Suburban schools' superior performance partly results from having students who reinforce each others' ambitions. Without suburban integration, low-income pupil achievement will not easily improve. Americans have bused children, redrawn attendance zones and set up magnet schools in fruitless efforts to equalize schooling without equalizing neighborhoods. While Moving to Opportunity may show a route to equal education, the political will may be absent to relocate large numbers of poor families to the suburbs. But if this nation truly wants the poor to have choices like the middle class, there is no alternative.
School vouchers are no substitute.
Click here to read more of Congressman Jackson's Issues and Positions.