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Non-malicious startup idea: What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much highe

Non-malicious startup idea: What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? From OP's calculation, a great school may cause at least $200K price increase per house and depending on capacity of the school you need to build, I think this can turn out to be pretty good business.

xyzzyz 8y ago
> What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? It's not easy to create a good school. Certainly, simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work, as shown by an example of US public schools. The most certain way to achieve it is to heavily preselect the attending children, but that presupposes the existence of such quality base in the area around the school. The problem is that if it does, then their parents are usually already rich themselves, and so the house prices are already high.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Are these assumptions, that throwing money at the problem characterizes US public school, and that quality children usually have rich parents, anything like justified?
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    Regarding the second part, yes, the fact that academic achievement is highly influenced by socioeconomic status is well supported by research; a big part of the whole correlation is that higher socioeconomic status means better schools, but there's still a strong effect within the same school. There's a bunch of studies that try to estimate the nature/nurture split, but in any case higher socioeconomic status correlates positively with pretty much everything schooling-wise.
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Sure, but all that is another thing. I was questioning a particular assumption: quality children usually have rich parents Maybe that wasn't what was meant, but that was what was said.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        What if poor children tend to have distracting home lives, stressful situations, parents who aren't educated enough to help tutor, poorer diets, higher rates of disease and fewer positive peer and authority figure examples?
        xyzzyz 8y ago
        If these are what makes poor children perform poor at school, then the strategy of making good schools to boost house prices is not viable -- we simply have no idea how to make kids facing the problems described above achieve good scores, because if we did, we'd already be doing this. Moreover, this wouldn't attract wealthy buyers, because their children don't have these problems in the first place, so they won't get any improvement. The point here is that we have no idea how to make a school good, other than by kicking out bad students (whatever the reasons for them being bad might be) and getting good ones. If you knew a way to take a random bad performing school in the country, and bring its students educational outcomes to above national average, you'd make lots of money contracting out consulting to local government.
        istjohn 8y ago
        > The point here is that we have no idea how to make a school good, other than by kicking out bad students I would disagree with any metric claiming to measure school quality that is not constant when the demographics of the school change. If our metrics simply gauge the socioeconomic status of a school's population, we need better metrics. We also need to develop interventions that overcome the educational costs of poverty, perhaps, dare I say, by eliminating--or at least attenuating--poverty.
  - efnx 8y ago
    They must be. Public schools are underfunded. Also, who measures children by “quality”? Jeez. This part of SV culture I would like to unsubscribe from.
    - dnautics 8y ago
      Public schools are not underfunded. The inflation adjusted per student k12 spend in the us has gone up over the last 30 years. It seems like school teachers are dramatically underpaid (a matter of opinion but I feel it's probably true in the median), but not the system as a whole.
      - forgotmysn 8y ago
        it really varies, its not fair to say that all schools are well or poorly funded. in california, it is dependent on local taxes for example. so palo alto has incredible schools, and LA and Oakland have some of the worst in the country
        aidenn0 8y ago
        For most of california it is not at all dependent on local taxes. Local taxes only significantly affect "Basic Aid" (i.e. wealthy) school districts, 40% of which are in the Bay Area. For the rest of the state, the funding is nearly identical on a per-student basis.
        xyzzyz 8y ago
        Palo Alto spends only 10% more than Oakland per student, which itself spends more than both national and state average. If Oakland schools are worst in the country, the funding has minor, if any, impact on it.
        ultrasounder 8y ago
        The difference is "PiE" Partners in education, which is a non-profit voluntary parent-led organization which supports "All" the extracurricular activities plus for in-class aides for all classes.
- romwell 8y ago
  >Certainly, simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work, as shown by an example of US public school. Yeah right, which school are you looking at? Meanwhile, elsewhere in the US: teachers have to hold several jobs just to survive[1]. (That story was on HN several days ago as well) [1]http://time.com/longform/teaching-in-america/ http://time.com/longform/teaching-in-america/
  - xyzzyz 8y ago
    > Brown often works from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. at her school in Versailles, Ky., then goes to a second job manning the metal detectors and wrangling rowdy guests at Lexington’s Rupp Arena to supplement her $55,000 annual salary. With her husband, she also runs a historical tour company for extra money. So, basically, in her teacher job, she already makes more than 60% of Versailles, KY households. If her husband makes anywhere close to what she does, their household makes more than 85% of households in Versailles, KY, and that's not even counting her moonlighting. Maybe they have some special needs, like e.g. disabled children, that make them need six figures income, then certainly I'm sympathetic to their plight, but if the argument here is that a household in Versailles, KY needs a six figure income just to survive, then well, I'm stunned.
    - jayd16 8y ago
      $55k but the benefits probably suck so you'll have to factor that in.
      - xyzzyz 8y ago
        I think you forgot your sarcasm tag.
    - romwell 8y ago
      The argument here is the teachers aren't well-paid in the US, especially given the importance of their profession and the level of education a teacher typically gets. I can't speak for KY, but if you want to go into specific numbers, let's start here: >In 2016, for instance, the average teacher’s starting salary was $38,617 Make that $45K in California[1]. In San Jose, where I currently live, median elementary school teacher salary is about $50K[2]. With this kind of salary, the median teacher will not be able to rent a one-bedroom apartment in decent San Jose, which typically go for well over $2K/month (about $2500 for 1B)[3], since landlords usually want to see monthly incomes of 3X rent (source: I'm renting). That's barely double the minimum wage ($12/hr in SJ) for a median teacher salary. Again: this means half the elementary school teachers in San Jose make under 2X minimum wage and most literally can't afford to rent a 1B apartment on their own. That's before you add in student loans (education isn't free!), car payment/maintenance/insurance (we don't have a usable public transportation system here), etc - and that's assuming no kids. You can always find an example of a teacher that's well paid, but there's a reason why the teachers were protesting in several states - and the reason isn't that they have too much money thrown at them. [1]http://www.nea.org/home/2016-2017-average-starting-teacher-salary.html http://www.nea.org/home/2016-2017-average-starting-teacher-s... [2]https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Elementary_School_Teacher/Salary/5c6fde16/Entry-Level-San-Jose-CA https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Elementary_School_T... [3]https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-jose-rent-trends/ https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-jose-rent-tre...
forgotmysn 8y ago
multiple houses plus a performing school seems like it would be an enormous investment
heavenlyhash 8y ago
> From OP's calculation, a great school may cause at least $200K price increase per house Say it with me: Correlation does not imply causation! Correlation does not imply causation! Correlation does not imply causation! Correlation does not imply causation! (And schools in the U.S. are funded largely by local property taxes. Therefore, the arrow of causation might very well go the opposite direction here: the places where homes are sold at higher prices are assessed at correspondingly higher taxes, and therefore those school districts get more money, and thus perhaps -- perhaps! Correlation does not imply causation! -- those more heavily funded schools are regarded as "better".)
- lwf 8y ago
  How do you account for wild differences between schools in the same school district? Despite sharing a tax base, you see a sharp increase of the median house sale price across school boundaries. Aside from differences in capital investments, generally the operational funding is allocated on a per-pupil basis.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
dragonwriter 8y ago
(1) good/bad school area refers specifically to the ratings of the public elementary, middle, and highs school to which persons living at an address are assigned by geography (it's a measure of what you are entitled to as a result of living at a given address, not what happens to be nearby otherwise); starting a private school (whether a regular private school or a privately owned charter school) has no direct effect on that, regardless of its ratings. (2) There's pretty strong evidence that school ratings mostly are a measure of the students assigned, so if you want to influence ratings of the local schools to manipulate real estate prices, you don't establish a new private school and try to make it good, you make a new private school and selectively admit low-performing students from the target area.

xyzzyz 8y ago

> What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? It's not easy to create a good school. Certainly, simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work, as shown by an example of US public schools. The most certain way to achieve it is to heavily preselect the attending children, but that presupposes the existence of such quality base in the area around the school. The problem is that if it does, then their parents are usually already rich themselves, and so the house prices are already high.

yesenadam 8y ago
Are these assumptions, that throwing money at the problem characterizes US public school, and that quality children usually have rich parents, anything like justified?
- PeterisP 8y ago
  Regarding the second part, yes, the fact that academic achievement is highly influenced by socioeconomic status is well supported by research; a big part of the whole correlation is that higher socioeconomic status means better schools, but there's still a strong effect within the same school. There's a bunch of studies that try to estimate the nature/nurture split, but in any case higher socioeconomic status correlates positively with pretty much everything schooling-wise.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Sure, but all that is another thing. I was questioning a particular assumption: quality children usually have rich parents Maybe that wasn't what was meant, but that was what was said.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      What if poor children tend to have distracting home lives, stressful situations, parents who aren't educated enough to help tutor, poorer diets, higher rates of disease and fewer positive peer and authority figure examples?
      - xyzzyz 8y ago
        If these are what makes poor children perform poor at school, then the strategy of making good schools to boost house prices is not viable -- we simply have no idea how to make kids facing the problems described above achieve good scores, because if we did, we'd already be doing this. Moreover, this wouldn't attract wealthy buyers, because their children don't have these problems in the first place, so they won't get any improvement. The point here is that we have no idea how to make a school good, other than by kicking out bad students (whatever the reasons for them being bad might be) and getting good ones. If you knew a way to take a random bad performing school in the country, and bring its students educational outcomes to above national average, you'd make lots of money contracting out consulting to local government.
        istjohn 8y ago
        > The point here is that we have no idea how to make a school good, other than by kicking out bad students I would disagree with any metric claiming to measure school quality that is not constant when the demographics of the school change. If our metrics simply gauge the socioeconomic status of a school's population, we need better metrics. We also need to develop interventions that overcome the educational costs of poverty, perhaps, dare I say, by eliminating--or at least attenuating--poverty.
- efnx 8y ago
  They must be. Public schools are underfunded. Also, who measures children by “quality”? Jeez. This part of SV culture I would like to unsubscribe from.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    Public schools are not underfunded. The inflation adjusted per student k12 spend in the us has gone up over the last 30 years. It seems like school teachers are dramatically underpaid (a matter of opinion but I feel it's probably true in the median), but not the system as a whole.
    - forgotmysn 8y ago
      it really varies, its not fair to say that all schools are well or poorly funded. in california, it is dependent on local taxes for example. so palo alto has incredible schools, and LA and Oakland have some of the worst in the country
      - aidenn0 8y ago
        For most of california it is not at all dependent on local taxes. Local taxes only significantly affect "Basic Aid" (i.e. wealthy) school districts, 40% of which are in the Bay Area. For the rest of the state, the funding is nearly identical on a per-student basis.
      - xyzzyz 8y ago
        Palo Alto spends only 10% more than Oakland per student, which itself spends more than both national and state average. If Oakland schools are worst in the country, the funding has minor, if any, impact on it.
        ultrasounder 8y ago
        The difference is "PiE" Partners in education, which is a non-profit voluntary parent-led organization which supports "All" the extracurricular activities plus for in-class aides for all classes.
romwell 8y ago
>Certainly, simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work, as shown by an example of US public school. Yeah right, which school are you looking at? Meanwhile, elsewhere in the US: teachers have to hold several jobs just to survive[1]. (That story was on HN several days ago as well) [1]http://time.com/longform/teaching-in-america/ http://time.com/longform/teaching-in-america/
- xyzzyz 8y ago
  > Brown often works from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. at her school in Versailles, Ky., then goes to a second job manning the metal detectors and wrangling rowdy guests at Lexington’s Rupp Arena to supplement her $55,000 annual salary. With her husband, she also runs a historical tour company for extra money. So, basically, in her teacher job, she already makes more than 60% of Versailles, KY households. If her husband makes anywhere close to what she does, their household makes more than 85% of households in Versailles, KY, and that's not even counting her moonlighting. Maybe they have some special needs, like e.g. disabled children, that make them need six figures income, then certainly I'm sympathetic to their plight, but if the argument here is that a household in Versailles, KY needs a six figure income just to survive, then well, I'm stunned.
  - jayd16 8y ago
    $55k but the benefits probably suck so you'll have to factor that in.
    - xyzzyz 8y ago
      I think you forgot your sarcasm tag.
  - romwell 8y ago
    The argument here is the teachers aren't well-paid in the US, especially given the importance of their profession and the level of education a teacher typically gets. I can't speak for KY, but if you want to go into specific numbers, let's start here: >In 2016, for instance, the average teacher’s starting salary was $38,617 Make that $45K in California[1]. In San Jose, where I currently live, median elementary school teacher salary is about $50K[2]. With this kind of salary, the median teacher will not be able to rent a one-bedroom apartment in decent San Jose, which typically go for well over $2K/month (about $2500 for 1B)[3], since landlords usually want to see monthly incomes of 3X rent (source: I'm renting). That's barely double the minimum wage ($12/hr in SJ) for a median teacher salary. Again: this means half the elementary school teachers in San Jose make under 2X minimum wage and most literally can't afford to rent a 1B apartment on their own. That's before you add in student loans (education isn't free!), car payment/maintenance/insurance (we don't have a usable public transportation system here), etc - and that's assuming no kids. You can always find an example of a teacher that's well paid, but there's a reason why the teachers were protesting in several states - and the reason isn't that they have too much money thrown at them. [1]http://www.nea.org/home/2016-2017-average-starting-teacher-salary.html http://www.nea.org/home/2016-2017-average-starting-teacher-s... [2]https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Elementary_School_Teacher/Salary/5c6fde16/Entry-Level-San-Jose-CA https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Elementary_School_T... [3]https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-jose-rent-trends/ https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-jose-rent-tre...

forgotmysn 8y ago

multiple houses plus a performing school seems like it would be an enormous investment

heavenlyhash 8y ago

> From OP's calculation, a great school may cause at least $200K price increase per house Say it with me: Correlation does not imply causation! Correlation does not imply causation! Correlation does not imply causation! Correlation does not imply causation! (And schools in the U.S. are funded largely by local property taxes. Therefore, the arrow of causation might very well go the opposite direction here: the places where homes are sold at higher prices are assessed at correspondingly higher taxes, and therefore those school districts get more money, and thus perhaps -- perhaps! Correlation does not imply causation! -- those more heavily funded schools are regarded as "better".)

lwf 8y ago
How do you account for wild differences between schools in the same school district? Despite sharing a tax base, you see a sharp increase of the median house sale price across school boundaries. Aside from differences in capital investments, generally the operational funding is allocated on a per-pupil basis.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

dragonwriter 8y ago

(1) good/bad school area refers specifically to the ratings of the public elementary, middle, and highs school to which persons living at an address are assigned by geography (it's a measure of what you are entitled to as a result of living at a given address, not what happens to be nearby otherwise); starting a private school (whether a regular private school or a privately owned charter school) has no direct effect on that, regardless of its ratings. (2) There's pretty strong evidence that school ratings mostly are a measure of the students assigned, so if you want to influence ratings of the local schools to manipulate real estate prices, you don't establish a new private school and try to make it good, you make a new private school and selectively admit low-performing students from the target area.