Re: Good Work

1

Is there a significance to the location of the point on each graph where all the lines are emanating from?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:03 PM
horizontal rule
2

It's where the city proper falls on the two axes.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:07 PM
horizontal rule
3

That's what I first thought, but you can't mouseover it like the rest, and it doesn't have a bubble to indicate population.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:11 PM
horizontal rule
4

The population of New York City is 8,550,405.


Posted by: Opinionated Bubble | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:13 PM
horizontal rule
5

I mean, I'm sure that is it, but I still think it's strange.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:13 PM
horizontal rule
6

Given the history of the area plus the geography (good port, solid bedrock for supporting dense construction), it's not strange at all.


Posted by: Opinionated Bubble | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:14 PM
horizontal rule
7

If you type in the name of the city as it appears in the chart, you'll see the bubble, and also see why it's not shown by default (it's huge).


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:15 PM
horizontal rule
8

Good point.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:18 PM
horizontal rule
9

It wasn't obvious to me at the beginning that the city is a single school district. I thought it might have been dispersed across a bunch of little bubbles. Austin is broken up into a bunch of school districts in counterintuitive ways, (although only one of them is called the Austin CISD).


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03-30-17 8:20 PM
horizontal rule
10

Nice chart! Fascinating that the correlation is much weaker than I would have expected, and very outlier-driven such as it is. SF is the exception, but the others are surprisingly flat.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 7:02 AM
horizontal rule
11

Minneapolis is hilariously flat, and also includes things that are bizarrely far away (Mankato?) and not obviously part of the CSA or MSA.

Somerville (where I am! where the kid starts public school this fall!) is in an... interesting place on that chart.


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 7:40 AM
horizontal rule
12

How are they evaluating School Quality? Is it just test scores?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 11:38 AM
horizontal rule
13

How are they evaluating School Quality? Is it just test scores?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 11:38 AM
horizontal rule
14

Using home price data from Redfin, a national real estate brokerage, and school quality data based on test scores from the Stanford Education Data Archive


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 11:40 AM
horizontal rule
15

A geographer I follow on Twitter (he stopped updating his blog :( ) said that he'd done a similar exercise during his last move, but that what he looked for was low test scores crossed with high ESL rates. "White BA+ households pay insane premiums for "good" schools."


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 11:49 AM
horizontal rule
16

Rather bizarre that there are exactly two districts that are more expensive housing and worse performing schools (and bad commute.) Why is there demand in those housing markets- bad zoning leading to a shortage of housing?


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:02 PM
horizontal rule
17

11- Not that you should tell me on the public blog, but I'd be interested to hear which school.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:04 PM
horizontal rule
18

I don't know. I assume it's more or less normal that every city has places where you can get a nice house, a half hour commute, reasonable schools, and three-digit mortgage payment.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:05 PM
horizontal rule
19

Where I live is behind, no surprise. We're currently hoping to get Atossa into one of the few good-seeming schools in the area, counting on the fact that other UMC white or model-minority parents in the neighborhood aren't concerned, and assuming that if the elementary schools really are so bad that she gets dragged down we'd have time to move before high school if necessary.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:23 PM
horizontal rule
20

My general belief is that subtle dragging-down isn't much of an issue in grade school -- if a school is a reasonably safe and pleasant environment, a middle class kid is going to do fine.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:29 PM
horizontal rule
21

I believe the children are our future. Hold them close and push them to get an A.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:40 PM
horizontal rule
22

Show them it's their duty to get a free ride.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:49 PM
horizontal rule
23

That should be "full ride". Sorry.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:50 PM
horizontal rule
24

Arlington had a reputation for good schools, because young professionals have moved in. Lexington is up there, but there's no diversity and kids learn that they only have value if they get in to Harvard. Used to be very white but now there are a lot of East Asians, so I guess that's some diversity. I'd love to be able to get more kinds of information.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03-31-17 12:51 PM
horizontal rule