primary issue with poor performing schools is funding? If you doubled their budget, you might move the needle a little, but as I posted before, you could take the entire class of Walt Whitman high school and bus them to the worst performing school in Anacostia and take the class from Anacostia and bus them to Walt Whitman. All teachers and facilities and budgets would remain the same. So the kids from Anacostia would be taught by the teachers at Walt Whitman with he facilities and resources of Walt Whitman. What would happen? I'd bet the performance of the kids from Anacostia might improve a little, but the performance of the schools would swap.... even over multiple years. I think the home environment totally dominates school performance. And that's what needs to be addressed. I don't know exactly how you go about doing that. It ultimately relies on breaking the cycle of poverty. Successful parents tend to raise successful kids. Poor parents tend to raise poor kids. Yes, education is key, but a lot of the key to a good education starts at home.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness response... I just don't know what we do to fix housing and land use issues