> The lower performing schools also tend to be older and require more maintenance and repairs than newer schools in wealthier areas.

Sure, that's a factor too, but I'd still call it a social service issue since it ultimately results from the historical disinvestment in the communities that today have low performing schools.

There are reasons that the roofs didn't get repaired and the lead pipes didn't get replaced in those schools: because middle income people took their lives, businesses, and tax dollars out of those communities starting in the late 1960s, both by migrating to newly built suburbs, and also by ensuring their tax dollars never went toward the communities they left.

Look up the opposition to "Robin Hood" school funding from the 80s and 90s. Where I grew up it was largely about keeping suburban tax dollars out of inner-city school districts.