I'm not really familiar with the DC school district, but LA Unified gets a bad rap for being an awful school district. If you take it on a whole maybe it is, but the wealthy neighborhoods produce very good schools because they are outspending neighborhoods in say South Central Los Angeles or East Los Angeles. Do you think that this is solely because in the richer neighborhoods the parents have more time to spend assisting the students or in the classroom? Also it would be interesting to know how much more the richer schools receive in funding than the poorer schools. It seems like they are getting a two fold advantage. They have more funding available and parents who have more time and/or more involved.

Edit: just to clarify I didn't want to come across as calling you a right-wing Nazi baby killer and hope that I didn't in the original post.