Schools and property values

This morning's Journal Sentinel reports on a dramatic rise in Milwaukee property values. This is the most convincing evidence yet that the Milwaukee education reforms are working.

For the past few years Milwaukee has experienced a surprisingly robust boom in condo construction, in areas like the Beer Line and the Third Ward. However, the connection with education reform has been easy to dismiss because the majority of condo purchasers seem to be people with little direct concern about the schools--empty nesters, young professionals, single people, gays.

Yet the growth in property values is quite different. The poorest areas experienced by far the highest percentage increases in property values. (See the graph in the post below.) These are areas with a great many children. Concern about education should have a much greater effect on property values in these areas. Here is my hypothesis about what happened:

The Milwaukee reforms were aimed at empowering parents by giving them choices over their children's education. In recent years, the number of real choices for Milwaukee parents have vastly increased. These include the school choice program (and recall that most residents of the areas with the biggest jumps in property values would qualify for this program), a wide and growing variety of charter schools, and continuing efforts by MPS to restructure its schools to make them more attractive (such as the move from middle schools to K-8s).

All of these changes would have the greatest impact on the areas with the most children and the lowest incomes, precisely the districts seeing the greatest percentage increases in property values. So families that in the past might have struggled to buy a house in the suburbs for better schools now find more opportunities in Milwaukee.