Is the general consensus still to always look for homes with above average school ratings for maintaining home value and ease of resell?
Currently looking at houses in the white hot so cal market. Ultimately, we'd get more home buying in an area with lower rating school districts vs not (via using Greatschools rating)
There is still the means of saving the money you'd spend by buying in a district with lower rated schools, and using that money for private school.
Has anyone taken either route, and how did it go?
Greatschools ratings are broken and here's why. While good-intentioned it actually punishes diverse schools. If a school is extremely diverse (I would argue a good thing) but any student subgroups score lower or higher than others, greatschools gives it a LOWER overall score even if the school has good average test scores by students. If a school has very few minorities the 'equity' weight is discarded entirely from the rating. So an all-white school on the east coast with average test scores might be rated 9 or 10 while a very good California school might be rated 6 because it has a lot of diversity but the test scores vary by economic/racial group. Now if you think this is stupid and ridiculous I would agree. Over time Greatschools inadvertently promotes homogeneous towns (white supremacy) and weirdly punishes schools which have a lot of diversity !!!! They made a wrong, bad, (stupid) assumption that different test scores by race means the school did something bad/nefarious, when it may not have anything at all to do with the school treating students differently....
This seems like it should be a massive controversy. GreatSchools gives schools with a % of non-white/asian students a "diversity" score, and it's always bad. That is then used to weigh down the overall score for the schools in question.
Schools which don't have hispanic or black students are never even given a "diversity" score and always rank 9 or 10.
This is insane right? They're driving gentrification, disincentivizing housing construction (lest "those" people move in), and pushing people out of otherwise good schools.
Why aren't social justice advocates going after them more aggressively? Every home listing is decorated with their scores and it's just a giant racial flag.
Hey everyone, so my work has still not given any official notice yet how our future will look in terms of TW However it is looking very clear that when if the dust settles from all of this I will need to report to my office at most 2x a week. I have done the Google maps as well as actually lived the commute a few times I have stayed with friends near the Locust Grove area. I can manage the commute happily if it's only 2x a week.
So I understand the negatives in terms of commute, and how it takes at a minimum 30 minutes to get anywhere (shopping, dining etc.). What other drawbacks might I not be taking into account.
We are considering eyeing lake of the woods potentially holding out for a waterfront property, how crowded does the lake get, is it large enough to allow water-skiing or hydrasliding, or is a trolling motor fishing boat the most powerful you'll get there?
What's included in the HOA ($141/month?). I assume the community center. Fitness center, pools, etc. Are all at an extra cost? Any ideas how much we are talking?
Are houses still flying off the market there like they are up here in the Northern part of NOVA? People are waving inspections and offering 10-20% over asking here, we have com to terms we can't afford it out here.
Schools, I would love some insight into the schools that Greatschools won't tell me, we are currently at a 4/10 school but the teachers are amazing to our kid, we couldn't be happier, I am learning to not obsess over the ratings.
Thanks!
My wife and I are planning to purchase a house in the next few months - primarily looking around Fairfax, Falls Church, and Springfield - and our realtor's app provides school ratings pulled from greatschools.org. I've been surprised by how many low ratings I've seen; 4s and below on a 1-10 scale.
Does anyone have any experience with GreatSchools and can you comment on the accuracy of the ratings?
EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the advice and suggestions. Trying to buy our first home has been stressful enough and you're all helping to keep us from getting too overwhelmed.
I have no idea how to react to this. Others got 8-10 out 10 while mine is 6 out of 10. It got worse than my middle school and elementary and they also sucked so I'm going to expect much worse. I mean I can't guarantee it's a good scoring system, 'cause the gender demographics for my middle school look unrealistic. One thing I was excited about was a new extracurricular that was related to my dream job, but that's also in another school (which has the same name so I will assume they are related). Plus most of my friends are going to another school, but at least I have some in my own. welp
When comparing school ratings / rankings across those 3 services, I wonder which one has the most truly representative score of what makes a "good" school.
I notice that GreatSchools - partner of the real estate sites like Zillow and Redfin - score some schools near me a good amount "lower" than USNews and Niche.
Wondering if anyone has found better resources or has a feel for which of the Big 3 is best?
Thalia Tringo, a real estate agent in the Boston area, faces a dilemma whenever a homebuyer asks her if the local schools are any good. This can be a dicey topic because buyers’ perceptions of schools are often closely associated with the racial makeup of their student bodies, which usually matches the racial makeup of their surrounding neighborhoods. Tringo avoids answering specific questions about schools because of professional rules designed to prevent racial discrimination in housing. So like many real estate agents, she plays it safe, telling clients to look up the information on their own, even though she is wary of what they’re likely to find.
Among the first results on a cursory Google search is usually GreatSchools, a nonprofit site that ranks public schools nationwide and feeds that information to real estate sites such as Redfin, Zillow, and Realtor.com. GreatSchools is easy to find, but its ratings correlate closely with students’ racial or economic backgrounds. “The schools that get high marks and diverse schools tend to not be the same ones,” Tringo says of the exams GreatSchools uses to produce its score. She recalls going to an eighth grade graduation for a client’s kid at Winter Hill Community Innovation School in Somerville, just outside of Boston, and marveling at the friendly atmosphere among the middle schoolers and the diversity of the graduating class. “[It] was just amazing,” she says. “But you wouldn’t get that from looking at rankings.”
Winter Hill has one of the most diverse student bodies in Somerville: Half of its students are Latino and 13 percent are Black. Yet with a rating of 4 on a scale of 1 to 10, GreatSchools deems Winter Hill “below average.” Its students’ poor test scores drag its rating down, despite evidence that they’re making as much academic progress as most students in Massachusetts. Buyers looking for homes near highly rated schools might skip right over the Winter Hill neighborhood and look closer to one of Somerville’s other schools or in another town altogether.
*There’s evidence that GreatSchools’ ratings are exacerbating racial segregation, not just within school systems but in the communities around them. “What makes GreatSchools popular is partly that they’re linked to real estate sites, which is partly what makes them dangerous,” says Sean Reardon, an education professor at Stanford Universi
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hi all,
The video linked below is on the topic of how one of the most used online scoring websites for looking up a neighborhood school's "rating" has a massive number of flaws and directly underserves less affluent and more diverse neighborhoods that might have great schools with just as good if not better teaching outcomes, but which aren't represented as such in the ratings used.
I thought it was a rather prevalent topic to discuss, since online scoring is becoming ever more common when people are choosing neighborhoods to move to.
Video Description: "When parents are researching where to move, they typically look at the quality of a neighborhood's schools. But good data on that is hard to find. That's where a website called GreatSchools has thrived. GreatSchools rates almost every public school in America on a scale of 1 to 10. But when we analyzed those ratings, we found that they almost never give high scores to schools in poor neighborhoods — even though data from their own website shows that many of those schools do a good job teaching students."
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC3ZPgg0nds
If your a parent a lot of concern is put on the greatschool rating of a school system. A lower income area may have a great staff and the best programs, but if the population is lower income, the family can't afford a tutor, can't afford to keep the electric turned on all year, etc, then the grades of their child will suffer for it and greatschools is a reflection of test scores... which is a direct reflection of socioeconomic status.
Having said that, if you are a family with high expectations of the results of your children, and you keep close tabs on their day to day progress, and you keep close tabs on all their teachers, and you provide all the resources your child requires, then it doesn't matter if you go to a 3 school or a 10 school, because your child will do excellent anywhere they go. A lot of families are burning their future by overpaying to be in the most expensive district because of an arbitrary number which scared the sh*t out of them, because they're ignorant to the mechanisms behind that number.
It's kind of like tricking someone to trade in their perfectly good Honda Accord to buy a new BMW because their Accord got a 4 star safety rating and the BMW got a 5 star safety rating. That's nice to bump up a star in safety but when the replacement costs 3 times more to drive and 5 times more to maintain, what are you sacrificing to be in that car? Is that one decision effecting your ability to max your retirement? To contribute to your kids college fund? Anyway, that's my unpopular opinion, greatschool ratings are an enormously misleading misnomer because all they really reflect is the average wealth of the school district, not how well the teachers teach, or how well your child will do. If you want to make maximum improvement to the results of your children, throw the greatscore listings in the garbage and take a look in the mirror. How healthy is your family environment? How healthy is it really? How much do you care about the results of your children? Are you providing all resources for their success? Are you reading with them every night when young and making sure they prioritize homework at all ages? Are you punishing bad results and bad behavior? That is 10x more important than the wealth score, because you can be wealthy and be an absent parent and send your kids to a 10 school and watch in horror as they flunk out and become heroin addicts before your eyes. What matters is the quality of family life.
Specifically in regards to how good it is to work there as a teacher.
I just landed in a new area that I hope to reside in for a few years, so I finally started digging deep into prospective areas to find deals. Simultaneously I also need to find a house for myself.
I've been relying on the greatscools score to help me judge neighborhoods as I pretty much know nothing about the area. I dug a bit deeper today and discovered that greatshools rating isn't all that great. They have a concept called 'equity', which I can understand the intent of it (reflects if the school helps poor people do better), it greatly distorts the ratings. I found out a the top school in the region is given a 6/10, however it's a 10/10 for college readiness, but 1/10 for equity. For my purposes, this makes greatschools a worthless tool to evaluate schools.
Questions:
- Do you find many people (e.g. prospective tenants) use greatschools blindly to evaluate where they want to live?
- Is there a visual (shows location on a map) tool that shows where all the high scoring schools are located and their service area?
My school has a 7/10 but thats only because they had to use our tax dollars to build a new campus for out school in 2012. Personally I would rate my school an 8.5/10. Whats your schools's greatschool rating?
There's a school in my district that has a pretty OK rating (7) on the greatschools.com website but when I look at homes the area on realtor.com the school is flagged with a lower rating (4), supposedly from the same ranking system. Any idea why it would be different? Is greatschools reliable for determining how good a school is?
Thanks in advance, I know this is only tangentially related to real estate.
I bought my house before I realized I was going to have a kid. Now I have a kid and my school district sucks, and I can't afford private school.
I live in a good neighborhood (upper middle) in a rough city in a metropolitan area. Most of the schools in the city are 2-4, but the elementary school in our neighborhood is a 5 and the High School is a 3. There are a few other 5's but most are 2-3. I talked to my neighbors and all the neighbors I know send their kids to private school. The school scores 6/10 in testing and academics but 3/10 in equity due to disparities in low income students and racial disparities. The white and Asian students score 9/10 and the black/Hispanic students score 4/10.
The main issue I'm having is not really with the school itself (though I'm not sure what to expect based on this rating) but the school district seems to be what most people are blaming. Since my son's ethnic group falls under the kids who score 9/10 does that mean he'll be okay?
My wife and I are looking to buy a house. We have a son and another child on the way. She works in Chapel Hill and I work in Cary. Having Durham as an option would be nice, but any internet research I've done leaves me questioning it as an option. We couldn't really do anything more than $200k so not a lot of options in Morrisville, which is are current favorite.
Anyone have insight on GreatSchools school ranks (www.greatschools.org)? Are they reliable? The disclaimer said they are based on test scores, but is that even an accurate predictor of quality of education available at a school?
Trying to vet potential public schools for my Kindergartener to be. Thanks in advance for the help!
I'm looking to move to a new area and am using the Greatschools rating that pops up on Zillow for a general idea of the quality of the school. Is it a fair assessment?
When you look up the rating on the website rather than Zillow it has some additional details. One of the schools we like has a 10 for test scores but a 5 for growth. What could cause students to test at the top of their state but not show growth on a year over year basis? There is another school very close that has high scores and high growth.
Sent this to /u/Randy_Watson, who introduced me, and the internet, to the horror of Elan.
http://www.greatschools.org/maine/poland/773-Elan-School/?sortBy=dd&tab=reviews#revPagination
The first thing I notice is that the reviews are mostly ... positive? It has four stars. I thought this was odd, but then I realised why.
The reviews are complete and total BS.
Look at this review:
"My nephew attended the Elan School. Our family can't say enough wonderful things about their program and all of it's staff !! He is currently enrolled in college, doing exceptionally and is "back" to the sweet person we all knew he was when he was younger, he's just a bit older now:) We're a very close family and all of the kids are fairly close in age. It was very difficult for us to have him away from all of us, especially so far away, and for so long. We knew we were losing him anyway, and feared that we would lose him permantly to the lifestyle he was living, so sending him away to school was the only choice. We are eternally greatful to the love and support that he received at this school. I've read alot of the stuff online recently and can only surmise that some of the kids writing this stuff didn't like the rules. I can assure you, on behalf of my family, we would have NEVER left one of our own in this school, for even a second, if we ever felt that in any way this school was abusive. It was a challenging experience for my nephew and we feel blessed to have found this school!"
(Bolded for visibility to certain stupid parts)
Wow. Just...wow. I'm not sure whether to feel outraged or to laugh out loud at the poor job they did.
Edit: Formatting
Edit: I am not a survivor. I am a concerned individual.
If there is, please let me know!
I realize that many district issues come and go with leadership or just aren't the right fit for some people. But I know so many new teachers (including myself) who signed on to work in hostile/ sketchy AF work environments because unless you know loads of people, you're screwed. After only a year I've heard so many horror stories of superintendents and principals who were passed around from school to school just causing chaos in their wake because friends/colleagues would lie for them. And so many of my teacher buddies are terrified to move to higher paying districts because "better the devil you know". Also, if you don't live in a union state or don't have a "good" union, you just don't have any protection if you want to keep your job.
Rate My Professor clearly has some issues with "Karen" posts, like Yelp, but it was also a great place to gas up your favorite prof and get excited for your new ones. If there isn't a site like this already for schools/districts, then I just think one would be useful.
Anyway, I had a nightmare my school forced me to teach Art next year and forced the Art teacher to teach P.E...... and it was completely, 100% realistic.
Stock is not my field. I bought our first stock ever in February. We are all in plus a mortgage now.
THANK YOU to all the wrinkled apes who share their work, knowledge and experience.
A few apes have asked for advice on buying real estate. I have 23 years experience in the most difficult and dangerous form of real estate practice; residential investment property and property management.
IMO the real estate market will crumble after MOASS along with the rest of the economy. Some regions and price ranges will do better than others. I do expect there to be bargain housing like there was in 2008 through 2010.
LESSON ONE; OWNER OCCUPIED FIRST TIME BUYER
This first lesson is for the apes that just want a house of their own.
Start out with what you know; Your city, town, county or province. Stay away from dangerous areas and bad schools.
Even if you don’t have kids this is important. Home values are partially determined by school quality.
Here are a couple of resources. Avoid schools with a high percentage of kids getting free or discounted lunch.
https://www.schooldigger.com/
https://www.greatschools.org/
Find a local realtor willing and able to show you actual sales data of recent comparable houses and neighborhood price trends.
A good place to start looking is https://www.crs.com/about-us/for-consumers it’s not 100% but the CRS designation takes work and documented sales. If your gut tells you the realtor is trying to sell you, rather than help you, find someone else. There are a few shady realtors and a lot of pushy ones.
Don't be pushed into a buyer’s agency agreement with a realtor until they gain your trust and respect
ALL of the online home value sites are shit. They are grossly inaccurate and omit huge factors affecting a property’s value. Their main purpose is to get your information.
Put your emotions away. Don’t “Fall in love” with a house or neighborhood. If you don't get the first house you like, that’s a good thing. I’ve seen it hundreds of times… The next house is always better than the one you missed out on.
Buy a house with selling it in mind. One day it will be sold even if you never plan to move. Make sure the house will appeal to other buyers.
Take your time; It’s expensive as hell to sell a house even in a seller’s market. In a buyer’s market you may have trouble selling without taking a loss.
Use Google Earth and street view to learn a neighborhood and look for nearby negative factors.
Look up
... keep reading on reddit ➡Phil
Sudden Lee
Go post NSFW jokes somewhere else. If I can't tell my kids this joke, then it is not a DAD JOKE.
If you feel it's appropriate to share NSFW jokes with your kids, that's on you. But a real, true dad joke should work for anyone's kid.
Mods... If you exist... Please, stop this madness. Rule #6 should simply not allow NSFW or (wtf) NSFL tags. Also, remember that MINORS browse this subreddit too? Why put that in rule #6, then allow NSFW???
Please consider changing rule #6. I love this sub, but the recent influx of NSFW tagged posts that get all the upvotes, just seem wrong when there are good solid DAD jokes being overlooked because of them.
Thank you,
A Dad.
So far nobody has given me a straight answer
..... Will get a reward.
Well, toucan play at that game.
As I previously mentioned, I am looking for some towns in Westchester as we're considering purchasing a house to live-in. Ideally, the towns would have great schools and be within 45 minutes to Grand Central.
Some of these towns:
- Hastings-On-The-Hudson
- Pelham
- Pelham Mannor
- New Rochelle
Except for Hastings, I noticed that each of the above had a ton of schools that were ranked 6 out of 10 at best on Great Schools.
Does someone else have a recommendation of a town that has good schools?
What website do people use to evaluate the schools and rankings?
Greatschools ratings are broken and here's why. While good-intentioned it actually punishes diverse schools. If a school is extremely diverse (I would argue a good thing) but any student subgroups score lower or higher than others, greatschools gives it a LOWER overall score even if the school has good average test scores by students. If a school has very few minorities the 'equity' weight is discarded entirely from the rating. So an all-white school on the east coast with average test scores might be rated 9 or 10 while a very good California school might be rated 6 because it has a lot of diversity but the test scores vary by economic/racial group. Now if you think this is stupid and ridiculous I would agree. Over time Greatschools inadvertently promotes homogeneous towns (white supremacy) and weirdly punishes schools which have a lot of diversity !!!! They made a wrong, bad, (stupid) assumption that different test scores by race means the school did something bad/nefarious, when it may not have anything at all to do with the school treating students differently....
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/are-greatschools-ratings-making-segregation-worse/2019/12
Greatschools ratings are broken and here's why. While good-intentioned it actually punishes diverse schools. If a school is extremely diverse (I would argue a good thing) but if any student subgroups score lower or higher than others, greatschools gives it a LOWER overall score even if the school has good average test scores by students. If a school has very few minorities the 'equity' weight is discarded entirely from the rating. So an all-white school with average test scores might be rated 9 or 10 while a good-testing school might be rated 6 because it has a lot of diversity but the test scores have variation by economic group. Now if you think this is stupid and ridiculous I would agree. Greatschools inadvertently promotes homogeneous-town home prices (white supremacy) and weirdly punishes schools which have a lot of diversity !!!! Every diverse school has a bad greatschools rating. They made a wrong, bad, (stupid) assumption that different test scores by subgroup means the school did something bad/nefarious, when it may not have anything at all to do with the school treating students differently....
Sent this to /u/Randy_Watson, who introduced me, and the internet, to the horror of Elan.
http://www.greatschools.org/maine/poland/773-Elan-School/?sortBy=dd&tab=reviews#revPagination
The first thing I notice is that the reviews are mostly ... positive? It has four stars. I thought this was odd, but then I realised why.
The reviews are complete and total BS.
Look at this review:
"My nephew attended the Elan School. Our family can't say enough wonderful things about their program and all of it's staff !! He is currently enrolled in college, doing exceptionally and is "back" to the sweet person we all knew he was when he was younger, he's just a bit older now:) We're a very close family and all of the kids are fairly close in age. It was very difficult for us to have him away from all of us, especially so far away, and for so long. We knew we were losing him anyway, and feared that we would lose him permantly to the lifestyle he was living, so sending him away to school was the only choice. We are eternally greatful to the love and support that he received at this school. I've read alot of the stuff online recently and can only surmise that some of the kids writing this stuff didn't like the rules. I can assure you, on behalf of my family, we would have NEVER left one of our own in this school, for even a second, if we ever felt that in any way this school was abusive. It was a challenging experience for my nephew and we feel blessed to have found this school!"
(Bolded for visibility to certain stupid parts)
Wow. Just...wow. I'm not sure whether to feel outraged or to laugh out loud at the poor job they did.
Edit: Formatting
Edit: I am not a survivor. I am a concerned individual.
