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Apparently, a woman from Rochester, New York has been jailed for enrolling her children in a suburban public school miles away from her urban home . Students at the largely affluent suburban school perform well on state-mandated tests. Students at her local urban school, which serves mostly low-income students of color, do not.

Susan Eaton finds this punishment outrageous. She writes in The Nation that the suburban district "reportedly hired a private investigator and sent him after... urban parents who'd done the same thing. The taxpayer-supported sleuth will continue to trail mothers and fathers suspected of trying to cross the line and 'steal' from the town...."

Eaton links the difference between the two schools' performance to racial and economic segretation, laying some of the blame on "discriminatory practices in the nation's housing and lending markets." Setting the dogs on those who seek the escape the effects of such segregation, she argues, merely adds insult to injury.

While she supports desegregation efforts, Eaton argues that such efforts are "simply off the table in most cities":

Thankfully, though, we have entered the fact-based era, and we can act on the knowledge that concentrated poverty and racial isolation contribute to the achievement gap. In this new space, we can build on and replicate educational models that value connection over division and incorporation over separation. To begin, a collective attack on poverty's symptoms--health problems, incarcerated parents, grandparents raising children, exposure to neighborhood violence, the list goes on--offers a promising approach to education policy.

So, we might add, do concerted efforts to improve schools like those in Rochester.