OAK PARK, MI – Recently I completed a book on this unusual little city, which for many years was the heart of Detroit’s Jewish community and boasted one of the best school systems in the state.
The story of Oak Park’s public schools is utterly fascinating, both unique and a good example of why so many Michigan school systems are in trouble these days. When World War II ended, Oak Park was a backward, semi-rural little town of five square miles, with a two-room schoolhouse that had been built in 1848.
The town had barely a thousand people and was dominated by a large swamp that frequently would catch fire. However, it was one of the few places that had no “restrictive covenants” forbidding African-Americans or Jewish people from living there.
Jewish builders asked the FHA, the Federal Housing Authority, to steer returning veterans with GI bill money to Oak Park, and they went to work building hundreds and hundreds of fine small brick homes. Soon, the town was built up, the swamp was gone, and by 1960 Oak Park had 36,000 people and an amazing school system.
“These were Jewish mommies and daddies who were going to make sure their kids studied hard, and had good teachers,” said 80-year-old Marian McClellan, Oak Park’s popular mayor.
How good were the schools? They produced Jeffrey Sachs, the internationally famous Harvard-trained economist who helped transition Eastern European nations to free markets after the fall of Communism — and he isn’t even their most renowned alum.
That would probably be Paul Milgrom, another economist who won a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his pioneering work. Oak Park schools also produced famous doctors, tons of lawyers, popular music legends like Doug Fieger of the Knack, Don Was, and many more.
But as time passed, the city declined. The state forced the schools to merge with a segregated and impoverished Black school district, and a common pattern of white flight followed.
Restrictive covenants were outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, and as they became more financially successful, some residents left Oak Park for larger homes in more expensive suburbs in places like West Bloomfield. The city slowly declined too.
However, a renaissance of sorts began in 2011, when the voters elected a new mayor, who hired a first-rate professional city manager who then built an impressive management team. The population, which had been declining, started increasing again.
Oak Park saw an explosion of new but affordable bars and restaurants designed to appeal to mainly young and single people, and the city was said to have a “cool vibe.” Last fall, the residents voted to increase their taxes to improve their parks and build what is expected to be a fabulous new community center.
But the city’s recovery has been hampered, because its schools, once among the state’s best, are now close to the worst. Only three percent of the students are adequately proficient in math; 12 percent in reading. Four out of five come from impoverished backgrounds, and the vast majority of the students don’t even live in Oak Park.
That’s for a variety of reasons; many parents began pulling their students out when the quality deteriorated.
To cover the expenses of running a school system, Oak Park public schools began admitting students from other cities, mainly Detroit, under a Michigan “schools of choice” program that allows districts to take students from elsewhere if they so choose.
Many poorer districts do indeed take students from elsewhere for a reason: Thirty years ago, Michigan went to a funding system where most state funding of public education comes via a per-pupil “foundation grant” paid to the district.
Currently, Oak Park gets $9,608 per student, providing an incentive to admit as many students as possible. But there have been culture clashes, fighting and even shootings.
Having an undesirable school system has been damaging to many communities, including Oak Park, limiting the city’s ability to improve beyond a certain point. However, the northern part of Oak Park is in the Berkley School District, which is ranked very highly.
There, in that part of Oak Park, new homes are constantly being built and housing values are soaring. It is not clear how weak school systems can be fixed, though it is clear that paying districts to maximize enrollment has been anything but an academic success.
Nor did the pre-1994 system, in which districts were funded mostly by local taxes, work well either; poorer districts frequently ran out of money and had to close before the school year ended.
The solution may be beyond the control of any government authority, and require major societal change.
A federal judge in charge of desegregating Detroit’s school district once told me, “teachers can have the best curriculum in the world, but if there’s nobody at home who cares if (the kids) do their homework, it’s meaningless.”
How can that be solved? He told me he didn’t have a clue.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
