I’m not so sure this is as cut-and-dried as the article on Highland Park implies. I don’t know the facts about Highand Park, but I can tell you about another Michigan city where they have just turned their own schools over to a charter school company after a state-appointed emergency manager could find no other way out. I could call it the “The Tale of Two Cities.” I was born and bred in one of them, City No. 1. I lived about a block from the dividing line with City No. 2.

City No. 2 was founded in the late 19th century by White businessmen. Over the years, it became, like its twin, an industrial engine of considerable capacity. The factories were large and played important war production roles in 1917-1918 and 1940-1945. The school systems in both cities were excellent. And the athletic programs were superb. The two principal high schools were great rivals on the football field, with both schools have long-time coaches who became legends in the state because of the number of state championships they notched. City No. 2 also became a noted state power in high school basketball.

In City No. 2 there was a certain street which could have rightly been named “The Street of Dreams.” Along that street there was a long line of factories large and small. They tell me that that street alone had 30,000 jobs and that, if you didn’t like your job, you could quit, walk down that street, and have another within an hour. Factories and foundries in both cities pumped out everything from piston rings to Army tanks and aircraft engines and office furniture and huge lifting cranes and home appliances. Returning vets from World War I to Vietnam had little trouble finding a job in either city when they came home.

There was another thing. During World War II, many Blacks came North looking for jobs, and they found them in the industrial bases of those two cities. There was, however, something which was hidden from view: racism. While the Old South was being crucified for open segregation, something similar was going on in many places in the North. The critical segregation tool was mortgage approvals. The lending organizations, including the factory credit unions run by the major unions, managed to turn down a mortgage application for any Black who wanted to buy in a “White” area. It did not matter how well qualified that Black might be — and many had good jobs in those factories and foundries with equal pay and unimpeachable credit records. As a consequence, City No. 2 became increasingly a “Black” town because that is where Black citizens could buy (but, even there, not everywhere in town). As I said, I lived only a block from the line between the two. Once you crossed the railroad track into City No. 2, you began to encounter Black neighborhoods. But not where I lived. I never had a Black schoolmate until I went to the central middle school in City No. 1. (How do I know all this? Because I knew the man who punched the first hole through this hidden color line by being the deciding vote on a credit union mortgage application by a Black factory worker and making himself a pariah among his White union mates. He was a conservative Republican voter and a devout fundamentalist Christian. He was also my father. Many years later, he told me he had done it because the discrimination was wrong and his Christian faith compelled him to take action when the power to do so fell on his shoulders.)

Now, let me bring this up to the current time and give you one expression: Rust Belt. That “Street of Dreams” is no more. It is now lined with shuttered factory buildings and empty lots where factories used to be. City No. 1 has suffered through similar bad times and has big troubles but manages to hold on because it is on the Big Lake and has a certain amount of tourist draw. But City No. 2, now Black by a huge majority, is landlocked and on its economic knees, not because of but, nevertheless, greatly affected by the current seemingly endless recession. Over the past few decades, a combination of high labor costs and shareholder pressures sent the large businesses South to right-to-work states or to Canada. With the loss of industry and jobs came the shrinking of the tax base to unbelievable lows. Crime is up in City No. 2. But the police force has been cut to the bone because the town cannot afford enough personnel. And now the schools, once part of a strong educational system producing many great graduates over the years, White and Black, is being given to a charter school organization for rescue. The charter school company just rehired the football coach, who tells us that, because of a transfer clause in the switch to the charter system, he fears that none of his 18 lettermen will return this season. He has to start from scratch. He is a good man — a one-time star at the University of Michigan — who will give it his best shot. So, I am confident, will all those teachers returning to the system under a different kind of contract. They are the last line of defense from absolute disaster. They need support, not criticism.

You can argue about rising education costs and the influence of public employee unions, as well as a lack of fiscal foresight and planning among the politicians. There is enough blame to go around. But I would posit that a big part of the problem in many of the cities of the North is the disappearance of the industrial base and and the consequent extreme diminishing of the tax base. The burden falls on the shrinking number of homeowners who still have decent jobs and on the remaining small businesses which have managed to survive despite it all. In my opinion, government by itself is not enough. Where was the “stimulus” money for City No. 2, essentially a long-time Democratic Party bastion? Just taxing the wealthy will never be enough, even if you did a “socialist” thing and stripped them of huge amounts — meaning they wouldn’t be your pot of gold for very long. Enhancing the social safety net is a stopgap thing which, in my opinion, can lead to complete, long-term dependence and then a loss of liberty. I posit that what we need is to toss aside the political partisanship and put our heads together so we can find a way to reconfigure and resurrect our economic production capacity. Government, the private sector, and the unions have to stop being rivals and start working together with transparent and honest intent. And they have to work smart, not just toss money around for future political gain.

In other and more blunt terms, all sides of the political spectrum have to put aside the %@*&%^& partisan ideological arguments and get to work before it is too late. Those kids in City No.2 are now on the last gasp road to try to save their school system. If that fails, where will they be then? Well, until the charter school idea drew a buyer, City No. 2 was considering something else. Just suppose that the schools in Loudoun County failed and we had to beg other jurisdictions like Fairfax to take our kids. THAT is what they were facing — until now.

Reb — I really don’t think that the “spirits” of the kids are broken in totem or that the teachers are all substandard. Some of the teachers in those two cities have been part of my own family or family friends. I know them, and they have worked hard in difficult circumstances. What I think you see in the proficiency stats may be more of a result of disruption in the classroom — the kind of thing which one finds so often in any society where economic dislocation has become a very large factor of life. In my opinion, the ill effects of economic uncertainty and outright poverty on basic family life are serious causal problems for the schools. As one of those teachers in an “inner city school” once told me, he had kids in his classes who went on to become excellent college students and then leaders in business and the professions. He had others who wound up imprisoned for murder. He had to walk a difficult road every day.