition to trade unions through state regulation, nationalism, centralism, as well as checks on the size of the Welfare State and local government. "Thatcherism" may be compared with Reaganomics, Rogernomics and Ruthanasia. She was deeply in favour of individualism rather than collectivism, with a mantra for self-help.

Under Thatcher the trains became crap.

Huh? Well, the French still has better trains. :)

@Robert,

What is your opinion about school vouchers? Is there any reliable evidence indicating this approach can benefit low-scoring low income and/or minority children?

Trains under Thatcher were supposed to become crap. Train riders are selfish parasites so filled with self hate that they won’t even come close to paying the operating costs of their chosen transportation consumption.

Economic reality.

Train riders are selfish parasites so filled with self hate that they won’t even come close to paying the operating costs of their chosen transportation consumption.

Awww.... c'mon, Robert, they can't ALL be that bad, can they? I rode the tube quite a lot when I was an exchange student in the UK, then later on as a grad student in Chicago and rather enjoyed it. I don't recall hating myself, though I can't say whether or not the trains were breaking even at the time. :-)

Meant to say, "later on I rode the 'L' train in Chicago". No Chicagoan would call it the "tube".

Every post by you that I have seen on the internet was pro-SUV and anti public transit.

I believe he is merely pro-market, which is not wrong at all.

People who grew up in communist countries and emigrate to the US at 57 shouldn’t try to learn to drive.

Their kids can drive them around though. Public transportation should be less subsidized. However, I also think that oil should be less subsidized. The market should be able to sort itself out.

You do not seem to like the housing market.

Huh? How does one like or dislike the market? The market is always morally neutral. I do not dislike the housing market. That is not the reason I am here.

Once again, I see I have to be the child basher here and say having kids, especially having kids in CA, is way overrated.

Once you have kids, your costs pretty much double and your free time goes to deficit. You start worrying about things that you have no control over, like the amount of employer sponsored healthcare coverage or if the kids next door are schizoid drug pushing bully zombie pyromaniacs. From the moment of concept until the kids turn about 30, you worry about whether they're gonna turn into schizoid drug pushing bully zombie pyromaniacs. Most people wouldn't even care about school districts or owning if they don't have kids.

Better to keep kittens. They don't have opposable thumbs so they can't strike a match.

Better to keep kittens. They don’t have opposable thumbs so they can’t strike a match.

Absolutely! There is no bubble in cat condos!

Patrick Says:

> Also, if you have a house already but want to go to
> school in the next town over, those with the money
> can just rent a tiny place and leave it empty. Voila,
> residency. Cheaper than private school.
> One of the Giovanotto family, a big landlord in Palo Alto,
> told me that “a lot” of their rentals are really just to
> give the renter a Palo Alto address and access to the
> schools. So they pay $1000 a month for a tiny apartment
> and never move in.

I bet this does not happen much since:

1. You can get a lot a Palo Alto friend or relative to say your kids live with them for a lot less than $1,000 a month.

2. You are going to have a tough time making a school believe that you live with your kids in a 500 sf studio (about all you get for $1,000 a month)...

As for the topic at hand, I'd the quality of schools depends a lot on the personality of the kid. A lot of kids will do better and learn more in magnet schools and under challenging curriculms. Some kids do better in a more laid back education environment. In almost all cases, parental involvement and observation is key, there's bad elements even at the best schools, and it's important to firmly steer the kids away from those elements.

SQT Says:

> I have found that desirable school districts go hand in
> hand with more desirable neighborhoods.

I have found that desirable school districts go hand in hand with "rich" neighborhoods.

This may not be PC but most people that make enough to afford a $2mm house are a lot smarter than average, went to better schools than average and have kids that are smarter than average that are working harder than average so they can get in to better than average schools…

I have never heard of a single school bad school district where all the homes are worth over $1mm. A couple local examples are Portola Valley, Hillsborough and Ross.