[vundercind]

Poorer kids tend to be harder to teach. School “quality” largely measures how easy-to-teach the kids are. School quality plays a huge role in home value.

That and related factors (likelihood to commit crimes of the sort that affect home values, say) are a lot of why communities try to keep affordable housing away. High prices are your buy-in to good schools if you can’t afford good private schools. Once you’ve bought in at a price inflated by school quality, you definitely don’t want to see that slip or there goes all the money you spent (maybe literally all of it—I’ve seen premiums for “good” versus “just ok” districts near one another that are well into the levels of mortgage down payments—20%, 30%)