Median Family Household Incomes by School

[Anonymous]

Since we are geeking on data, any idea where to get average grades or standardized test scores per school? Same cohorts from ES to MS and HS.

[Anonymous]

This is very interesting and cool, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. I did this in part because every time wealth inequality comes up it is hard to compare schools to each other. FARMS just gives you the low end, not any indication of the high end. Looking at other data sources and proxies is problematic. Data sources often aren't closely tied to school boundaries, and it is hard to demonstrate you're not cherry picking data.

I double checked the logic and did some consistency checks with zip codes. The data seems to be accurate. But this isn't the median income for families of students- it includes young married couples and married retirees. Even for families with kids, it includes single-parent households and single-earner households. These will drive the median lower than whatever you might intuitively expect. And in some cases, people underestimate how many multi-family homes are in an area- you don't need a lot of space to offset expensive SFHs.

If you're going off of zip code, then the consortium schools are going to be totally wrong since students don't necessarily end up at their neighborhood school. NEC wise, for example, Blake has the most enrollment, but has a smaller number of families than PB on this table. This only works for neighborhood schools, not magnet and consortium schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. I did this in part because every time wealth inequality comes up it is hard to compare schools to each other. FARMS just gives you the low end, not any indication of the high end. Looking at other data sources and proxies is problematic. Data sources often aren't closely tied to school boundaries, and it is hard to demonstrate you're not cherry picking data.

I double checked the logic and did some consistency checks with zip codes. The data seems to be accurate. But this isn't the median income for families of students- it includes young married couples and married retirees. Even for families with kids, it includes single-parent households and single-earner households. These will drive the median lower than whatever you might intuitively expect. And in some cases, people underestimate how many multi-family homes are in an area- you don't need a lot of space to offset expensive SFHs.

If you're going off of zip code, then the consortium schools are going to be totally wrong since students don't necessarily end up at their neighborhood school. NEC wise, for example, Blake has the most enrollment, but has a smaller number of families than PB on this table. This only works for neighborhood schools, not magnet and consortium schools.

Block groups don't capture that, either. They're just more fine-grained than zip codes.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

And yet there are huge FARMS rates differentials. People see what they want to see.

"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" -- Homer Simpson

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

I’m not surprised, but I still think median household incomes above 200k are very high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

I’m not surprised, but I still think median household incomes above 200k are very high.

But also half are below that at these very rich schools. A HHI below $200k is still like two teachers.

This does seem like it conflicts somewhat with home values. Maybe I am clueless but are town houses or $600k houses somewhere in the Whitman catchment I’m unaware of? Where do the under $200k HHI people live for Whitman?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

I’m not surprised, but I still think median household incomes above 200k are very high.

But also half are below that at these very rich schools. A HHI below $200k is still like two teachers.

This does seem like it conflicts somewhat with home values. Maybe I am clueless but are town houses or $600k houses somewhere in the Whitman catchment I’m unaware of? Where do the under $200k HHI people live for Whitman?

I’m not familiar with housing there. But imagining these households: there will also be single income households, people working in lower paid work, older adults who have been in their homes forever, and renters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

And yet there are huge FARMS rates differentials. People see what they want to see.

"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" -- Homer Simpson

Yes that is other data that we see all of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

I’m not surprised, but I still think median household incomes above 200k are very high.

But also half are below that at these very rich schools. A HHI below $200k is still like two teachers.

This does seem like it conflicts somewhat with home values. Maybe I am clueless but are town houses or $600k houses somewhere in the Whitman catchment I’m unaware of? Where do the under $200k HHI people live for Whitman?

I’m not familiar with housing there. But imagining these households: there will also be single income households, people working in lower paid work, older adults who have been in their homes forever, and renters.

I think it has to be mostly retirees who have been in their homes forever since cheaper starter home or even apartments don’t exist in high numbers. This is one of the ways that Whitman is so wealthy — housing policy.

[Anonymous]

Redfin has the ability to search for homes to buy/rent and also sold records within a school catchment area.
Also, something to keep in mind is that a lot of the increase in home values is relatively recent. I personally know several families who either live with parents who have been in the home for 20 to 40 years or who "bought" the home from their parent with a gift of equity. Depending on age many people have (particularly households with two professionals) have equity from previous homes or condos.
Another anecdote, I live in the Wootton area at a "rich" elementary school and had our first child at 30. We have consistently been some of the younger parents at many school events and surprisingly saw parents in their 40s and even 50s at elementary events.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since we are geeking on data, any idea where to get average grades or standardized test scores per school? Same cohorts from ES to MS and HS.

Maybe not average grades but percent proficient (or whatever the metric is) can be found on the MCPS dashboard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

I’m not surprised, but I still think median household incomes above 200k are very high.

But also half are below that at these very rich schools. A HHI below $200k is still like two teachers.

This does seem like it conflicts somewhat with home values. Maybe I am clueless but are town houses or $600k houses somewhere in the Whitman catchment I’m unaware of? Where do the under $200k HHI people live for Whitman?

It would be two starting out teachers, social workers, nurses, fire, professors, other government and nonprofit workers but most incomes would slowly increase over the years.there would be very few homes for 600 in Whitman and those would be fixer uppers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

They either flipped a house, family money, high income or bought house long ago. The demographics will change as how many can afford a 1-3 million dollar house on 200-300k.