Test Scores and Housing Costs

April 19, 2012, 6:01 PM

By MOTOKO RICH

Parents hoping to enroll their children in the best public schools have long known that where you live matters and that housing prices can be dictated by the quality of the nearby schools.

A new study from the Brookings Institution quantifies that price gap, and the differences between the cost of living near a high-scoring public school and a low-performing one are striking.

The study, by Jonathan Rothwell, a senior research analyst in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, found that housing costs in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas were an average of 2.4 times as high – a difference of $11,000 a year – for homes near schools whose average test scores put them in the top fifth of schools in the area, compared with schools in the bottom fifth.

That means that a family would have to pay more per year to move into a good public school zone than for their children to attend some private schools. Translated into an average home price, the gap works out to an average of $205,000 more for a home near a high-performing school.

“We think of public education as being free, and we think of the main divide in education between public and private schools,” Mr. Rothwell said in an interview. “But it turns out that it’s actually very expensive to enroll your children in a high- scoring public school.” Mr. Rothwell said that in the New York metropolitan area, for example, annual housing costs are $16,000 higher on average in neighborhoods near high-performing schools than in neighborhoods near low-performing schools, compared to the average annual tuition at Catholic schools of around $6,000.

The study also found that the average low-income student – defined as a student who is eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches – attends a school that scores in the 42nd percentile on state tests. In other words, well over half of the schools in the state have higher average test scores than schools attended by poor students. By contrast, the average middle- or high-income student (one not eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches) attends a school whose average state test scores put it at the 61st percentile.

Mr. Rothwell said that the study could not determine whether the average test scores at schools attended by low-income students fell below the average test scores at schools attended by higher-income students because low-income students had less academic support at home or because the quality of teaching was worse. But he noted that other studies showed that when students from low-income backgrounds attended schools with higher-income students and higher average test scores, those lower-income students improved their own test performance.

The study also found that within metropolitan areas, those with higher levels of economic segregation between neighborhoods and school zones had even wider gaps between average test scores. Of the 10 metro areas with the widest gaps in average test scores, six were in the Northeast, including Hartford, Buffalo and Philadelphia.

Zoning may play a role in excluding lower-income families from neighborhoods where there are high-performing schools. The study found that in areas where zoning codes prohibited the development of multifamily rental units or smaller houses, the cost of living near a high-performing school was even higher than in places where affordable housing units were sprinkled in with more expensive housing stock.