Dude... White flight already happened. They moved out to the 'burbs where property values are higher and school systems are better.
School systems in the poor neighborhoods suck. In many of them, per-student funding is quite healthy (albeit spent on the wrong things, i.e. bloated administrations). How are we supposed to solve the problem of those school districts? Throw more money at it?
We need reform, and it's not going to happen when the "customers" are legally required to go to school, and cannot afford to go to private schools or move out of the poor neighborhoods, so they're captives to the system.
I'm probably not going to make you a school choice believer... I'm fine with that.
What's your solution?
I know 'white flight' is taught as a one-use term to describe the specific era you shared, but it's not just that - it's continuous and occurs in nearly every portion of our society. All this damn integration has run amok and cities are somewhat checkerboards when it comes to neighborhood quality. It's so sad that every elite neighborhood can't buffer itself with an upper middle class neighborhood, away from the poor kids.
So it's another white flight from mostly-nice public schools to charter schools (money-making bonanzas) and private schools - both of which have somehow (guess which party helps) extracted public funds.
So what's the solution?
Well, the solution is NOT to siphon money from public schools to give to charters and privates.
The solution is NOT for the best students and most involved families to ditch their public schools....if that happens, then there is no solution.
An actual "fix" of our school system would require a total reset, based on what's best for the students. Not what's easiest to test them, not what's going to avoid hurting feelings, etc.
Teachers are tasked with being given a bell curve of students and told to make them all average or better. It's absurd.
Grade levels aren't a problem, but having annual cohorts and 95% of them marching along to the next grade year by year is a clown fantasy come to life. There are MANY 8 year olds that should still be in kindergarten. There are MANY 8 year olds ready for middle school content. We're more worried about the social stigma of holding kids back or promoting them too quickly, based on their knowledge/ability level. Except that that pales in comparison to these students not being at the correct level even more (imo).
We could fill 1000 forum pages on this, but there needs to be a paradigm shift of epic proportions.