I think it's really housing is expensive near good schools because people (with kids) want to live near good schools so it drives up the price.
I guess also people who buy their house based on education probably have a positive effect of the education in that area but I think it's more of a market effect of the school already being above average.
This sort of aligns with some other comments here. Parents want their kids to be around other kids that are better than the average. So like kids who behave well, aren’t violent, care about grades, have attentive parents, etc. I completely support that way of thinking given what school can be like when you don’t have that, which I did not like or benefit from in any way (even though some claim that mixing with other types of people is somehow positive).
I tend to agree.
As a parent with young kids moving to a new city a few years ago, we based our house hunting process on being near the best public schools (based on academic achievements; not much else to go by), and paid quite a bit more for our house than we would have otherwise. I know it sounds selfish, but our concern is that if our kids are mostly surrounded by other kids who don't have high academic standards (through no fault of their own, just their environment doesn't support that or it's not even a goal), then they will have a hard time bucking the tide, so to speak.