Test Scores and Housing Costs by Motoko Rich - Essay Example

 In his New York Times blog “Test Scores and Housing Costs1,” Motoko Rich explains the correlation between educational performance and the housing market. These are two variables that are quite different from each other, but, as the author explains, there is a definite link between the two. It is natural to assume that parents only want the best when it comes to schooling for their kids. This is something that is universal across parents of varying social classes. However, parents are often restricted in terms of schooling for their kids by the average cost of living near schools.

Schools that have a better reputation will also likely require a higher cost a living in the surrounding areas. But, the better schools also have a higher demand than schools located in poorer areas. The result of this is that the price of houses increases considerably. This is because with a wider selection of buyers, and a very limited supply of houses available around a certain school, home owners can charge more for their homes. On the other hand, schools that do not perform well on state tests will likely have a cheaper cost of living in the surrounding areas.

This is because the demand is not so high for these schools and so house prices remain relatively low in order to encourage people to buy houses. Other factors of course play a role, such as poverty, but poor quality of housing is a major contributor towards academic performance. In looking at the reasons why housing prices and education are linked, there can be two ways to describe it: either low cost housing contributes to poor academic performance or low education results in cheaper housing.

The most obvious choice would seem to be the first one, but studies say otherwise. Jonathon Rothwell, a senior research analyst in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, mentions that it has been proved that when students from poor backgrounds attend schools with students from more affluent backgrounds their educational performance improves as a result. This suggests that academic performance rests solely on the performance of teachers and not due to economic background. However, teachers likely choose to teach at schools in close proximity to where they live, so the better teachers will prefer to teach where the standard of living is higher.

The graph above shows what happens when there is an increase in the quality of education—the cost of housing increases the same. The graph below shows the opposite; when the quality of education decreases, the cost of housing also does so.