Originally Posted by Tallulah
It could be done if the population density is high enough. If a kid is, say, 1 in 10,000 frequency then the odds of having another child in that range in that grade in that school are miniscule. And if everyone knew that Kennedy Elementary and King Middle in Jonesville were the regional magnets then you could take that into account when looking for a house.
There is already a model for this problem and how difficult it is to solve: Deaf education. There is no contest that the best environment for deaf kids is immersion at a school with a natural sign language (like ASL). The problem is that the frequency of congenital deafness in the population is so low, and it's made worse by the magnet effect -- families with genetic deafness migrate to big cities with deaf communities, leaving even lower frequencies in the smaller towns.

People have been trying to solve this one for many decades. First there were residential schools, usually one per state, which meant that deaf kids were away from their families for months on end. Then there was mainstreaming, which was an educational and social disaster for deaf kids. Now there is a mix of programs. Unsurprisingly, it all works better in the high-population areas.

What I'm saying is that the current system obviously is broken, but that doesn't mean there's an easy fix if only there were the political will. This is a thorny problem that will always be difficult to solve.