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All true.
I grew up in a small town in northern New Jersey during the 1950s and was never more than six blocks away from either grammar or high school. I used to come home for lunch practically everyday, something that is quite atypical these days.
It's not just the growth of new suburbs that has done away with this sort of environment, but also the trend towards consolidating several small local schools into a giant regional school, a move which makes busing just about mandatory. School desegregation in urban areas (though a worthy goal) has had much the same effect.
I wish we would return to small local schools, but I doubt this will happen any time soon.
There is actually an active movement to re-establish small neighborhood schools. See for instance the National Association of Realtors' magazine, On Common Ground, Winter 2005. The effort is helped by support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the fact that small schools have better performance records. See in particular the article Of Sprawl Schools and Small Schools.
Another factor that makes suburbs unwalkable is that the street patterns are deliberately designed to be disconnected, with every street ending in a cul de sac. You might live a half mile from school as the crow flies, but it could be a two mile walk to get out of the maze of cul de sacs, out onto the dangerous arterial, and to the school campus (after cutting through 5 acres of school parking). Why did the suburbs develop that way? See Connectivity Part II: Historical Background for the story.
Isn't (d)efficiency wonderful?