Or what we realized was the right idea a long time ago... mixing everybody up by force. (Busing)

I believe it has been proven that as communities become more integrated, outcomes improve for all parties — and not just academically.

One Source, since people seem to disagree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/23/...

Something more academic: https://gsppi.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/johnson_schooldesegregat...

But the problem we realized, after trying out forced busing, was that in the long term all parents with resources would simply opt out of the public school system to avoid it.

Because schools are a reflection of the students they get. Private schools do better not because they teach any better, but because they keep out the ones that aren't there to learn and thus the teacher can actually spend their time teaching a group of kids at the same level.

Practically, going a long way to school on a bus every morning blows

Affirmative action was almost certainly the least bad solution--it broke the back of the rampant discrimination in this country, something that would have been very hard to do anywhere near as fast by other means.

The problem is that it's already produced all the benefits it's going to, now it's pure burden with no benefit.