Absolutely! I went to the county school districts' websites (we are looking in Baltimore and Harford counties) and downloaded the school area maps. Then I basically redlined the areas that I am restricting my search to. BTW, I did the same when I was looking for rental apartments.

IMHO, if one is a parent, then one must first and foremost ensure that one's kids will receive a decent education. And is one is not a parent, one should still pay attention, since many of the potential buyers down the road will be... Just my two cents...

The other important factor to correlate is the % of kids getting free lunches. The county (BCPS) used to publish this information around mid October.

Make your decisions on whatever your values are but do so armed with all of the information that directly relates.

I've been watching the Howard County market for a year, and it seems like school district plays a big part in house value. There are a few higher-end neighborhoods whose home values seem to have been dropping much quicker than in comparable neighborhoods -- seems to me that school district is the likely cause, because the neighborhoods and the homes themselves are very nice.

For example, here are two houses that both went on the market at $825,000 in February.
(A) http://franklymls.com/HW6992241
(B) http://franklymls.com/HW6981360
House A is in one of the "sought-after" school districts. House B is only about 3 miles away, but is in a "less desirable" school district. House A closed earlier this month at $765,000. House B is still on the market (162 days so far) and is down to $649,500. Note that house B is on a golf course and acording to the tax record is about 800 sq.ft. bigger than house A.

This example matches my observations and intuition about this particular area, but I did some rough number crunching to see if the example generalizes. This wasn't terribly scientific, but here were my parameters: sold in the last 15 months, closing price under $800K, detached SFH, built between 1990-2000, and within Columbia or Clarksville either in high school district A or B (as the houses above). Raw data was from franklymls, but I had to add in some school district info where it was missing. I had 30 houses in group A and 17 in B.
Results:
District A: Avg. sold price was $649,877 and Avg. DOMP was 75 days
District B: Avg. sold price was $616,741 and Avg. DOMP was 102 days

That's a really interesting analysis, clover. Thanks for sharing it!

I agree with clover's analysis but people who have lived in Columbia for a period of time know that there is a price disparity based on school districts. What some people fail to realize is that Howard County has skewed demographics. A disproportionate number of adults have college degrees and in many cases multiple degrees. So are the better test scores a result of better schools and teachers or a result of more highly motivated parents and students? Disclaimer - I live in one of the less desirable school districts.

"So are the better test scores a result of better schools and teachers or a result of more highly motivated parents and students?"

In almost every instance it is those highly motivated parents that make better schools where better teachers gravitate. The parents simply won't accept anything less.

The few exceptions to this involve some other entity filling in for that parental role.

Does the School have a PTA?
What % of the families are signed up?
What % of that group participate?
It isn't much more complicated than this.