>>The other advantage with metrics like zip code or school ranking is that one way to game that kind of metric is to intentionally send your kids to a strugglin

>>The other advantage with metrics like zip code or school ranking is that one way to game that kind of metric is to intentionally send your kids to a struggling school or merging school districts to incorporate struggling schools, and it seems like that might have some positive impacts. That was a similar argument for indiscriminate school bussing, and if anything those formerly big-fish-in-a-small-pond students , past a certain age like 7 or 8, were more likely to fail in their more rigorous environment. This "reverse bussing" solution you've suggested could just result in the educational equivalent of gentrification or could push people to invent their way out public schooling entirely. And with the pandemic, the public school system had further undermined itself. As edutech and homeschooling platforms are become the next evolution in learning. Students won't be required to participate in struggling schools as that's not the only option left to them anymore. They can have their education a la carte. In addition to this, merging school districts isn't usually a move made for educational advancement. It's a move made for federal dollars or latent cost-cutting. And where there's one form of cost-cutting, there are bound to be others that slowly compromise student education starting with the education of the brightest. Parents who can afford charters or private school rarely deal with the shenanigans of politics or the sociological experiments that come with public education.