An example is neighboring districts in rich areas of the country. Example: great neck vs mount sinai.
How can these two be so different in terms of budget etc to achieve such different results?
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The biggest input to a school’s raw performance is the students, their preparation, and the support they get from their parents.
So imagine a family who really cares about education. They read to their child, go on trips to the science museum, etc. They’re moving for work and buying a new house. They research the school districts and find that one is rated highest. The houses in that district are more expensive (because the schools are better), but this family cares a lot about education, so they pay the premium (or live in a smaller house).
Now imagine an equally wealthy family that doesn’t care about education. They also move to a new area, but now they specifically *avoid* the houses in the better district because they are more expensive for (to this family’s mind) no reason.
So now we’ve sent the better-prepared student to the “good” district and the less prepared student to the “bad” district. Even if these districts are doing everything exactly the same, the “good” district will get higher test scores because their students come from families that were willing to spend a lot on education. This isn’t to say that the districts necessarily ARE the same, but this is a way that small initial differences in school quality can get magnified into big realized differences in test scores.
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