When court-ordered desegregation began in Milwaukee 40 years ago, the goal, in broad terms, was to replace segregated neighborhood schools with integrated schools drawing kids from broad areas.
What a deal! We ended up with neither.
We have few integrated schools, especially at the kindergarten through eighth-grade levels, either in the city or in the suburbs.
And strong neighborhood schools? That’s still the reality in many suburbs, thanks to small school systems that aren’t particularly diverse by race or economics.
But in the city, consider this answer to a question I asked about Milwaukee Public Schools: What percent of kindergarten through eighth-grade students across the city go to the school in the “attendance area” where they live?