Friday, March 25, 2005
The cost of good schools.
Carol Lloyd writes here about the difficult choices people make in the Bay Area about housing and schools.
At the least, it is widely accepted that most Bay Area public schools are not all that, and this boosts the price of housing in those communities which are the exceptions to this rule: "According to one East Bay real estate agent, a home in Oakland identical to one across the street in Piedmont might cost $150,000 less." You would think that property owners in Oakland would have a powerful incentive to improve the quality of their public schools, to try to capture some of these gains. I don't know much about education reform, but I suspect the problem is that no one really knows how to take a school system like Oakland's and turn it into a school system like Piedmont's.
At the least, it is widely accepted that most Bay Area public schools are not all that, and this boosts the price of housing in those communities which are the exceptions to this rule: "According to one East Bay real estate agent, a home in Oakland identical to one across the street in Piedmont might cost $150,000 less." You would think that property owners in Oakland would have a powerful incentive to improve the quality of their public schools, to try to capture some of these gains. I don't know much about education reform, but I suspect the problem is that no one really knows how to take a school system like Oakland's and turn it into a school system like Piedmont's.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]