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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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