Real estate/school district selection advice I've heard as a new parent - how true is it?

[Anonymous]

You can still buy a small but decent SFH with that budget in MoCo: Blair, Northwood, Einstein, Richard Montgomery, Magruder, Northwest clusters.

[Anonymous]

We live in an area with low rated schools and our kids had to attend them bc we couldn't afford private. We found the ratings to be accurate. So I would ignore that advice not to pay attention to them.

Look at the school pyramid that the home is zoned for. Yes, it can change, but if it's a good pyramid people will fight tooth and nail for the boundary not to be impacted and my observation is they win.

Take a look at the private schools within a 30 minute drive as well or whatever you deem reasonable as a commute to school. Once your kids are ready for school you might be surprised that you want to consider private

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Take a look at the private schools within a 30 minute drive as well or whatever you deem reasonable as a commute to school. Once your kids are ready for school you might be surprised that you want to consider private

I struggle to understand the value proposition of private school in our area. We already pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes that fund some of the best public schools in the country - and despite that people are willing to pay an additional $20-30k in tuition every year for 12 years? Is the quality of education at the private school in our area really that much better? Does it translate to that much more money earned when the kid enters the workforce, or that much more social-emotional well-adjusted-ness? Even if money were no object, I find the marginal value of private school very low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At your price point you’re looking at a tear down in Fairfax county further out from dc or buying in London county exurb for a nicer home. So pick between that, the rest of this analysis isn’t really that relevant. If you had a 2M budget then it would matter more.

Not true on its face, but you also seem to assume I’m looking for a massive suburban McMansion single family home, when in fact I’d be perfectly fine buying a townhouse or condo if it got me in the right neighborhood.

Best housing advice I ever got was: buy the cheapest house in the best neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

ntek87ntek wrote:My wife and I had our first child last July and are trying to figure out what our real estate buying strategy will look like as our daughter grows up. How are folks here in a similar situation approaching buying real estate and picking a school district? Has anyone else gotten advice like what I'll list below? Given how expensive home buying is, we all need to start planning and saving for this NOW, and this topic has taken up a lot of my mental headspace recently.

Our particular budget/goals: $750k-$800k. We have no interest in sending our kid to private school. We're people of color and don't want to be in a district where our kid is the only one who looks like her in the classroom. Our kid is too young for us to know if she will have special needs. We're perfectly fine if she ends up going to an average public university or trade school rather than getting in the high achievement elite college admissions rat race.

Advice I've heard: How true is it?

Don't buy into a district with "good schools:" Over the course of a child's 18 years in school, school district boundaries can change, the characteristics of student bodies can change, and the quality of teachers and administrators can change as they turn over. It therefore makes zero sense for families with small children to buy a "forever home" on the basis of the school district's reputation.

Quality of elementary schools and middle schools matters less than quality of high school: The idea here is that you can buy a more affordable home in a district with mediocre elementary/middle schools, save up money, and then move to a district with a better high school. At the elementary/middle school level, parental involvement matters much more as long as the kid's school is clean and safe. But with high school, things like extra curriculars and AP/IB classes make a big difference in college admissions or preparing for future vocational career paths.

School rankings are not a useful metric: There's a lot of media reporting about how sites like GreatSchools measure how wealthy the parents are in a school district rather than how effective a school district is in educating children. How true is that for the DMV area? Are there more reliable metrics we should be looking at? Or is it true that the quality of a school district is so idiosyncratic that broad assessments make no sense at all:

1. An academically talented kid could succeed in any school / a kid with mediocre academic abilities would struggle even at the best school
2. One bad teacher/one bullying problem/one bad set of friends can erase any benefits of going to a "good" school
3. Outcomes for kids with special needs depend much more on quality individualized support than how well-funded or "good" a school is.

Response to each of them.

Great schools ratings are useful, because it benchmarks the performance relative to other schools. Yes, the performance in public schools is mostly explained by socioeconomic status, but pubic schools have to teach to the lowest common denominator. If there are too many below grade level students, the teachers will not be able spend much time teaching more advanced material because the underperforming students are too far behind. So the average skill level of students matters a lot for how rigorous content will be at a given school. However, I would ignore the equity score component and focus on the test scores and academic progress.
1) Half-true, it really depends on the kid, a very bright child may underachieve a regular school because it is just too easy for them. Medicare kid could benefit from high expectations if it forces them to work harder, but a super competitive school could be harmful if it demoralizes them and they are unable to keep up with their peers.
Rankings are used
2)Disagree, there are always exceptions to the general rule or trend, but your kid is less likely to have bad teachers at an above average school(because teacher prefer to teach at schools with better students) and the good schools have a lower proportion of kids with behavioral issues.
3) No opinion on this one with regards to special needs children, but school funding in general has a minimal impact on school performance once you control for parental SES. The evidence that funding has a meaningful impact on school outcomes is very weak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can still buy a small but decent SFH with that budget in MoCo: Blair, Northwood, Einstein, Richard Montgomery, Magruder, Northwest clusters.

I agree. We’re in DTSS zoned for Blair and know many families in Northwood and Einstein clusters as well, because they’re all close. OP’s budget can buy in this area, depending on the house. I would not get too worked up about one or another schools in this area, because yes the current admin matters, but I do think the schools in the area are broadly decent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can still buy a small but decent SFH with that budget in MoCo: Blair, Northwood, Einstein, Richard Montgomery, Magruder, Northwest clusters.

I agree. We’re in DTSS zoned for Blair and know many families in Northwood and Einstein clusters as well, because they’re all close. OP’s budget can buy in this area, depending on the house. I would not get too worked up about one or another schools in this area, because yes the current admin matters, but I do think the schools in the area are broadly decent.

+2

[Anonymous]

Buy a house where the schools are at least acceptable all through HS.

I agree with this too. My oldest is entering high school next year. We had always planned to move from a townhouse to SFH before the kids started high school, but for several reasons have not. And it's okay, we are zoned for a decent HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Take a look at the private schools within a 30 minute drive as well or whatever you deem reasonable as a commute to school. Once your kids are ready for school you might be surprised that you want to consider private

I struggle to understand the value proposition of private school in our area. We already pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes that fund some of the best public schools in the country - and despite that people are willing to pay an additional $20-30k in tuition every year for 12 years? Is the quality of education at the private school in our area really that much better? Does it translate to that much more money earned when the kid enters the workforce, or that much more social-emotional well-adjusted-ness? Even if money were no object, I find the marginal value of private school very low.

But... Poor kids would go to those schools with Larla!

[Anonymous]

Focus on the HS. You can fairly easily support your kids through middle school yourself. At the HS level, it gets much tougher.

[Anonymous]

We are a mixed race (Black) family zoned for Rockville HS. We chose our neighborhood intentionally because I want nothing to do with our child being surrounded by the privilege of the W's. Our HHI is at probably double our immediate neighbors and that's fine because our DD never needs to know that. We want her to grow up with normal people and normal families that accept her not because she's "one of the good ones." This thread validates every one of our concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Take a look at the private schools within a 30 minute drive as well or whatever you deem reasonable as a commute to school. Once your kids are ready for school you might be surprised that you want to consider private

I struggle to understand the value proposition of private school in our area. We already pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes that fund some of the best public schools in the country - and despite that people are willing to pay an additional $20-30k in tuition every year for 12 years? Is the quality of education at the private school in our area really that much better? Does it translate to that much more money earned when the kid enters the workforce, or that much more social-emotional well-adjusted-ness? Even if money were no object, I find the marginal value of private school very low.

This is coming from a foreigner with no kids yet, so take what I am about to say with a grain of salt (as I don't know how private schools are generally setup here).

If I could afford to pay 50k for private (sidwell and etc), I would want my, hypothetical, kids to go there. Not necessarily because the quality of education would be that much better (it most likely won't if comparing good public to goos private in area), and also not because of better college outcomes (in some ways I'd argue going top private may hurt top college outcomes).

But because I would assume that the private schools are safer (given the ridiculous gun epdicemic in this country and dumb rednecks focus on the 2nd amendment). Seeing all these school shootings make me worry a bit, and I would assume the private school has better security (when I was at a private abroad, we had probably over a hundred guards on campus at once).

The other value that I can see, is that your kids will be surrounded with the kids of influential people and people that matter, which could also be helpful for your kid in the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Take a look at the private schools within a 30 minute drive as well or whatever you deem reasonable as a commute to school. Once your kids are ready for school you might be surprised that you want to consider private

I struggle to understand the value proposition of private school in our area. We already pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes that fund some of the best public schools in the country - and despite that people are willing to pay an additional $20-30k in tuition every year for 12 years? Is the quality of education at the private school in our area really that much better? Does it translate to that much more money earned when the kid enters the workforce, or that much more social-emotional well-adjusted-ness? Even if money were no object, I find the marginal value of private school very low.

This is coming from a foreigner with no kids yet, so take what I am about to say with a grain of salt (as I don't know how private schools are generally setup here).

If I could afford to pay 50k for private (sidwell and etc), I would want my, hypothetical, kids to go there. Not necessarily because the quality of education would be that much better (it most likely won't if comparing good public to goos private in area), and also not because of better college outcomes (in some ways I'd argue going top private may hurt top college outcomes).

But because I would assume that the private schools are safer (given the ridiculous gun epdicemic in this country and dumb rednecks focus on the 2nd amendment). Seeing all these school shootings make me worry a bit, and I would assume the private school has better security (when I was at a private abroad, we had probably over a hundred guards on campus at once).

The other value that I can see, is that your kids will be surrounded with the kids of influential people and people that matter, which could also be helpful for your kid in the future.

"People that matter." This is so incredibly gross.

[Anonymous]

I wish I had bought in the best school district I could, but instead I purchsed in DC. Don't do that.

[Anonymous]

ntek87ntek wrote:My wife and I had our first child last July and are trying to figure out what our real estate buying strategy will look like as our daughter grows up. How are folks here in a similar situation approaching buying real estate and picking a school district? Has anyone else gotten advice like what I'll list below? Given how expensive home buying is, we all need to start planning and saving for this NOW, and this topic has taken up a lot of my mental headspace recently.

Our particular budget/goals: $750k-$800k. We have no interest in sending our kid to private school. We're people of color and don't want to be in a district where our kid is the only one who looks like her in the classroom. Our kid is too young for us to know if she will have special needs. We're perfectly fine if she ends up going to an average public university or trade school rather than getting in the high achievement elite college admissions rat race.

Advice I've heard: How true is it?

Don't buy into a district with "good schools:" Over the course of a child's 18 years in school, school district boundaries can change, the characteristics of student bodies can change, and the quality of teachers and administrators can change as they turn over. It therefore makes zero sense for families with small children to buy a "forever home" on the basis of the school district's reputation.

Quality of elementary schools and middle schools matters less than quality of high school: The idea here is that you can buy a more affordable home in a district with mediocre elementary/middle schools, save up money, and then move to a district with a better high school. At the elementary/middle school level, parental involvement matters much more as long as the kid's school is clean and safe. But with high school, things like extra curriculars and AP/IB classes make a big difference in college admissions or preparing for future vocational career paths.

School rankings are not a useful metric: There's a lot of media reporting about how sites like GreatSchools measure how wealthy the parents are in a school district rather than how effective a school district is in educating children. How true is that for the DMV area? Are there more reliable metrics we should be looking at? Or is it true that the quality of a school district is so idiosyncratic that broad assessments make no sense at all:

1. An academically talented kid could succeed in any school / a kid with mediocre academic abilities would struggle even at the best school
2. One bad teacher/one bullying problem/one bad set of friends can erase any benefits of going to a "good" school
3. Outcomes for kids with special needs depend much more on quality individualized support than how well-funded or "good" a school is.

I think 1 is wrong. Or at the very least, you want the school district with the best middle and high schools. Elementary is more of a crap shoot. If you don't mind moving after elementary (and tearing your DCs away from friends), then don't worry about middle and high school. For middle and high school you at least want a group of kids that can be academic peers for your kid; if the whole place is just struggling with kids that are well below grade-level, you aren't going to get that (assuming your kid is at least on grade level and wants to be challenged a little).

I think 2 and 3 are right.

But someone upthread said that % FARMS is probably the most useful metric in terms of correlating to things you really don't want to have to worry about for your kids (e.g., getting mugged on the way to work).

Also, to the extent possible, don't bank on lotterying into specific schools.