Finding the best home prices, the best schools
Phoenix Business Journal - by Angela Gonzales The Business Journal
If you believe high test scores mean the best education for your children, you better make sure you're living in one of five Valley neighborhoods.
There are only five pockets where students can attend top scoring elementary, middle and high schools without hopping from district to district.
To sweeten the deal for parents, a few homes in those areas can be purchased for less than $150,000. But prices are going up.
A study by the Arizona Real Estate Center in the College of Business at Arizona State University shows the median sales price for existing Valley homes was $110,000, compared with $101,000 in the same quarter in 1997. The median price for new homes during the first quarter of 1998 was $137,210, up from $135,830 during the same period in 1997.
Although there were fewer than 20 homes available in those five neighborhoods for less than $150,000, about 100 homes are priced under $200,000, according to Paul Johnson, a Phoenix real estate consultant who also operates Maps & Facts Unlimited Inc.
These homes are in the same neighborhoods as $2 million homes, he said.
"Rising prices are going to price people out of these neighborhoods," Johnson said. "Fewer people can afford a median-priced home."
Homeowners in those neighborhoods, however, are glad to see housing prices increase because they're building equity, he said.
As usual, Chaparral High School in Scottsdale was at the top of the high school ranking by test scores. Cocopah Middle School in the same Scottsdale school district, however, went from the top in 1996 to a tie for seventh in 1998. Magnet Traditional in central Phoenix took top middle school honors.
At the elementary level, Alhambra Traditional in Phoenix -- tied for fourth in 1996 -- made the top of the list this year.
Madison Richard C. Simis Elementary held the top ranking from 1994 to 1996, but didn't quite make the grade this year. For the first time, the central Phoenix school is not even ranked in the top 10.
Matt Devlin, principal for Madison Simis, said he was disappointed the school dropped from the top 10, and is working to bring scores back up.
"We don't expect to go away," he said. "We expect to be back in the top 10 or real close to that next year."
When ranking the schools, Maps & Facts used the test scores of 4th-graders to represent the elementary school ranking, 7th grade to represent the middle schools and 10th grade for high school. It did the same for charter schools, ranking them separately.
The Business Journal and Maps & Facts have teamed since 1994 to connect school rankings and resale home value.
Third through 12th grade students were administered the Stanford 9 test this year, but Maps & Facts concentrated on 4th-, 7th- and 10th-grade test scores to maintain consistency with previous years, when Iowa Test of Basic Skills was administered only to those grades.
New tests
This is the second year the Stanford 9 test was taken by students, with more than 536,000 students taking the test this spring. Statewide test scores improved significantly from last year, the most marked improvement in mathematics.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan said the state's academic standards and education reform efforts are having a positive effect on student achievement.
Still, test scores remained somewhat average, ranging from the 46th percentile ranking for 3rd-graders on the math test to a high of 57th on the math test for the 6th- and 9th-graders. A score of 46 means the average Arizona student scored better than 46 percent of the students in the national sample group for 1995.
Other factors for success
But test scores are not the end-all to choosing a school.
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