Elephantstrunk

Mark Thoma quotes from the abstract:

These results — both the negative effects of segregation, and the indication that neighborhood segregation matters more than does school segregation — stand up in the face of a variety of statistical tests designed to rule out competing explanations. The segregation effects do not appear to be attributable to differential family background characteristics of black students living in more- and less-segregated cities, nor to resource differences between students’ schools.

The paper he quotes confirms my bias that some problems faced by schools need to be dealt with in the wider world — by the time it reaches school it is too late to fix it much.  Some of the comments suggest that the evidence here is not undeniable. School segregation is an issue that busing and lottery schemes are meant to fix. Take the paper at face value and such measures look like too little too late. Of course it might still be worth doing but if the benefits are limited the trade offs in such schemes might be less acceptable and worrying about them might be a distraction. Maybe nursery education is the key, maybe urban planning is where these problems will be solved.