[SilasX]

I don't think the problem is the government funding per se but the government operation, and the tying of attendance rights to location of residence. You could have a much better system while keeping government funding: "money follows the student". That is, you can send your kid to any school meeting the government's criteria, and that gets your subsidy.

Why won't we switch to that? Well, most homes owe a significant portion of their value to "being in a good school district" and most such homeowners have made a leveraged bet of most of their net worth in that home. Such reform would mean destroying that.

It would also mean schools trying to apply the same resegregation filters most parents want, at which point governments would have to adapt their criteria to stop that, and the arms races continues.