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[quote=Anonymous][quote=ntek87ntek]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.

[b]Our particular budget/goals:[/b] $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.

[b]Advice I've heard: How true is it?[/b]

[b]Don't buy into a district with "good schools:"[/b] 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.

[b]Quality of elementary schools and middle schools matters less than quality of high school:[/b] 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.

[b]School rankings are not a useful metric:[/b] 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.[/quote]

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.  [/quote]

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