Nice suburbs will likely always be outliers since we're talking about an income group that can afford the extra expenses; I'm talking more about families in the

Nice suburbs will likely always be outliers since we're talking about an income group that can afford the extra expenses; I'm talking more about families in the $50K-100K yearly household income that work in NY but live in Jersey as my example. Those people will likely move into closer, more urbanized locations as time goes on. The matter in schooling is reflected by the district budgets, which are highly dependent on the tax base of its population (probably one of the biggest factors of inequalty in the US, but I digress), so as soon as you get wealthier people moving in and caring about teacher quality that will catch up. Gentrification also means that poor people end up moving out, so people with less opportunities will go to elsewhere (a huge topic by itself).