What is a good education worth? This is the question that American families must answer when making decisions about their child's education. How parents choose to answer that question tends to affect nearly every aspect of their lives, from where they live to their family finances.
The Effects of Location-Based School Assignment
Generally, a child is assigned to a public school based on where they live. Parents dissatisfied with their child's school can move locations, pay to enroll in a private school, or home school. Many policymakers across the country have recognized the need for greater parental control and more options so they have created programs, such as charter school laws. However for most students, the school they attend is a result of where they live.
Most of the debate about education reform centers on the effect that the public school system has on education quality. However, it is also important to consider how this affects families and communities in other ways. For example, the desire of parents to buy homes in jurisdictions with public school systems with a good reputation has lead to escalating home prices in these areas. For example, one study found that a one-point increase in a standardized test score creates a $4,600 house price increase.
As a result, many families make significant financial sacrifices to afford to live in these desirable areas. This includes taking on larger mortgages and depending on two salaries to pay for necessities, leaving them more vulnerable to serious financial hardship.
How School Choice Can Alleviate Financial Pressure on Families and Improve Communities
School choice programs give parents more ways to choose their child's school. This would reduce the pressure on families to live in areas with the best public schools, which would allow families to buy homes more within their means and consider other factors. There are numerous benefits of easing financial pressures on families, from creating greater piece of mind to allowing more opportunity to save for retirement, college, and times of need. In addition, in some cases, reduced financial pressure may enable some families to opt to keep one parent at home or reduce their work schedules.
In addition to helping more families achieve their desired balance of work and family time, enabling more parents to stay home has the potential to positively affect communities. Having more parents available during the day can help change the dynamic to benefit children not only in a given family, but within the community. Stay-at-home parents serve as volunteers for school fieldtrips and act as neighborhood watchdogs, helping make the streets safer for children to play outside and prevent inappropriate behavior. It could also discourage the trend of families with children leaving urban areas, which drains these areas of their tax base, reduces property values, and robs them of some of their most active and concerned citizens, which can be detrimental for crime rates.
All facts taken from More than a Classroom: How School Choice Affects Families, a publication by the Independent Women's Forum, available at iwf.org