DC Accepted Papers Paper:
A Hedonic Analysis of School-Quality Valuation Under the Universal Lottery System in Washington, D.C.
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Lucy M. Hadley, Georgetown University
In 2014 at the press conference announcing Promise Zones, President Obama, declared, “child’s course in life should be determined not by the zip code she’s born in” (Slack & Oken 2014). Though this has become a common refrain among candidates for office, divorcing education from wealth and geography is an unlikely promise. Though public education is supposed to be “free and appropriate” for all, wealthy families buy access to high-quality schools through the purchase of a home in a high-quality catchment area. As a result, American communities experienced Tiebout-like sorting, where those with a high willingness to pay for a public good sort into neighborhoods with similar preferences. This means some districts (and schools within districts) have a large property tax base to raise education revenue. Housing prices therefore reflect the willingness to pay for different levels of quality education. These economic disparities are closely mirrored by racial inequality (Condron & Roscigno 2003; Baker & Green 2005; Vaught 2008) Tying school enrollment to neighborhoods has driven race and income-based disparities in enrollment, funding, teacher quality, academic performance, and later-life outcomes (Darling-Hammond 1998; Johnson 2014).
School choice polices can “uncouple” students from their neighborhood by conducting school assignment based on parent preferences rather than zip code. How does this new form of assignment disrupt the correlation between housing prices and school quality? This research aims to address this question in the District of Columbia between 2009 and 2019, five years before a unified lottery system was in place, and the first five years under this new choice system. The methods build on previous hedonic pricing models, but with the additional condition of choice (Oates 1969; Black 1999; Brasington 2003; Kane et al. 2006; Downes & Zabel 2012). Thus, this paper has relevant and intersecting implications for housing, education, and school choice policies.
