DC vs Detroit: a Few Considerations

As I was reading an article in the New York Times about Detroit I couldn't help but compare Detroit to the District. Both cities have major poverty issues, a troubled school system, a high tax rate (Detroit's is high for Michigan), and a history that includes riots in the 60s and both white flight and black middle class flight. Detroit is currently facing the specter of receivership, and DC has DEFINITELY been there. Luckily, DC is currently in a position where its citizens can look at Detroit and breath one huge sigh of relief. It is true that in the District crime is a problem, the juvenile justice and school systems are largely in shambles, and affordable housing is in crisis. But it is also true that this city is leaps and bounds ahead of Detroit. We have a terrific public transportation system (even if coverage is not universal and bad weather can still wreak havoc); our average income level is rising not falling (tax revenues are increasing); and we are looking at a budget surplus, rather than a shortfall. But it's the similarities that get me. The following paragraph made me cringe.

Flight is even more furious from the public schools, which have lost 33,000 students since 1998-9, enough to fill 65 elementary schools (21 have closed). Competition that was supposed to promote improvement has instead hastened the district's collapse. Of the 9,300 students who did not return
last all, 3,400 went to charter schools and 1,300 to neighboring suburbs that recruit Detroit residents.

Those left are the hardest and most expensive to educate. One in seven Detroit students is in special education, and 72 percent are poor enough to qualify for free lunches, up from 61 percent four years ago.

I look at the District's public school system, and I feel overwhelmed. I have no direct experience with the school system here (never having attended, or taught in, any District schools), so everything I know about it comes from what I read, or from conversations with people who have taught in charter schools here. My point being that I can't begin to say how we can go about fixing the schools here, but I do know that until the problem is fixed, the District will never lure bright young families unable, or unwilling, to foot the private school bill, and the District government will continue to be complicit in the creation of permanent underclass (complete with all the inequality/crime that generally accompany such an unjust system).