The article was talking about a study where they looked at the results of kids from bad schools who applied to good schools and had to put their names in a lottery. The kids who won the lottery and went to the good schools significantly out performed the kids who lost the lottery and went to the bad schools. They did this even though the good school would be more crowded and the bad school less crowded. There is nothing hypothetical about the study.

For the lucky students who managed to get into the better schools it was a huge opportunity they would not have otherwise have had. I count that a win even though it is only a partial win since some kids were still forced to attend failing schools. Just because you can't save everyone doesn't mean you shouldn't save the ones you can. Now the hope would be that the loss of students would force the bad school to improve but at least the maximum number of students were helped even if it doesn't. If we could get the unions and the politics out of the way we could empower the administration at the bad school to either learn to do better or replace them with someone who can. There is no excuse for taxpayers to spend money on an education system that doesn't educate or to protect the jobs of educators who do not educate.