TY - JOUR TI - Do New Yorkers vote with their wallets? DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3X92D60 PY - 2015 AB - In February 2012, New York City released value added scores for its grade 4 through 8 public school teachers. There was little concern about the potential impact of the release of this public information on the housing values, residential segregation or school segregation for New York City dwellers. Since people “vote with their feet” (Tiebout, 1956), it is logical to believe that public information on teacher quality measures influences housing price, and resident and student mobility. Hedonic, fixed effects models were used to analyze the teacher quality, school report card, residential housing sales, and American Community Survey data. The housing market responds significantly to the new information provided by the release of the teacher quality information. The results also suggest that the highly debated release of teacher quality information has large implications on housing choices and an impact on school demographics. The results provide the first evidence of the effects of teacher quality scores on New York City’s housing market. An increase in teacher quality increases housing prices and this influences the demographics of neighborhoods and schools. The release of the data had some impact on increasing the average household income and educational attainment levels in less affluent and less educated neighborhoods. The results also indicate that home buyers who are responding to the data release are predominately White and are displacing Hispanic and Black residents. There are also changes that occur in the diversity of the school zones where the percentage of White students has increased in schools with high teacher quality and school diversity indices have decreased. Furthermore, the results show that there are teacher quality gaps between Title I and non-Title I schools putting students at Title I schools at a disadvantage. Not only are they being taught by lower quality teachers, the schools and neighborhoods that they are in are negatively impacted as the wealthier, more educated home buyers opt out of living and attending schools in these areas. As more affluent people move into areas with higher teacher quality, many of the low income families are being prices out and new policies need to be considered to make schools more equitable. KW - Urban Systems KW - Management KW - Segregation in education--New York (State) KW - Teacher effectiveness KW - Discrimination in housing LA - eng ER -