Comment by brownbat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brownbat | Hacker News Reader

> "wealthier people tend to live together more than before and so do poorer people"

Some people are essentially told to contribute to this phenomenon when you buy a house in the US. High home values mean good school funding, which means homes will hold their value over time, pricing out people of different incomes. Buy the cheapest house you can in the most expensive neighborhood you can afford for the best return (with the caveat that mixed use zoning is rare).

If had a Japanese zoning model,[0] decoupled school funding from local incomes,[1] and ended or capped the mortgage interest deduction, a lot of this would go away.

None of those are trivial changes without entrenched interests though.

[0] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

[1] I've heard some states do this already. Oregon maybe? I know economic mobility varies a lot based on where you are in the US. http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobilit... Would be interesting to cross compare that with some of these policies, see how much they matter. Maybe the effects of redlining can't just be papered over so quickly.

Hawaii funds all of its public schools at the state level (i.e., not through property tax). And there are still differences between the more affluent and poorer neighborhoods. More affluent neighborhoods can fundraise more effectively and the students tend to have more stable households.

The other effect, is that for high school, almost everyone who can afford it, sends their kids to private school. This is because at the high school level, many of the smaller school districts are combined mixing different socioeconomic groups.

There's more to it than just school funding. Homes are expensive in certain areas because they are expensive. Affluent people are willing to pay more specifically to avoid being near poor people.

People who can hardly-afford-their-(new)-home will also move to expensive areas to avoid being around the "typical" poor people: alcoholics, drug-addicts, dropouts, street gangs, etc.

My mother raised me as a single mom. Her two options were "live reasonably in a poor, drug-riddled, crime-filled area" or "live poorly in a more affluent area with far less drug/crime issues". As a kid I understood that we were too poor to be living where we were living but was still too young to understand why we had moved "if we couldn't afford it". It wasn't until I was old enough to know I'd never raise my kids in my hometown either, even if it meant struggling to live somewhere I couldn't quite afford.

We weren't affluent by any means, but we we had just enough money to not be living down the street from a meth addict and being next-door-neighbors with the neighborhood slinger.

I am actually somewhat surprised that rural school districts haven't argued for pooling state funding assets. The focus always tends to be on the Urban vs Suburban divide (and cultural politics involved with suburban flight, etc.) - but rural schools would far and away be beneficiaries of such a policy change.

Rural districts want independence. Pooling of funding always results in consolidation.

I have been under the impression that economic want fuels consolidation: as funding is reduced small districts must consolidate into a smaller number of larger schools.

I believe this is what has happened in Kansas - small towns have lost local schools and kids are bussed into larger, more centralized school districts. Anecdotally, I've heard fears that this might threaten the long term stability of the small towns as kids will be less inclined to move back. Can't speak to that personally, though.

Only in extreme cases. It's hard to kill institutions. States and counties drive consolidation by paying for things.

Assuming that states/counties are not merely cutting a check to school districts (as they do for Title One funding). Using the state level department of education as a pass through to aggregate and distribute funding per student doesn't neccessitate that they can then dictate consolidation on school districts.

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