Location, location, location
By Goldwater Institute: Carrie Lukas (10/27/06)
School choice could help the middle-class squeeze - In The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, authors Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi highlight why parents make significant financial sacrifices to pay for an expensive home: they want to give their children the best start possible, and "the best possible start begins with good schools. . ."
The problem is that where children attend school, for the most part, is dictated by where they live. Parents unhappy with their local school can either opt out of the public school system and pay private tuition, or can move residences. During the last decade, housing costs have climbed overall, but parents have been particularly affected as families bid up home prices in the few areas that offer high quality schools.
What can policymakers do to address this problem? Warren and Tyagi offer this advice: "Any policy that loosens the ironclad relationship between location-location-location and school-school-school would eliminate the need for parents to pay an inflated price for a home just because it happens to lie within the boundaries of a desirable school district. A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly."
School choice programs have been shown to improve student outcomes and increase parental satisfaction with schooling. The fact that these programs may also help alleviate the middle-class financial crunch is just another reason for policymakers to embrace them.
Carrie Lukas is the vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women’s Forum and a Goldwater Institute senior fellow. A longer version of this article appeared on Townhall.com
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php?/1162.html
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