Reply to The REAL issue with the proposals to shift boundaries & how MCPS can fix it

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Reply to "The REAL issue with the proposals to shift boundaries & how MCPS can fix it"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Not at all.  [b]You presuppose that the boundaries themselves are a distorting factor,[/b] when the actual distorting factor is income inequality.  So long as high performing schools are seen as a valuable amenity, the money will filer in and push lower SES individuals out no matter where the boundaries are.  Tinkering around the edges only transfers equity from the families who are taken out of the district to those who are moved in.  However, during the next sales cycle the newly "promoted" house commands the same price premium that the desirable district brings and lower SES brackets are priced out in the same way as before.  Thus, what you do is get a temporary gain in SES diversity (to the extent that wealthier families don't immediately bolt), financially punish some families, give some families a windfall, and then have to do it all over again in ten years once you realize that fighting the natural progression of the market just doesn't work.  The only way to break this cycle is to make [b]all[/b] the schools high performing; but, given that the fact that the best and only statistically valid predictor of a child's educational outcome is their parents' educational attainment, you cannot "fix" the schools by moving boundaries, but rather you have to lift up the community as a whole, increase income across the board, and assist lower income families with childcare and other programs of the like.  This is, of course, hard, so it won't be done.  What will be done is that some feckless politicians will tinker around the edges, pat themselves on the back for increasing a useless metric like diversity (while ignoring the only metric the matters - performance), and ignore the income disparities that are the actual root of the problem.

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It is a fact that the boundaries are a distorting factor. Otherwise you wouldn't have people supposedly paying hundreds of thousands more for a house zoned for a "good" school vs another house in the next block zoned for a "bad" school.[/quote]

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