"Expansion Management" ranks Madison schools third in nation -- how will this be used in debate?

This press release from an industry magazine we've all never heard of was making the rounds of the local news recently -- the dreaded Expansion Management magazine rated Madison a "five star" location for business based on "quality of life" factors and their assuredly scientific ranking system, including a number three spot in school district quality. They explain why such rankings are crucial to competitiveness:

Being located in a place where employees can afford to enjoy a decent standard of living has long been an important site location factor. People just didn’t associate it with the term “quality of life,” which generally centered on images of culture and recreation.

Real quality of life, however, is where people can afford to live and work on the salaries their employers can afford to pay.

For companies, the corollary is true. If they want to be able to attract and retain the best employees without having to pay exorbitantly high salaries, they must be located in places that offer, among other things, good schools, affordable housing and low crime.

That’s why, for the seventh straight year, Expansion Management is publishing its Quality of Life Quotient™ ranking of metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) throughout the country.

This kind of "livable city indicators" analysis and ranking has long fascinated me ever since the early 1990s when these rankings really hit the media big. Such calculations inevitably include profound assumptions about citizenship, consumption, race, class -- just a whole host of political-economic-social projects and philosophies. Unpacking them, when raw data and methodology are available (which is rare), can be a treat.

Of course, at the same time, I entirely believe Madison has a "top ten" school system, and I'm at a loss to figure out why I persist in that belief...

Anyway, my hypothesis is that this ranking will be granted legitimacy and repeated throughout the media by those wishing to use it as a reason to convince voters to pass all three funding referenda next month ... although there is a counter-hypothesis which would anticipate an argument about how "our schools are already on top, we don't need to pony up any more cash for them". What do other QSG members think?

(PS. I've long thought that a thesis analyzing such "best places" and "livable cities" discourse and how it moves through policy groups, activist groups, media outlets, and geographic locations would be a great project -- the kind of thing that could nicely combine communication research and geographical sensibilities. Hint, hint.)