Nah, it's the student (and parent) pool, mostly, I reckon. Selection bias, essentially. The bad lockdown-over-threats-of-violence-every-week sorts around here p

Nah, it's the student (and parent) pool, mostly, I reckon. Selection bias, essentially. The bad lockdown-over-threats-of-violence-every-week sorts around here pay better than the good schools, by a large margin (they get more grants and such). The problem's the lockdown-over-threats-of-violence-every-week, not the money, and fixing that's a much, much bigger (and more expensive) problem than just evening out school funding. Goes like that on a sliding scale, middle-tier schools will also have a harder-to-teach population though may not be so obviously bad as the ones that are real wrecks. Usually a ton more English-as-a-second-language. Some actual variety among the good schools where some truly are better, but the vast majority of the difference across the whole spectrum is selection bias, if we're talking graduation rates, college entrance outcomes, test scores, that kind of thing. All the usual measures. [EDIT] point is, the main thing you're paying for is for your kid to be around other kids whose parents could also afford to pay more for housing, plus keep a couple cars running regularly to handle the commute, and so on, whatever the barriers happen to be for the district/schools in question.