Unlike the obtuse Cohete, you have an excellent grasp on the funding situation. I tip my hat to you good sir.
**cough cough cough** https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/28/opinion/the-unmet-promise-of-equality.html Then this happens...4 years later. 20% of 5,000 is a drop in the bucket. Way to go, de Blasio! Let us not #BeMoreLikeNYC or #BeMoreLikeCalifornia. Let's find a Texas solution to an historically derived, yet modern issue, which is best solved by a community-based approach.
I feel like I should respond to your question because you bolded it. But, I don't think I understand it, or I don't understand why you think it is so compelling. I think it's obvious. If your school is zoned in a way that many of the families are distressed (which mostly comes down to not having the time and/or the money to support the kids, the school, and the community because you work too many hours for not enough pay), the whole peer group will not be as successful and your kid will be weighed down by the peer group even if your own family situation is stable and successful. Would one of my old Third Ward neighbors be offended if I told them their kid would succeed better if he was sitting next to some River Oaks kids? Maybe, but it's true so I'm going to say it. Fortunately with HISD's magnets (for however much longer they exist), you can do this if you can handle the logistical hassle of getting your kid across town. Don't know where the 'bottom-of-the-barrel' comment came from, but immigrants are another marginalized minority that needs better education service than we have been providing them. The implication I take from your comment is that you want to shunt them off elsewhere so they don't bring down the peer group for your kids' school district. That misses the point. We are competing to be the best economy in the world in an information age. All our low-skill jobs are being replaced by computers and robots. We should want to have the best educated populace in the world. We won't get there by dividing up the school kids so that 'our' kids get the best and 'their' kids get scraps.
I had some time this morning, while watching the World Cup, to go through the NYT data. It doesn't look good for "blue" states. Sure, New York is slightly ahead of Texas, but NYC has the most segregated schools in the country (it's worse than Mississippi!). California is just in absolute shambles -- it is a disaster. The obsession with being a "blue state", with being "liberal", with being "progressive", etc, is a holy grail. I feel like Sean Connery in The Last Crusade when I say this:
