Chait on charter schools.

I have some points of disagreement but agree with the parts of this that will make people mad. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/unlearning-democrats-answer-on-charter-schools.html

Because I'm obsessed with housing policy, I've increasingly seen this through a housing lens.

People who live one block west of me are zoned into Ross Elementary rather than Garrison Elementary. And Ross feeds to School Without Walls for middle school rather than Cardozo.

Ross and especially SWW are seen as "better" than Garrison or Cardozo.

And in DC elementary schools that feed into Wilson High School and especially the sub-set of them that feed into Deal Middle School are seen as particularly desirable.

This gives homeowners a lot of interest in upholding the city's "public" school system (where slots are allocated to the highest bidder via the real estate market) vs its "charter" school system (where slots are allocated by lottery).

But there's more!

In my neighborhood where we now have a good number of yuppies but where the middle school option has a bad reputation, what the yuppies want is not liberation from the zone system but for the city to build a new Shaw Middle School.

I don't really have a piece with a clear thesis in me on this, but I think those housing dynamics are a big deal alongside the union stuff and everything else.

Much demand for "good neighborhood schools" that are capitalized into the price of the property they own.