School ratings as the new redlining

Here is an NPR article about how neighborhood school ratings are becoming a de facto way of reinforcing housing segregation.

I had hinted at this in a past blog post on Ferguson, in which I expressed skepticism that the white parents who obsess over school ratings in the neighborhoods they move to are in fact that concerned about education.  If true education were really their chief concern, they'd be focused on getting rid of their TV, taking their kids a, their neighbors' kids, and themselves to more museums, and interacting more with a broad cross-section of society.  If, on the other hand, one is mainly concerned with avoiding interaction with people of color, then school ratings track nicely with ethnic makeup of a school district.

Anyway, it is a validation for me to see a serious journalistic treatment of something I had only mused on.  And it is interesting to read about the murky legal questions raised by using school ratings to sell houses.