Real Estate should take a page out of the play book from the New York City School system.

Much to the surprise of some wealthy homeowners in New York, the city released its first grading system results for public schools.

The schools were based on performance, academic progress, and indexed against one another.

Good schools whose standardized test scores did not improve were given grades of B or C.

Many people are speaking out in NYC, especially residents who moved to an area because of school quality, and not surprising - REALTORS® representing sellers.

Suddenly, good schools are not good anymore because of the measurement.

Residents of NYC have pressured city administrations for years to seek improvement.  At every step of the way, grading individual teachers has been rejected.  This system rates the schools and will provide benchmarks and goal setting for improvement – a goal that everyone seemingly wants.  Now homeowners and parents are up in arms!

We should applaud New York City for its efforts to do what is right for the benefit of the city’s education system.

Rating systems for REALTORS® has also been a long debate with little or no progress.  Perhaps the debate needs to focus on Brokers rather than agents.

Please let me know if you use any type of rating system like QSC, or shout back with your opinion on this.