Jonathan Rothwell of the Brookings Institution just published a new report, “Housing Costs, Zoning, and Access to High-Scoring Schools.” Education reporter Keung Hui wrote a clear and balanced story on the Brookings report in today’s News & Observer.
Let’s get a few things out into the open. Like all research studies, the Brookings report has flaws. The metropolitan areas covered in the study have important structural differences that are not necessarily accounted for in the research design – differences in the size and governance of school districts within the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), variations in the relationship between school districts and municipal/county governments, demographic changes, and a host of issues that may be described as “politics.” The author identifies the most important limitation of all,
To be sure, people are not randomly assigned to metropolitan areas, so this analysis cannot control for unobservable characteristics that may differentiate residents of metro areas with high or low average test scores for minority students. (p. 28 n 83)
In other words, people make choices on where to live based on factors that cannot quantified. The degree to which zoning regulations or school quality drive these decisions is debatable.
It is important to note that the study is not a longitudinal one. Most of the test score data used by Rothwell was from 2010 and 2011 (See p. 6 and p. 26 n 63). Even proponents of Wake County’s busing program will admit that the socioeconomic diversity policy was in decline during this period. Perhaps the success of the Raleigh-Cary MSA can be attributed to the fact that the policy had been weakened by the Republican school board majority elected in 2009. Of course, other changes instituted by the Republican school board may have also played a role. Given the design of the study, there is no way to know for sure why the Raleigh-Cary MSA fared well in the study.
