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. 33 P R O P E R T Y - O W N I N G P L U T O C R A C Y Inequality and American Localism stephen macedo Th e A m e r ic a n dr e a m i s a dream of liberty and opportunity. It promises reward and advancement to those who pursue it. The dream is pursued by families: parents seek it for themselves and their children. It involves owning a home and sending one’s children to a good school. These ideals organize our lives and inform our institutions. Public policy promotes it in all sorts of ways: for example, by encouraging home ownership and by providing free public education for all. It is a dream that most of us pursue, and it is a dream that we believe—or want to believe—is available to all. But is the dream available to all? This chapter argues that American local institutions are deeply flawed. Competition among local communities, homeowners, and school districts creates a race to the top for some, while leaving many behind. The nexus of home ownership, local funding and control of schools, and the power of local communities to zone to exclude the poor provides enormous positional advantages to those who can afford to live where the best schools are. It also, as we will see, builds perverse inegalitarian incentives into the motivational structures of ordinary citizens, who function as parents, property owners, and citizens. Good Schools for All? The website GreatSchools.org allows parents to search the country for the “best schools for your housing dollars.” It reports that “every year millions of U.S. parents consider pulling up stakes to make a city and school upgrade,” and many move “from city to city in search of educational excellence and affordable living.” The website helpfully rates cities and towns across the country, sorted according to housing prices and 1 34 . S T E P H E N M A C E D O the quality of the local schools. It combines research on school quality with analysis of the local housing market. The best school districts “recruit and retain, motivate, and develop great teachers.” Other keys to success, according to the website, are small class sizes, low teacher– student ratios, constant innovation, access to “cutting-edge technology,” and superintendents who approach their work with “unflagging intensity and creativity.” The very best schools, in places like the wealthy suburbs around Boston, “offer students an enriching environment of artistic, athletic , and musical extracurriculars” (GreatSchools Inc. 2010).1 Not all the towns with excellent schools are superrich, and GreatSchools .org insists that it is possible to have excellent schools in places where homes are affordable.Tiny Harrison, Arkansas (population 13,000), has excellent schools and a median home price of only $99,800. Harrison also has a thriving business community and “an intensely committed parent body.” The high school’s booster club recently raised $7 million for a new sports facility. Generally, however, many of the very best schools are indeed in wealthy communities. There are medium-sized cities with good schools—such as Raleigh, North Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ; and San Francisco, California—that, in fact, score much lower than top suburban and small-town schools. So while the website provides options for anyone who can afford to live in a wide range of places, it also candidly states, “Want a superior education? Follow the money.” GreatSchools.org is not a source of cutting-edge research on income and school achievement, but it is a window into the American dream and apparently, at least, a helpful guide for concerned parents with sufficient resources to be mobile. Across the country, suburban realty web pages boast of the quality of local schools. Home values are enhanced by the quality of the local schools. Ideally, every family, by choosing where to live, will be able to find a community with at least a decent school for their children. And the whole system of fragmented metropolitan areas with many local jurisdictions, each with their own local schools, competing for residents based on the relative quality of schools, and thereby helping to bid up home prices, should lead to educational improvements overall. And indeed there is some evidence that school quality increases, and the general cost of public services may be kept down, in metropolitan areas with multiple suburban and ex-urban jurisdictions. [18.118.12.222] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 05:02...

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