Getting off the topic of religion, the house hunting thread made me think of this one.
In the county where I mostly grew up, since I was 8, the public school system is very competitive and people generally tend to be very well off. So people are willing to pay extra for a house in a district for a certain high school that has high test scores.
What has always broken my brain is that people would buy their homes when their children weren't even born yet!! My parents were partly guilty of this. They bought in that area when I was almost 8 and my brother wasn't even born yet. They wanted both of us to be able to attend one of the more popular high schools in the area.
Well, guess what? Districts changed when I was a freshman. Since I was already there, I was grandfathered in, but my folks were bummed that my brother would not be able to attend that high school and would be bused to another one that was in one of the few areas of town that was a little too close to the working class part of town.

They did rebuild the school in the 8 years between when I started high school and when he did and it turned out to be nicer than the school I went to.
But that always hurt my brain. Do people really expect that districts aren't going to change in 14 years? Why pay extra to buy a house in a certain area just to make sure your kid will attend there, when that child's not even born yet?
It does make sense in an area that's small and you have one of each kind of school that will serve a large area. Like my bff's small midwest town. Doesn't matter where you buy either in town or in the country, there's just one elementary school, one middle and one high school, and districts just don't change.