Test Scores and Home Prices
Last week the results for the Connecticut Mastery Test were released to the public. The Courant has put together a nice page for quickly seeing data, while the official results website allows users to generate detailed reports.
As expected, there has been a flurry of commentary on the results for different towns. The West Hartford results are being debated on West Hartford Forums, Talk of West Hartford, and The West Hartford Blog. I’m sure that there are other places also.
Rather that rehashing what has already been said, let’s keep the focus on real estate and take a look at the relationship between test scores and home prices. Will buying a home in a town with higher median home prices provide access to better performing schools (based on CMT results)?
The above graph shows test scores for each town (average performance of eighth graders) as a function of the town’s median home prices (second quarter of 2008). It is interesting to note that test scores and median home price seems to be correlated. I’m sure there are other factors that influence the relationship. Anyone up for running a regression analysis… 
[...] The Greater Hartford Real Estate Blog has an excellent post (and a fracking cool graph) about the relationship between CMT scores and the value of your home. [...]
Amy B. This is a wonderful post and thanks for doing this analysis. The question is are the home prices lower because of higher scores or because of location location location? The learning corridor schools should be bringing up scores and subsequently home values. Are they? How do the prices of homes look around the better schools in Hartford? or in New Britain? It is certainly all very thought provoking.
Unfortunately it’s very hard to track housing data by specific school because agents don’t always complete the data field for schools. I tried this last year and it was a very tedious exercise. Additionally, many schools are fed by a lottery system, so looking at the “better schools” in a town may not tell a relevant story because the children come from all over the town/city, not from the school’s neighborhood.
I also do not know the answer to why home prices are higher in some towns versus others. I’m sure it is some combination of location, test scores, and socio-economic conditions. I wasn’t kidding when I asked if anyone wanted to run a regression analysis.
OOPs that was a typo…. let’s try again and clarify …. Amy B. This is a wonderful post and thanks for doing this analysis. The question is are the home prices higher because of higher scores or because of location location location? Conversely, are the home prices lower because of lower scores or because of location location location? There is clearly a difference between the location and condition of properties compared between say Avon or New Britain. The housing stock is really different when you compare these places in this graph above too. The learning corridor schools should be bringing up scores and subsequently home values. Are they? How do the prices of homes look around the better schools in Hartford? or in New Britain? It is certainly all very thought provoking.
A regression analysis would be quite interesting.